Miscellaneous Configuration Advices
- BeeGFS-mgmtd backup: We strongly recommend to setup a backup solution like rsync, in order to backup the management target (often /beegfs/mgmtd/) to a safe external location. Please keep in mind that RAID or buddy mirroring is no replacement for an external backup. Also, you can set up your beegfs-mgmtd in a DRDB HA setup as described in https://www.beegfs.io/login/wiki2/MgmtdHAWithDRBD , to have valid 2nd. copy of the BeeGFS management data.
- Command-line Configuration Tool: In addition to the BeeGFS Admon GUI, there is a command-line tool (beegfs-ctl) in the beegfs-utils package, which can be used to query file system status information and to configure striping settings.
- Tuning: Your servers definitely require tuning to deliver optimal performance. Here are some hints on tuning. You should especially read the sections about server tuning.
- Admon: If you installed the optional Admon package, read the Admon guide to find out how to use the GUI.
- Multiple Network Interfaces: If your nodes are equipped with multiple network interfaces and you want to assign specific priorities or exclude some of the interfaces, read the corresponding section Multiple Network Interfaces in the Frequently Asked Questions.
- Client Module Loading: If you are unable to load the client kernel module, dmesg (or /var/log/messages) might provide useful information.
- Safety Options: BeeGFS contains some safety options that you might want to set when your initial file system setup is complete:
- storeAllowFirstRunInit=false forbids daemon startup if the storage directory is empty, e.g. because the corresponding RAID volume is not mounted properly.
- sysAllowNewServers=false in beegfs-mgmtd.conf forbids registration of new servers (e.g. to make sure a new server is not registered accidentally in a production environment).
- sysMountSanityCheckMS can be used to let the client refuse mounting the file system if not all servers are reachable. (You will typically want to disable this option for clients that are running together with server daemons on the same machine.)
- Security Options: Without connection-based Authentication, BeeGFS allows any machine that can connect to your servers to mount your BeeGFS install. To counteract that, you can enable the option connAuthFile as described in the config files' comments. Please also see here: connection-based Authentication in the FAQ.
- Communication Retries:
- BeeGFS clients support a time-limited retry mode for communications, which will make them keep on trying to complete their I/O operation in case a server is temporarily unreachable.
- The connCommRetrySecs option in /etc/beegfs/beegfs-client.conf sets the time limit for communication retries.
- Retries can be stopped by:
- Interruping the application waiting for the I/O operation, e.g. CTRL+C.
- Disabling retries for the entire mountpoint: echo false > /proc/fs/beegfs/<...>/conn_retries_enabled
- Preferred Servers:
- Clients can prefer certain storage servers for new files and directories
- For example due to a certain network topology.
- See options tunePreferredMetaFile and tunePreferredStorageFile in /etc/beegfs/beegfs-client.conf
- Note: These options only affect the placement of new files. Clients having those options set still can read all files, regardless on which server they are located.
- Multi mode: Multiple services of one kind can run together on a single machine. For more information please have a look here.
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