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OneFS provides a single file system that operates outside the constraints of traditional scale up constructs such as RAID groups. OneFS allows data to be placed anywhere on the cluster, accommodating various levels of performance and protection.
Each cluster operates within a single volume and namespace with the file system distributed across all nodes. As such, there is no partitioning, and clients are provided a coherent view of their data from any node in the cluster.
Because all information is shared among nodes across the internal network, data can be written to or read from any node. Performance is therefore optimized when multiple users are concurrently reading and writing to the same set of data.
From an application or user perspective, all capacity is available - the storage has been virtualized for the users and administrator. The file system can grow organically without requiring too much planning or oversight. The administrator does not have to be concerned about tiering files to the appropriate disk because SmartPools handles that automatically. Also, no special considerations need be given to how the administrator might replicate such a large file system. The OneFS SyncIQ service automatically parallelizes the transfer of the data to one or more alternate clusters.
Note: See the OneFS Technical Overview white paper for further details about the OneFS architecture.