Administrator Guide

BeeGFS file system
7 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for HPC BeeGFS High Capacity Storage | ID 424
2 BeeGFS file system
This storage solution is based on BeeGFS, an opensource parallel file system, which offers flexibility and
easy scalability. The general architecture of BeeGFS consists of four main services: management, metadata,
storage, and client. The server components are user space daemons. The client is a patchless kernel module.
An additional monitoring service is also available.
The key elements of the BeeGFS file system are as follows:
• Metadata targets (MDTs)
Stores all the metadata for the file system including filenames, permissions, time stamps, and the
location of stripes of data.
• Management target (MGMTD)
Stores management data such as configuration and registry.
• Metadata server (MDS)
Manages the filesystem namespace (files and directories) and file layout allocation, and determines
where the files are saved on the storage devices. Manages the MDTs, providing BeeGFS clients with
access to files.
• Storage targets (STs)
Stores the data stripes or extents of the files on a file system.
• Storage server (SS)
Manages the STs, providing BeeGFS clients with access to the data.
• Clients
The BeeGFS client kernel module is installed on the clients to allow access to data on the BeeGFS
file system. To the clients, the file system appears as a single namespace that can be mounted for
access.
For more information on BeeGFS file system architecture, see Introduction to BeeGFS
.