- Overview of Intel® Enterprise Edition for Lustre* software

# Overview of Intel® Enterprise Edition for Lustre* software

Contents

Intel® Enterprise Edition for Lustre* software is a global single-namespace file system architecture that allows parallel access by many clients to all the data in the file system, across many servers and storage devices. Designed to take advantage of the reliability features of enterprise-class storage hardware, Intel® EE for Lustre* software supports availability features such as redundant servers with storage failover. Metadata and data are stored on separate servers to allow each system to be optimized for the different workloads. The components of an Intel® EE for Lustre* software, file storage system include the following:

• | Intel® Manager for Lustre* server: The server that hosts the Intel® Manager for Lustre* software and GUI, and is the server from which Lustre file systems are created, monitored, and managed. This server is connected to storage servers via the administrative LAN. This is distinct from the management server, which provides access to the management target.

• | Management server(s) (MGS): Provide access to the management target. Paired, redundant management servers provide server failover (high availability) in the event of a server failure.

• | Management target (MGT): The MGT stores configuration information for all the Lustre file systems in a cluster and provides this information to other Lustre components. Each Lustre object storage target (OST) contacts the MGT to provide information, and Lustre clients contact the MGT to retrieve information. The MGT can be no larger than 10 gigabytes.

• | Storage servers: Storage servers provide access to the management target, metadata target and the storage targets. Paired, redundant storage servers provide server failover (high availability) in the event of a server failure.

• | Metadata target (MDT): The MDT stores metadata (such as file names, directories, permissions, and file layout) for attached storage, and makes this available to clients. Typically, each file system has one MDT, however Intel® EE for Lustre* software supports multiple MDTs.

• | Object storage targets (OSTs) - User file data is stored in one or more objects that are located on separate OSTs in the file system. The number of objects per file is configurable by the user and can be tuned to optimize performance for a given workload.

• | Lustre clients - Lustre clients are computational, visualization, or desktop nodes that are running Lustre client software, allowing them to mount the Lustre file system.

The servers on which the MGT, MDT, or OSTs are located can all be configured as high-availability (HA) servers, so that if a server for a target fails, a standby server can continue to make the target available.