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An individual or clustered set of BlueArc servers can present a single, unified or “global” namespace to hosts. This unified namespace allows any host accessing any BlueArc clustered server to see the same directory structure. The BlueArc term for this capability is called Cluster Namespace (CNS). When implementing CNS each BlueArc server still owns its own file systems. When data is requested from a host to a given BlueArc server in the cluster that does not own the file system in question, that BlueArc server transfers the request to the appropriate server in the cluster.
Beyond host redirection, the principal advantage of using CNS is simplified storage management at scale. CNS reduces the number of mount points and presents an abstraction layer of the individual file systems to the end-user or application, thereby giving the storage administrator the freedom to leverage any file system within the BlueArc cluster for presentation as a single directory with a hierarchical tree structure. This hierarchy allows for any number of storage tiers to appear as a single file system to hosts, with a single mount point if desired. The storage administrator achieves enormous flexibility with CNS; end-users or applications do not necessarily know the type of physical storage on which their data resides. This abstraction allows administrators to best match the type of storage to the classification of data on each tier, without requiring users or applications to know the physical location of the different file systems. All tiers appear as a single large file system, incorporation whichever storage technologies are best suited, scaling to petabytes. CNS also allows administrators the freedom to expand or change the underlying storage architecture without having to notify users or re-write applications.
In enterprise consolidation scenarios, CNS provides a centralized file server structure. Windows, UNIX, Linux, or other software-based file servers have much lower limits on the size of individual file systems (which is the predominant reason why enterprises have experienced such a proliferation of such systems and now need to consolidate), and have lower performance characteristics as well. With CNS storage administrators can scale to massive capacities and provide a virtual CNS tree for all end-users and applications. As the number of users, projects, and overall data capacity increases, more pseudo-directories can be added within the existing CNS structure and immediately be accessed by the appropriate users. Increases in capacity, number of file systems, and/or aggregate performance requirements are all easily accommodated with SiliconFS without changes to the way users mount the data exports. In conjunction with BlueArc's virtual storage pool capabilities, CNS enables administrators to configure file systems to automatically grow as needed within pre-defined rules, eliminating downtime associated with storage provisioning. The end-user view of the file structure never changes as it dynamically scales to meet demands. The ability to access any data, anywhere within a BlueArc CNS structure reduces end-user confusion, eliminates the need to rewrite applications, lowers administrator overhead, and provides a flexible, robust design to better accommodate the storage needs of both today and tomorrow.
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