BeeGFS

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BeeGFS is a scalable network-storage platform with a focus on being distributed, resilient, highly configurable and having good performance and high reliability. BeeGFS is extremely configurable, with administrators being able to control virtually all aspects of the system. A command line interface is used to monitor and control the cluster.

From Wikipedia:

BeeGFS (formerly FhGFS) is a parallel file system, developed and optimized for high-performance computing. BeeGFS includes a distributed metadata architecture for scalability and flexibility reasons. Its most important aspect is data throughput. BeeGFS was originally developed at the Fraunhofer Center for High Performance Computing in Germany by a team around Sven Breuner, who later became the CEO of ThinkParQ, the spin-off company that was founded in 2014 to maintain BeeGFS and offer professional services.

From BeeGFS.io:

BeeGFS is the leading parallel cluster file system, developed with a strong focus on performance and designed for very easy installation and management. If I/O intensive workloads are your problem, BeeGFS is the solution.

Terminology

Tip: A full glossary is available in the official documentation.

Node Type and Description	Packages
Management Server (one node) Manages configuration and group membership Hostname or IP address must be known by other nodes at service start time	beegfs-mgmtd^AUR
Metadata Server (at least one node) Stores directory information and allocates file space on storage servers	beegfs-meta^AUR
Storage Server (at least one node) Stores raw file contents	beegfs-storage^AUR
InfluxDB / Grafana based Monitoring Server (optional) Continuous monitoring of servers Live statistics beegfs-admon (Java based administration and monitoring GUI), must not be installed on the same server	beegfs-mon^AUR
BeeGFS utilities for administrators `beegfs-ctl` tool for command-line administration `beegfs-fsck` tool for file system checking Several small helper scripts such logging and DNS lookup functionality	beegfs-utils^AUR
BeeGFS Common Common files for all packages Enables support for remote direct memory access rdma-core based on the OpenFabrics IBVerbs API, through `libbeegfs-ib`.	beegfs-common^AUR
Client Kernel module to mount the file system Requires userspace helper daemon for logging and hostname resolution	beegfs-client^AUR

In addition to the free and open-source packages described here, BeeGFS also offers a number of Enterprise Features and Professional Support, which include:

High Availability
Quota Enforcement
Access Control Lists (ACLs)
Storage Pools
Burst buffer function with BeeOND

Warning: Whilst the BeeGFS server components are userspace daemons, the client is a native kernel module. The latest version of BeeGFS v7.1.3 has support for Kernels up to 4.19.x. Hence there are a number of adhoc patches to the client source build files included in the beegfs-client^AUR PKGBUILD. This in turn may lead to instability with the client kernel module.

Installation

Example cluster deployment

The following hardware configuration will be used in this example:

Hostname	IP Address	Description
node01	`192.168.0.1`	Management Server and Monitoring (optional) Server
node02	`192.168.0.2`	Metadata Server
node03	`192.168.0.3`	Storage Server
node04	`192.168.0.4`	Client

Tip: One if free to choose the option of using dedicated hosts for all BeeGFS services. BeeGFS allows running any combination of services (including client and storage/metadata service) on the same machine. Especially the management and mon daemons are not performance-critical and thus are typically not running on dedicated machines.

NTP client

Install and run a time synchronization client on all the nodes. See Time synchronization for details.

Note: It is strongly recommended to synchronize the clocks on all cluster nodes to prevent clock drift (see System time#Time skew for details), which can degrade the performance of your cluster or stop it from functioning altogether. The official documentation recommends that nodes run some form of clock synchronization.

Management server

Install it with the package beegfs-mgmtd^AUR on the management node 192.168.0.1.

The management service needs to know where it can store its data. It will only store some node information like connectivity data, so it will not require much storage space and its data access is not performance critical. Thus, this service is typically not running on a dedicated machine.

/etc/beegfs/beegfs-mgmtd

storeMgmtdDirectory = /mnt/beegfs/beegfs-mgmtd

Start/enable the beegfs-mgmtd@node01.service on the management node.

Monitoring server

Install the package beegfs-mon^AUR on the management/monitoring node 192.168.0.1, which collects statistics from the system and provides them to the user using a time series database InfluxDB. For visualization of the data beegfs-mon provides predefined Grafana panels that can be used out of the box.

Before running beegfs-mon, you need to edit the configuration file /etc/beegfs/beegfs-mon.conf. If you have everything installed on the same host, you only need to specify the management host:

/etc/beegfs/beegfs-mon.conf

sysMgmtHost = localhost

Tip: If your InfluxDB is installed on another host, say the client for example or you need to use a different database port or name, you also need to modify the corresponding entries:

/etc/beegfs/beegfs-mon.conf

dbHostName = node04
dbHostPort = 9096
dbHostName = beegfs_mon_client

Start/enable the beegfs-mon@node01.service on the management/monitoring node.

Configuration of default Grafana panels

You can use the provided installation script for default InfluxDB and Grafana deployments on the same host.

# cd /etc/beegfs/grafana
# ./import-dashboards default

Accessing Grafana panels

Access the application on localhost, e.g.: http://127.0.0.1:3000 . Refer to Custom Grafana Panel Configuration for non-default installations and for the Reference to All Metrics monitored.

Note: Different services on the same machine cannot share the same storage directory, so different directories have to be used, i.e. /mnt/beegfs/beegfs-mgmtd for management servers and /mnt/beegfs/beegfs-mon for monitoring servers.

Metadata server

Install the package beegfs-meta^AUR on the metadata server(s), i.e. 192.168.0.2.

The metadata service needs to know where it can store its data and where the management service is running. Typically, one will have multiple metadata services running on different machines.

/etc/beegfs/beegfs-meta.conf

sysMgmtdHost = node01
storeMetaDirectory = /mnt/beegfs/beegfs-meta

Start/enable the beegfs-meta@node02.service on the metadata node.

Storage server

Install the package beegfs-storage^AUR on the storage server(s), i.e. 192.168.0.3.

The storage service needs to know where it can store its data and how to reach the management server. Typically, one will have multiple storage services running on different machines and/or multiple storage targets (e.g. multiple RAID volumes) per storage service.

/etc/beegfs/beegfs-storage.conf

sysMgmtdHost = node01
storeStorageDirectory = /mnt/beegfs/beegfs-storage

Start/enable the beegfs-storage@node03.service on the storage node.

Client

Install the package beegfs-client^AUR on the client node, which will build the client Kernel module.

The client service needs to know where it can reach the management server.

/etc/beegfs/beegfs-client.conf

sysMgmtdHost = node01

The client service needs to know where it can mount the cluster storage, as well as the location of the client configuration file.

/etc/beegfs/beegfs-mount.conf

/mnt/beegfs/beegfs-mount /etc/beegfs/beegfs-client.conf

Load the Kernel module and its dependencies.

# modprobe beegfs

Start/enable the beegfs-helperd@node04.service on the client node.

Start/enable the beegfs-client.service on the client node.

Utilities

Install the package beegfs-utils^AUR.

Tip: Best to install on either the management server or client node, or both. For the purposes of this example the client node is used.

Check connectivity

Check the detected network interfaces and transport protocols from a client node with the following commands:

# beegfs-ctl --listnodes --nodetype=mgmt --nicdetails 
  node01 [ID: 1]
    Ports: UDP: 8008; TCP: 8008
    Interfaces: 
    + enp0s31f6[ip addr: 192.168.0.1; type: TCP]

# beegfs-ctl --listnodes --nodetype=meta --nicdetails 
  node02 [ID: 2]
    Ports: UDP: 8005; TCP: 8005
    Interfaces: 
    + eno1[ip addr: 192.168.0.2; type: TCP]

# beegfs-ctl --listnodes --nodetype=storage --nicdetails 
  node03 [ID: 3]
    Ports: UDP: 8003; TCP: 8003
    Interfaces: 
    + eno1[ip addr: 192.168.0.3; type: TCP]

# beegfs-ctl --listnodes --nodetype=client --nicdetails 
  4E451-5DAEDCBF-node04 [ID: 4]
    Ports: UDP: 8004; TCP: 0
    Interfaces: 
    + wlo1[ip addr: 192.168.0.4; type: TCP]

Server tuning and advanced features

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InfiniBand Support

Explicitly Install beegfs-common^AUR, which will provide libbeegfs-ib.so shared object libraries.
Enable support for RDMA-capable network hardware.
Rebuild the client kernel module.