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Prerequisites for GFS Deployment

Hammerspace can utilize block storage, existing Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Cloud/Object storage. It is installed as a single software load, including all components on bare-metal, virtual, and cloud-based environments.

Hardware Resources

Ensure each site has at least one installed Anvil metadata node (HA is strongly recommended for resilience) and at least one installed DSX data services node (two or more per site is recommended for resilience).

  • Confirm that the underlying block storage of the Anvils has sufficient IOPS and low latency to handle metadata operations. Sub-optimal storage can severely impact Replication performance.

  • Anvils must have sufficient CPU and memory to process metadata changes and manage metadata checkpoints, especially in environments with high file churn or many sites. Please work with your Hammerspace Sales Engineer to ensure you have adequate resources.

Network Connectivity

  • Reliable and high-bandwidth network connectivity between all participating sites.

    • High-Bandwidth is defined as enough to transfer any new data and estimated changed data to or from any other site participants.

  • Network connectivity between the Anvil nodes using four ports: 443, 9097, 9298, 9299

  • Proper firewall rules to allow communication between Anvils and DSXs across sites, and to the shared cloud bucket.

Shared Bucket

A pre-configured shared object-storage bucket accessible by all sites for data transfer. A central, non-site-specific bucket is preferred for Replication. This helps manage bandwidth and data transfers, especially when data is not needed at all remote sites. Be aware of potential egress charges when using a bucket in a public cloud.

Hammerspace object storage volumes (OSV) can support the following features:

  • File chunking: 4MB chunk size, on by default. Can be disabled by adding the OSV in native mode, but use cases for disabling are not common.

  • Deduplication: Hammerspace will deduplicate by matching SHA256 sums of chunks. This can not be disabled as there would be no advantage to disabling it.

  • Compression: Compression can be enabled on OSVs. With some data sets this can save capacity and bandwidth, but may cost CPU cycles on DSX nodes.

  • Encryption: If a Key Management Service (KMS) is configured, new objects placed in an OSV will be encrypted unless the OSV is configured with the --no-encryption option in the CLI.

The four features above are critical because shared OSVs should be added to each participating Hammerspace cluster with the same parameters. In particular, if the KMS is not the same for all clusters, clusters with different or no KMS will not be able to decrypt objects from sites with encryption enabled.

Global NFS Shares

There are no special requirements for NFS to work globally.

Global SMB Shares

For Windows and SMB data access, it is required that both sites are joined to the same domain/domain forest for the proper translation of Security Identifiers (SIDs) on both sites.

Global S3 Servers/Buckets

Each site can present data over S3 without any coordination required across sites for S3.