1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
3 ============================
4 Ceph Distributed File System
5 ============================
7 Ceph is a distributed network file system designed to provide good
8 performance, reliability, and scalability.
10 Basic features include:
13 * Seamless scaling from 1 to many thousands of nodes
14 * High availability and reliability. No single point of failure.
15 * N-way replication of data across storage nodes
16 * Fast recovery from node failures
17 * Automatic rebalancing of data on node addition/removal
18 * Easy deployment: most FS components are userspace daemons
22 * Flexible snapshots (on any directory)
23 * Recursive accounting (nested files, directories, bytes)
25 In contrast to cluster filesystems like GFS, OCFS2, and GPFS that rely
26 on symmetric access by all clients to shared block devices, Ceph
27 separates data and metadata management into independent server
28 clusters, similar to Lustre. Unlike Lustre, however, metadata and
29 storage nodes run entirely as user space daemons. File data is striped
30 across storage nodes in large chunks to distribute workload and
31 facilitate high throughputs. When storage nodes fail, data is
32 re-replicated in a distributed fashion by the storage nodes themselves
33 (with some minimal coordination from a cluster monitor), making the
34 system extremely efficient and scalable.
36 Metadata servers effectively form a large, consistent, distributed
37 in-memory cache above the file namespace that is extremely scalable,
38 dynamically redistributes metadata in response to workload changes,
39 and can tolerate arbitrary (well, non-Byzantine) node failures. The
40 metadata server takes a somewhat unconventional approach to metadata
41 storage to significantly improve performance for common workloads. In
42 particular, inodes with only a single link are embedded in
43 directories, allowing entire directories of dentries and inodes to be
44 loaded into its cache with a single I/O operation. The contents of
45 extremely large directories can be fragmented and managed by
46 independent metadata servers, allowing scalable concurrent access.
48 The system offers automatic data rebalancing/migration when scaling
49 from a small cluster of just a few nodes to many hundreds, without
50 requiring an administrator carve the data set into static volumes or
51 go through the tedious process of migrating data between servers.
52 When the file system approaches full, new nodes can be easily added
53 and things will "just work."
55 Ceph includes flexible snapshot mechanism that allows a user to create
56 a snapshot on any subdirectory (and its nested contents) in the
57 system. Snapshot creation and deletion are as simple as 'mkdir
58 .snap/foo' and 'rmdir .snap/foo'.
60 Ceph also provides some recursive accounting on directories for nested
61 files and bytes. That is, a 'getfattr -d foo' on any directory in the
62 system will reveal the total number of nested regular files and
63 subdirectories, and a summation of all nested file sizes. This makes
64 the identification of large disk space consumers relatively quick, as
65 no 'du' or similar recursive scan of the file system is required.
67 Finally, Ceph also allows quotas to be set on any directory in the system.
68 The quota can restrict the number of bytes or the number of files stored
69 beneath that point in the directory hierarchy. Quotas can be set using
70 extended attributes 'ceph.quota.max_files' and 'ceph.quota.max_bytes', eg::
72 setfattr -n ceph.quota.max_bytes -v 100000000 /some/dir
73 getfattr -n ceph.quota.max_bytes /some/dir
75 A limitation of the current quotas implementation is that it relies on the
76 cooperation of the client mounting the file system to stop writers when a
77 limit is reached. A modified or adversarial client cannot be prevented
78 from writing as much data as it needs.
83 The basic mount syntax is::
85 # mount -t ceph monip[:port][,monip2[:port]...]:/[subdir] mnt
87 You only need to specify a single monitor, as the client will get the
88 full list when it connects. (However, if the monitor you specify
89 happens to be down, the mount won't succeed.) The port can be left
90 off if the monitor is using the default. So if the monitor is at
93 # mount -t ceph 1.2.3.4:/ /mnt/ceph
95 is sufficient. If /sbin/mount.ceph is installed, a hostname can be
96 used instead of an IP address.
104 Specify the IP and/or port the client should bind to locally.
105 There is normally not much reason to do this. If the IP is not
106 specified, the client's IP address is determined by looking at the
107 address its connection to the monitor originates from.
110 Specify the maximum write size in bytes. Default: 64 MB.
113 Specify the maximum read size in bytes. Default: 64 MB.
116 Specify the maximum readahead size in bytes. Default: 8 MB.
119 Specify the timeout value for mount (in seconds), in the case
120 of a non-responsive Ceph file system. The default is 60
124 Specify the maximum number of caps to hold. Unused caps are released
125 when number of caps exceeds the limit. The default is 0 (no limit)
128 When stat() is called on a directory, set st_size to 'rbytes',
129 the summation of file sizes over all files nested beneath that
130 directory. This is the default.
133 When stat() is called on a directory, set st_size to the
134 number of entries in that directory.
137 Disable CRC32C calculation for data writes. If set, the storage node
138 must rely on TCP's error correction to detect data corruption
142 Use the dcache contents to perform negative lookups and
143 readdir when the client has the entire directory contents in
144 its cache. (This does not change correctness; the client uses
145 cached metadata only when a lease or capability ensures it is
149 Do not use the dcache as above. This avoids a significant amount of
150 complex code, sacrificing performance without affecting correctness,
151 and is useful for tracking down bugs.
154 Do not use the dcache as above for readdir.
157 Report overall filesystem usage in statfs instead of using the root
161 Don't use the RADOS 'copy-from' operation to perform remote object
162 copies. Currently, it's only used in copy_file_range, which will revert
163 to the default VFS implementation if this option is used.
165 recover_session=<no|clean>
166 Set auto reconnect mode in the case where the client is blocklisted. The
167 available modes are "no" and "clean". The default is "no".
169 * no: never attempt to reconnect when client detects that it has been
170 blocklisted. Operations will generally fail after being blocklisted.
172 * clean: client reconnects to the ceph cluster automatically when it
173 detects that it has been blocklisted. During reconnect, client drops
174 dirty data/metadata, invalidates page caches and writable file handles.
175 After reconnect, file locks become stale because the MDS loses track
176 of them. If an inode contains any stale file locks, read/write on the
177 inode is not allowed until applications release all stale file locks.
182 For more information on Ceph, see the home page at
185 The Linux kernel client source tree is available at
186 - https://github.com/ceph/ceph-client.git
187 - git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/sage/ceph-client.git
189 and the source for the full system is at
190 https://github.com/ceph/ceph.git