MooseFS - A Petabyte Distributed File System

MooseFS is a Petabyte Open Source Network Distributed File System. It is easy
to deploy and maintain, fault tolerant, highly performing, easily scalable,
POSIX compliant.

MooseFS spreads data over several physical commodity servers, which are visible
to the user as one big volume. For standard file operations MooseFS acts like
ordinary Unix-like file system:

  * A hierarchical structure (directory tree)
  * Stores POSIX file attributes (permissions, last access and modification
    times, etc.)
  * Supports ACLs
  * Supports POSIX and BSD locks
  * Supports special files (block and character devices, pipes and sockets)
  * Symbolic links (file names pointing to target files, not necessarily on
    MooseFS) and hard links (different names of files which refer to the same
    data on MooseFS)


Distinctive MooseFS features:
=============================

  * High reliability - configurable number of files' copies are stored
    on separate servers
  * No Single Point of Failure - all hardware and software components may be
    redundant
  * Parallel data operations - many clients can access many files concurrently
  * Capacity can be dynamically expanded by simply adding new computers/disks
    on the fly
  * Retired hardware may be removed on the fly
  * Deleted files are retained for a configurable period of time (a file system
    level "trash bin")
  * Coherent, "atomic" snapshots of files, even while the files are being
    written/accessed
  * Access to the file system can be limited based on IP address and/or password
    (similarly as in NFS)
  * Data tiering - supports different storage policies for different
    files/directories
  * Efficient, pure C implementation
  * Ethernet support


Supported platforms
===================

MooseFS can be installed on any POSIX compliant operating system including
different Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OS X:

  * Ubuntu
  * Debian
  * RHEL/CentOS
  * OpenSUSE
  * FreeBSD
  * MacOS X
  * Raspbian - Raspberry Pi 3

MooseFS Client uses FUSE (https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse).
There is a separate MooseFS Client for MS Windows available, built on top
of Dokany (https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany).


Getting started
===============

You can install MooseFS using your favorite package manager on one
of the following platforms using officially supported repositories
(https://moosefs.com/download):

  * Ubuntu 14/16/18
  * Debian 8/9
  * RHEL/CentOS 6/7
  * FreeBSD 9.3/10/11
  * MacOS X 10.9-10.13
  * Raspbian 8 (Jessie) - Raspberry Pi 3

Minimal set of packages, which are needed to run MooseFS:
  * moosefs-master - MooseFS Master Server for metadata servers,
  * moosefs-chunkserver - MooseFS Chunkserver for data storage servers,
  * moosefs-client - MooseFS Client - client side package to mount
    the filesystem.


Source code
-----------

Feel free to download source code either from GitHub code repository
or from our website archives (https://moosefs.com/download/#source-code).

Install the following dependencies before building MooseFS from sources:
  * Ubuntu: sudo apt install build-essential libpcap-dev zlib1g-dev libfuse-dev pkg-config
  * CentOS: sudo yum install gcc gcc-c++ make libpcap-devel zlib-devel fuse-devel pkgconfig

Recommended packages:
  * Ubuntu: sudo apt install fuse
  * CentOS: sudo yum install fuse

Building MooseFS on Linux can be easily done by running ./linux_build.sh.
Similarly, use ./freebsd_build.sh in order to build MooseFS on FreeBSD
and respectively ./macosx_build.sh on MacOS X. Remember, that those scripts
do not install (i.e. do not run make install at the end). Run this command manually

Minimal setup
-------------

Just three steps to have MooseFS up and running:

1. Install at least one Master Server

   1. Install moosefs-master package
   2. Prepare default config (as root):
        cd /etc/mfs
        cp mfsmaster.cfg.sample mfsmaster.cfg
        cp mfsexports.cfg.sample mfsexports.cfg
   3. Prepare the metadata file (as root):
        cd /var/lib/mfs
        cp metadata.mfs.empty metadata.mfs
        chown mfs:mfs metadata.mfs
        rm metadata.mfs.empty
   4. Run Master Server (as root): mfsmaster start
   5. Make this machine visible under 'mfsmaster' name (e.g. by adding
      a DNS entry or adding it in /etc/hosts on all servers)


2. Install at least two Chunkservers

   1. Install moosefs-chunkserver package
   2. Prepare default config (as root):
        cd /etc/mfs
        cp mfschunkserver.cfg.sample mfschunkserver.cfg
        cp mfshdd.cfg.sample mfshdd.cfg
   3. At the end of mfshdd.cfg file make one or more entries containing paths
      to HDDs / partitions designated for storing chunks, e.g.:
        /mnt/chunks1
        /mnt/chunks2
        /mnt/chunks3
      It is recommended to use XFS as an underlying filesystem
      for disks designated to store chunks.
   4. Change the ownership and permissions to mfs:mfs to above
      mentioned locations, e.g.:
        chown mfs:mfs /mnt/chunks1 /mnt/chunks2 /mnt/chunks3
        chmod 770 /mnt/chunks1 /mnt/chunks2 /mnt/chunks3
   5. Start the Chunkserver: mfschunkserver start

   Repeat the steps above for second (third, ...) Chunkserver.


3. Client side: mount MooseFS filesystem

   1. Install moosefs-client fuse libfuse2 packages
   2. Mount MooseFS (as root):
        mkdir /mnt/mfs
        mount -t moosefs mfsmaster: /mnt/mfs
      or:
        mfsmount -H mfsmaster /mnt/mfs
   3. You can also add an /etc/fstab entry to mount MooseFS during
      the system boot:
        mfsmaster: /mnt/mfs moosefs defaults,mfsdelayedinit 0 0

   There are more configuration parameters available but most
   of them may stay with defaults. We do our best to keep MooseFS easy
   to deploy and maintain.

   MooseFS, for testing purposes, can even be installed on a single machine!


Additional tools
----------------

Setting up moosefs-cli or moosefs-cgi both with moosefs-cgiserv is also
recommended - it gives you a possibility to monitor the cluster online:
  1. Install moosefs-cli moosefs-cgi moosefs-cgiserv packages
     (they are typically set up on the Master Server)
  2. Run MooseFS CGI Server (as root): mfscgiserv start
  3. Open http://mfsmaster:9425 in your web browser

It is also strongly recommended to set up at least one Metalogger on a different
machine than Master Server (e.g. on one of Chunkservers). Metalogger constantly
synchronizes and backups the metadata:
  1. Install moosefs-metalogger package
  2. Prepare default config (as root):
       cd /etc/mfs
       cp mfsmetalogger.cfg.sample
       mfsmetalogger.cfg
  3. Run Metalogger (as root): mfsmetalogger start

Refer to installation guides (https://moosefs.com/support/#documentation)
for more details.


Some facts
==========

  * Date of the first public release: 2008-05-30
  * The project web site: https://moosefs.com
  * Installation and using MooseFS: https://moosefs.com/support
  * (Old) Sourceforge project site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/moosefs


Contact us
==========

  * Reporting bugs: GitHub issue (https://github.com/moosefs/moosefs/issues)
    or support@moosefs.com
  * General: contact@moosefs.com


Copyright
=========

Copyright (c) 2018 Jakub Kruszona-Zawadzki, Core Technology Sp. z o.o.

This file is part of MooseFS.

MooseFS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation, version 2 (only).

MooseFS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
MooseFS; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St,
Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02111-1301, USA or visit
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html.