Dell DX6000 Reference Manual

Also see for DX6000: Manual Supplementary guide Hardware installation instructions Hardware owner's manual Application guide

Contents

Dell DX6000 Reference Manual Manual pdf 4 page image

Dell DX Object Storage – File Gateway Architectural ReferencePage 3Scope of this DocumentThis document provides an overview of the Dell DX Object Storage CFS Gateway solution and lists thehardware and software components that are used in the solution.For more detailed information about deploying this solution or any of its components, seesupport.dell.com.OverviewThe Dell DX Object Storage platform, initially released in May 2010, integrates applications via nativeHTTP writes. The DX Object Storage Gateway solution extends access to DX Object Storage by adding afile system interface that supports Windows & UNIX clients.The interface is provided by CIFS/NFS software that runs on a PowerEdge R410 server. In the Gatewaysolution this is called the Cluster File Server (CFS), and it provides a file system interface that enablescustomers to write files to DX Object Storage as they would any other file system. The write to the DXObject Storage system is indirect, however, as the files temporarily reside in spool cache on the CFSserver or on a shared storage device.In a single-server Gateway solution, data objects are written to a spool that is on the CFS and thenmoved to a storage node in the DX Object Storage cluster once the write is complete; in a failoverconfiguration, the files are written to a Dell PowerVault MD3200i storage system, which persists thedata in the event that a CFS fails. See “Specific CFS Configurations” for more details.Standard hardwareThe following briefly describes the standard hardware components of DX Object Storage Gatewaysolutions. In most cases, none of these components are yet installed at the customer site.Cluster File Server (CFS) – This server hosts the file server software that presents the Dell DXObject Storage system as a standard file system. In single-server solutions, this server alsoprovides a spool cache on local disk.Cluster Services Node (CSN) – This node is the head of the DX Object Storage systems andhosts the services that run on the cluster, such as cluster services, storage services, andcontent router (if applicable). It is not used for data storage.Storage Nodes – These nodes host data that is indirectly written to them by application servers(via the spool cache). A minimum of two nodes is required, and each data object has at leastone replica.Shared Storage System – Shared storage is a cache where files are stored before they getwritten to the DX Object Storage and also where they can be accessed on subsequent reads, iflocally available. A separate shared storage system, such as the MD3200i is required for failoversolutions. In these types of solutions, if the gateway server fails over to another gatewayserver, the common spool cache is still available to either write its data to the storage nodes,or serve data to clients.