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Introduction
The Dell Fluid File System (FluidFS) network attached storage (NAS) solution is a highly-available file
storage solution. The solution aggregates multiple NAS controllers into one system and presents them to
UNIX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows clients as one virtual file server.
How PowerVault FluidFS NAS Works
PowerVault FluidFS NAS leverages the PowerVault FluidFS appliances and the Dell PowerVault MD
storage to provide scale‐out file storage to Microsoft Windows, UNIX, and Linux clients. The FluidFS
system supports SMB (CIFS) and NFS clients installed on dedicated servers or on virtual systems deploying
VMware virtualization.
The MD storage systems manage the “NAS pool” of storage capacity. The FluidFS system administrator
can create NAS volumes in the NAS pool, and CIFS shares and/or NFS exports to serve NAS clients
working on different platforms.
To the clients, the FluidFS system appears as a single file server, hosting multiple CIFS shares and NFS
exports, with a single IP address and namespace. Clients connect to the FluidFS system using their
respective operating systems’ NAS protocols:
• UNIX and Linux users access files through the NFS protocol
• Windows users access files through the SMB(CIFS) protocol
The FluidFS system serves data to all clients concurrently, with no performance degradation.
FluidFS Terminology
The following table defines terminology related to FluidFS scale‐out NAS.
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