Metadata servers and filesets

The metadata servers manage such things as file locations, file permissions, and locking. Only the metadata information travels over the IP network, minimizing the data transfer on the IP network. The SAN File System clients still access the regular data in the SAN and thus can benefit from the high performance a SAN can provide. For ideal performance, it is beneficial to evenly balance the workload across the metadata servers. Each fileset is assigned to a metadata server, and thus the filesets can be balanced across the metadata servers in the cluster.

SAN File System provides administrative commands that can be used to monitor transaction rates on each metadata server. Transaction rate parity across all metadata servers provides better SAN File System performance. Fileset assignment can be changed from one metadata server to another to balance transaction rates within the SAN File System environment. You should plan the filesets to be used based on expected I/O transaction rates, because this (rather than file size or storage space consumption) drives workload on the metadata server.

Parent topic: Metadata server

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