3.1.2 MxFS-Linux Administration Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction 3

• Cluster-wide consistent user authentication. A user and NFS client

may always be authenticated, by any NFS server in the cluster, as the

same user and NFS client (assuming that an organizational

authentication service such as LDAP has been deployed).

• Cluster-wide, connection-oriented load balancing. Through the use

of DNS round-robin connection load balancing (or any external load

balancer), NFS client connections mounting through a single common

IP address (or DNS name) will be automatically and evenly

distributed among the NFS servers in the cluster that are exporting the

same filesystems. The DNS service may also be configured for high

availability on the same file-serving cluster.

MxFS Concepts and Definitions

MxFS uses and manages the following objects to provide scalable and

highly available file service across the cluster: Export Groups, export

records, and Virtual NFS Services.

Export Groups

An Export Group is equivalent in form and function to the /etc/exports file

of a traditional NFS server. However, unlike a traditional NFS server,

MxFS supports multiple Export Groups (the equivalent of multiple

independent /etc/exports files) on a single node.

An Export Group is composed of a name (which must be unique among

all other Export Groups in the cluster), a list of cluster nodes that will

participate in the NFS service for the exports defined by this Export

Group, and a list of Export Records describing the filesystems shared via

NFS by the nodes listed in the Export Group.

An Export Group created on one node of the cluster is immediately

available to all cluster nodes defined in the Export Group. A

high-availability monitor is automatically associated with each of these

nodes to monitor the health of the NFS service on the nodes and to

initiate failover actions if the health of the NFS service degrades.