Connecting Clients to your LizardFS installation

The most exciting part of this tutorial - you will finally be able to store files on your installation!

Linux / *NIX / *BSD / MacOS/X client

Install the client package

Check Getting and installing LizardFS for instructions how to install package

Example for Debian/Ubuntu:

$ apt-get install lizardfs-client

Make sure that the mfsmaster host is set in your /etc/hosts file. For our example configuration it would be:

192.168.16.100 mfsmaster

Create a mountpoint:

$ mkdir /mnt/lizardfs

Mount the file system to the mount point with just the default options from mfsmount.cfg if any:

$ mfsmount /mnt/lizardfs

That’s it. Simple, straight and easy.

Optional settings for performance on *NIX

big_writes

On most systems adding big_writes to the options will significantly increase your throughput since it will force the fuse library to use writes > 4k.

Example:

$ mfsmount -o big_writes,nosuid,nodev,noatime /mnt/lizardfs

will mount with fuse option: big_writes and default system mount options: nosuid, nodev and noatime.

Read ahead cache

If you want to make use of the read ahead caching feature which will significantly improve your read performance, you will need to configure the following options:

-o cacheexpirationtime=MSEC      set timeout for read cache entries to be considered valid in milliseconds (0 disables cache) (default: 0)
-o readaheadmaxwindowsize=KB     set max value of read ahead window per single descriptor in kibibytes (default:

Example:

mfsmount -o cacheexpirationtime=500 -o readaheadmaxwindowsize=4096 mountpoint/

Reasonable values:

  • cacheexpirationtime - depends on latency, 500 should be alright for most installations. Higher values = data will be kept in cache longer, but it will also occupy more RAM.
  • readaheadmaxwindowsize - depends on latency and cacheexpirationtime, 1024-8192 are usually fine. Higher values = bigger portions of data asked in single request.
  • IMPORTANT! Version 3.12 had cacheexpirationtime set by default to 300 (300ms). The subsequent versions have this value reverted to 0, because caching is not appropriate for some use cases. Please use cacheexpirationtime=0 for turning off cache in 3.12.

readaheadmaxwindowsize can be adjusted to your local requirements - starting from 1024 and increasing it in small steps until your tests show no more performance gain is a good idea.

You can now store your files on your brand new installation.

See the mfsmount(1) and mfsmount.cfg(5) man page for more options

See FUSE to find out more about the fuse library.

Windows™

System Settings for LizardFS clients

Recommended tuning for Windows™ Clients:

  • Make sure your Power Options are set to “High Performance”.
  • Increase the number of Transfer and Receive Buffers in the configuration of your network interface
  • Increase the number of Queues available in your network interface setting
  • If at all possible set all network devices in your network to use Jumbo Frames.

The precise number for your respective host / NIC will be different in every setup, but they for sure will be far higher than the default settings.

Windows™ GUI client

Install our client from exe package provided

Add your credentials and the address and port of the master server.

Select the drive you want your lizardFS file system to appear as in your windows session.

It should look like in the following image:

Figure 2: main view of LizardFS Windows™ client

Figure 2: main view of LizardFS Windows™ client

Windows™ CLI Client

Together with the GUI client the installation package adds a CLI client to your Windows™ system. It is located in:

C:\Program Files\LizardFS\lizardfscli.exe

Options are:

-H The address of the Master
-P The port to use at the Master
-D The drive letter to use for the mounted FS

Windows™ service

The Windows™ Client can also be run as a Windows™ Service. This is provided by the LizardFSController command.

Basic configuration

Minimal configuration:

LizardFSController -p -lic-file <LICENSE_FILE> -H <ADDRESS_OF_MASTER>

where LICENSE_FILE should be the name of the file containing a valid License and ADDRESS_OF_MASTER should be the hostname or IP address of the LizardFS master server.

Further configuration options

(Must follow the -p command)

Command Description
-H HOST set master server host address.
-P PORT set master server port. Default 9421.
-D DRIVE set <DRIVE> as a mount point i.e. D:. Default L:
-f SUBFOLDER mount only given LizardFS sub folder
-uid UID set new UID. Default is 1000.
-gid GID set new GID. Default is 1000.
-umask UMASK set new UMASK. Default is 000.
-pass PASS authenticate to LizardFS master using MD5 password.
-lic LICENSE set new LICENSE.
-lic-file LICENSE_FILE load new LICENSE from LICENSE_FILE.

Installation and runtime

After you have done the configuration, you can add the service to your Windows system by running:

LizardFSController -i

and start it by running:

LizardFSController -s

If you would like to un install the service again, just run:

LizardFSController -u

To terminate the service, run:

LizardFSController -t

A full list of options can be displayed using:

LizardFSController -help

New Windows Client with ACL and AD support

To utilize the ACL and AD support in the new Windows CLient you need to do the following:

  • Modify your Active Directory domain controller settings

  • run the following commands in the cmd shell of your Active Directory domain controller:

    Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:adminui /all  &REM admintools
Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:nis /all      &REM NIS server
Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:psync /all    &REM syncpasswd tools
shutdown /r /f -t 1                                         &REM reboot

  • for users that need access to the LizardFS drive set fsgsf, tab “UNIX Attributes”, property “NIS Domain”. In the attached picture “skytest” is the name of our test domain and it should be selected. Other fields will set themselves.

Figure 3: view of required ACL settings
  • install the new LizardFS Windows client with ACL support on the end user machines.