Announcing MooseFS 4.57.5: Enhanced Storage, Monitoring, and More!

March 17th, 2025 | MooseFS Team

We are excited to introduce MooseFS 4.57.5, the latest update packed with new features, improvements, and critical fixes to make your MooseFS experience even more robust and efficient. This release enhances storage management, improves monitoring capabilities, and resolves key issues, ensuring a smoother and more reliable distributed storage system.

Key Highlights of MooseFS 4.57.5

Enhanced Storage Class Functionality

Managing storage just got smarter! This update introduces storage class priorities, allowing chunks to select the highest-priority storage class they belong to, improving storage allocation behavior.

Additionally, exports.cfg now supports storage class group assignments, replacing the older mingoal and maxgoal approach with a more flexible and scalable solution. This means you can define up to 16 different storage groups and control which groups are allowed for exports, offering greater granularity and efficiency in storage management. By default, newly created and imported storage classes are assigned to group 0, while predefined legacy classes (1–9) are mapped to groups 1–9, ensuring backward compatibility while allowing for more customizable configurations.

For new installations, predefined storage classes have been improved, ensuring more logical defaults for a streamlined setup experience. This simplifies configuration, making it easier for new users to get started without extensive manual adjustments.

Locate and Manage Trash & Sustained Items More Easily

A significant usability improvement: metasearch now displays file paths for trash and sustained items, making it easier to find and clean up unnecessary files. This is particularly useful for administrators managing large volumes of data, as it simplifies maintenance and data organization. By providing full file paths, users can locate and verify files before taking action, reducing accidental deletions and improving overall file management.

Improved Cluster Monitoring and Leader Communication

Monitoring and maintaining a distributed storage system requires real-time insights and seamless communication between nodes.

To enhance observability, cluster traffic charts have been added to the GUI. These charts display total bytes per second read and written by all mounts, allowing administrators to analyze performance trends and detect potential bottlenecks more efficiently. Additionally, there are separate views for data-only and data-with-overhead traffic, helping in identifying bandwidth consumption patterns more precisely.

To improve leader synchronization, leader IP broadcasting in simple mode ensures that all follower nodes receive updated information about the active leader, preventing outdated or incorrect leader assignments from causing synchronization issues. The KEEP_LEADERSHIP option has also been introduced, allowing a specified master node to reclaim leadership automatically after disconnections or restarts. This significantly reduces failover complications, providing more stability and predictability in cluster operations.

Master Server Enhancements

The master server plays a crucial role in managing storage and ensuring metadata consistency. This update brings multiple optimizations to improve its reliability and performance.

One of the key fixes addresses better space management for EC (erasure-coded) parts marked for removal, preventing premature deletion before relocation. This fix ensures that parts stored on disks marked for removal are properly migrated before being deleted, reducing risks of unintended data loss.

Additionally, we have resolved changelog rotation issues in the Community Edition, a long-standing problem that users reported. Changelogs now rotate correctly, ensuring metadata consistency and preventing unnecessary log file bloat.

Another notable fix is the quota adjustment fix, ensuring that changes to the grace period are applied correctly, avoiding inconsistencies when modifying quota settings.

Furthermore, improvements in tracking chunk copies and erasure-coded parts have been implemented, ensuring reported values reflect the actual state of storage. This results in better accuracy for storage utilization statistics, preventing discrepancies in data integrity assessments.

GUI and CLI Improvements

User experience is key to effective system administration, and this update includes several improvements to the GUI and CLI for a smoother experience.

The maintenance time display is back for chunk servers, helping administrators keep track of active maintenance operations. This addition makes it easier to plan and coordinate maintenance tasks without disrupting ongoing workloads.

A fix has been applied to the graph summary bar, which now correctly represents licensing limits. Previously, incorrect negative values caused confusion about licensing constraints, but this fix ensures clear and accurate quota representation.

We have also improved chart legends, making them more readable and helping users quickly interpret storage and performance data without additional guesswork. Additionally, sanity checks for CLI integer values have been introduced, reducing the likelihood of misconfigurations that could lead to unexpected behavior. These checks provide an extra layer of protection against accidental input errors, ensuring commands are executed as intended.

Fixes Across Multiple Components

This release also brings stability improvements across various platforms and components to enhance MooseFS’s versatility and reliability.

One of the most critical updates is improved Linux ACL compatibility, ensuring that ACL attributes are correctly displayed in ls -al outputs with the + symbol. This enhancement brings MooseFS in line with standard Linux ACL behavior, improving compatibility with access control tools and ensuring proper permissions visibility.

For Windows users, a fix has been implemented for mutex initialization in the Windows client, resolving crashes that particularly affected Windows 7 systems. This fix significantly improves stability for Windows-based deployments, reducing unexpected application failures.

Additionally, we have introduced better warnings for duplicate variables in configuration files, helping users quickly identify misconfigurations. These warnings make troubleshooting simpler and prevent potential conflicts between settings, ensuring a smoother configuration experience.

🛑 Python 2.7 Support Deprecated

As part of our modernization efforts, support for Python 2.7 has been removed. This change aligns with current best practices and ensures compatibility with modern development environments. Python 2.7 reached end-of-life in 2020, and continuing to support it posed security and maintenance risks. Users relying on Python 2.7 are encouraged to upgrade to Python 3 to ensure continued support, better performance, and future-proof compatibility with MooseFS.

Upgrade Today!

We strongly recommend upgrading to MooseFS 4.57.5 to take advantage of these new features, performance enhancements, and critical bug fixes.

Stay tuned for more updates, and thank you for being part of the MooseFS community!

Upgrading to MooseFS 4: A Comprehensive Guide

January 17th, 2025 | MooseFS Team

Upgrading your MooseFS instance to version 4 ensures better performance, enhanced features, and continued support. This guide will walk you through the process, offering clear instructions for safe and secure upgrades.

Package Names

In this guide, we use package names corresponding to the Pro version of MooseFS wherever the instructions for Pro and CE versions are identical. If you’re using MooseFS CE, simply remove the -pro from the package names while following the instructions.

Preparation Before Upgrading

To ensure a seamless upgrade process, follow these essential steps:

1. Review the `NEWS` File

Read the NEWS file included with the MooseFS distribution. It contains details about new features and changes that might require additional actions, such as updating configuration options.

2. Check Your Chunk Matrix

Inspect your chunk matrix via the GUI or CLI to confirm there are no endangered or undergoal chunks. If any exist, wait for the system to replicate them. Address any hardware issues, such as faulty disks, before proceeding.

3. Plan Your Timing

Schedule the upgrade during a low I/O period or disconnect all client processes. While upgrades can be performed during regular operation, module restarts may temporarily delay I/O operations. Ensure external processes have sufficient I/O timeouts to avoid errors.

4. Save Metadata

Before upgrading, use the mfssupervisor tool (if on MooseFS 4) to save the master’s metadata. For Pro users, use the “all servers with CRC check” mode and verify metadata consistency via the GUI or CLI.

Backup Master’s Metadata

Before upgrading the master module, back up your master’s metadata. For Pro users, this backup is necessary only before upgrading the first master follower.

Finding Metadata Files:

Check the DATA_PATH variable in the master’s configuration file.
Locate metadata.mfs.back and changelog.*.mfs files in this directory. Copy them to a secure location.

Note: If you stop (not restart) the master process during the upgrade, back up the metadata.mfs file instead.

Upgrading from Previous Major Versions to MooseFS 4

While MooseFS strives for backward compatibility, we recommend the following steps for a reliable upgrade:

Upgrade CE to CE or Pro to Pro

Upgrade incrementally through major versions. For example, upgrade from 2.1.7 to 2.1.12, then to 3.0.118, and finally to the latest MooseFS 4 version.

Upgrade CE to Pro

Upgrade to the Latest CE Version First
Whenever possible, upgrade your instance to the latest available CE version before switching to Pro. If upgrading to the latest CE version is not feasible, contact MooseFS Pro Support for personalized guidance.
Switching and Upgrading Simultaneously
A version upgrade combined with a switch from CE to Pro is possible but not recommended. This approach introduces additional complexity and risks. If this is your only option, always consult MooseFS Pro Support for tailored guidance and instructions, as the procedure can vary based on your current version and specific setup.
Special Upgrade Order for CE to Pro
Unlike other upgrade scenarios, the package upgrade order for CE to Pro differs:
- First, upgrade all chunkservers to the Pro version.
- Next, upgrade the master(s) to the Pro version.
- Finally, upgrade and remount the client mounts.

Switching from Pro to CE

Switching is only possible between identical versions (e.g., 4.57.1 Pro to 4.57.1 CE). Follow the upgrade order for minor version upgrades and remove any obsolete packages afterward.

Upgrading Between Minor Versions of MooseFS 4

MooseFS 4 uses a three-part version numbering system (e.g., 4.55.5):

Major Version: Indicates the product generation (e.g., 4).
Minor Version: Significant feature updates or changes.
Patch Level: Bug fixes and minor adjustments.

Upgrade Rules:

Modules with the same minor version but different patch levels are compatible.
Modules with different minor versions must follow these compatibility rules:
- Metalogger ≥ Master
- Master ≥ Chunkserver
- Master ≥ Client
- Chunkserver ≥ Client
- For Pro, Master Follower ≥ Master Leader
GUI Recommendation: The GUI module should match or exceed the master’s version for optimal functionality.

Step-by-Step Upgrade Instructions

1. Upgrade GUI, CLI, and Netdump

Upgrade the moosefs-pro-cgi, moosefs-pro-cgiserv, moosefs-pro-cli, and moosefs-pro-netdump packages (if applicable). Restart the required services for changes to take effect.

2. Upgrade Metalogger

Upgrade the moosefs-pro-metalogger package (if applicable) and restart the metalogger process.

3. Upgrade Master(s)

CE: Upgrade the moosefs-master package and restart the process. Wait for all chunk servers to reconnect and complete chunk registration (visible in the GUI’s INFO tab).
Pro:
- Upgrade each master follower module (moosefs-pro-master) one by one. Restart each process and wait for it to reconnect and sync as a functioning follower.
- Upgrade the master leader last. Restarting the leader will promote a follower to leader. Use mfssupervisor to restore leadership to the original master if needed.

4. Upgrade Chunkservers

Upgrade the moosefs-pro-chunkserver packages one by one, restarting each process. Wait for chunk registration to complete before proceeding to the next chunkserver.

5. Upgrade Clients

Upgrade the moosefs-pro-client package and remount the filesystem. Client upgrades can be performed in parallel.

Conclusion

Following these steps will ensure a smooth upgrade to MooseFS 4. If you encounter any issues, consult the official MooseFS documentation or contact support. Stay updated with the latest improvements and maintain optimal performance by upgrading your system today!

MooseFS PRO Showcases at SC24 Atlanta, GA

September 30th, 2024 | MooseFS Team

We’re eager to share that we’re heading to Atlanta, Georgia, United States to exhibit MooseFS PRO at SC24 from November 17–22, 2024!

There’s nothing quite like face-to-face interaction, and we’re excited to discuss all things Distributed Storage with you, so be sure to book your tickets and visit us at Booth 4643 to meet the team behind MooseFS PRO.

To make your visit even better, we’re offering exclusive vouchers for our guests. Want to be one of them? Simply contact us for more details.

Why should you stop by? Here’s what you’ll gain:

Personalized Solutions: Discuss your storage needs with our experts and find the perfect fit for your business.
In-Depth Insights Into MooseFS Pro: Discover the powerful features of MooseFS Pro and how it can transform your data infrastructure.
Scaling Demonstration: See firsthand how MooseFS Pro scales from a single node to a multi-petabyte cluster!

About the event

The Supercomputing Conference (SC) is one of the largest and most prestigious annual conferences in the field of high-performance computing (HPC), networking, storage, and data analysis. It is a major event for researchers, engineers, developers and practitioners in the supercomputing community, providing a platform to discuss the latest advancements, share research, and explore the future of computing technologies.

We can’t wait to connect with you in Atlanta!

MooseFS 4 Community Edition is Here!

September 25th, 2024 | MooseFS Team

We are thrilled to announce the release of the highly anticipated MooseFS 4.x Community Edition!

As an open-source solution, this new version brings an impressive array of exciting new features and enhancements that our community has been eagerly asking about. MooseFS 4.x introduces significant improvements over the previous 3.x version, offering powerful new capabilities and more efficient data storage solutions that address the needs of modern data environments.

We have a long-standing and strong commitment to the open-source community. Since 2005 we have been passionately involved in supporting and contributing to open-source initiatives. Our philosophy is to provide this superb tool to everyone who wants to use it, as we firmly believe in the power of open-source software and the strength of the community. By making MooseFS 4.x available to all, we continue to uphold our dedication to openness, collaboration, and the shared pursuit of technological innovation.

Erasure Coding and Space Optimisation

One of the most notable new features in MooseFS 4.x is the introduction of Erasure Coding (EC) in an 8+1 as well as 4+1 format. This innovative coding approach allows for significant space savings without compromising data integrity or protection. In traditional replication methods, data chunks are typically stored in multiple copies, which can occupy a substantial amount of space; for example, storing a chunk in 2 copies would normally use 200% of the required storage capacity. With the new EC8+1 coding format, you can achieve a comparable level of data protection while using only about 112.5% of the space needed for the actual data, and with EC4+1, 125%. This approach allows for more efficient data storage with significantly reduced overhead compared to non-Erasure Coding solutions, making MooseFS 4.x an excellent choice for data-intensive open-source applications.

New features and enhancements in MooseFS 4.x

The new chunk format includes better handling of control sums, which enhances data integrity and system reliability. We have also revamped the web-based interface, providing more detailed information, numerous new charts for monitoring, and an overall improved charting system that offers better insights into system performance. MooseFS 4.x introduces new multilan configuration options that allow clients in different LANs to communicate with the master within their IP class, enhancing network efficiency and performance.

The IP remapping feature in MooseFS 4.x has been significantly enhanced with the introduction of a more flexible remap file. This new configuration allows for full custom IP-to-IP remapping, enabling users to define completely custom mappings between IP addresses rather than being limited to the fixed remapping of leading bits as in previous versions. This improvement provides greater control over network configurations, making it easier to adapt MooseFS to complex network environments and specific infrastructure needs.

MooseFS 4.x also includes new configuration options that allow users to define flags and set limits for disks storing chunks, particularly when these disks are shared with other processes. This improvement enables more accurate calculation of occupied and available space, optimizing storage efficiency. Additionally, a new tool has been introduced for offline searching of metadata files based on conditions like chunk IDs, inodes, and attributes, greatly enhancing the ability to manage and locate specific data within the system.

The logging system in MooseFS 4.x has been significantly improved to enhance clarity and control. Log messages are now categorized by severity levels, allowing users to configure what should be logged and how these logs are reported to syslog. Additionally, there are numerous other new features and improvements in this version, such as enhanced tools for ACL handling, a new chunk format with better control sum management, and a variety of updates to existing algorithms that make MooseFS faster, more efficient, and less prone to errors in edge cases. With improvements in metadata handling, a new web-based interface for better monitoring, and expanded configuration options, MooseFS 4.x is designed to deliver a more powerful and flexible storage solution for our community. These enhancements are just the tip of the iceberg, with many other quality-of-life improvements aimed at making your data management experience smoother and more efficient.

More details

For more detailed information, be sure to check the release notes for the latest version, which include updates, new features, and bug fixes. You can explore the complete project code, contribute to development, or report issues directly on the project’s GitHub repository.

Looking Ahead

MooseFS 4.x represents a significant leap forward in our ongoing commitment to delivering robust, efficient, and user-friendly distributed file system solutions to our community. This new version not only introduces cutting-edge features and enhancements but also maintains the exceptional stability, ease of use, and manageability that users have come to rely on from previous versions. MooseFS continues to offer a dependable and intuitive solution for managing data storage, combining advanced capabilities with a user-friendly experience.

We are excited to see how these new features and improvements will empower our users to better manage their data storage needs. As always, we welcome feedback and encourage our community to explore these new capabilities to their fullest potential. Your input helps us to continually refine MooseFS and ensure it meets the evolving demands of our users.

MooseFS PRO

If you are looking for high availability (HA) for master servers, improved disk space management with enhanced data protection through EC configurations with higher redundancy levels, and dedicated support, we also offer the MooseFS PRO version. This version is designed for enterprise environments where uptime and data integrity are critical, providing features like automatic failover for master servers, more advanced erasure coding for greater resilience against hardware failures, and professional support services to ensure smooth operation and rapid issue resolution. MooseFS PRO adds an extra layer of reliability and optimisation for those managing large-scale, mission-critical storage systems.

Stay tuned!

Stay tuned for upcoming updates! Where we’ll continue to enhance the project with new features, improvements, and fixes. Be sure to follow the repository to receive notifications on the latest changes.

Appreciation from MooseFS open-source user

February 17th, 2023 | MooseFS Team

Last week, we received a heartfelt email from Tianon, a user of the MooseFS open-source version and a valuable GitHub contributor. Tianon expressed his gratitude for our ongoing development of MooseFS as open-source software:

Hey, there’s nothing urgent here, and no need to even reply — I just know this job is often really thankless, and I really, really appreciate your team, your company, and your product/project. I’m thrilled that you’re doing well enough to continue maintaining it and that we continue to get the benefits of those fixes in the excellent open source project. 🙇💕

Our entire MooseFS team was delighted to receive this recognition of our work. We are passionate about MooseFS and believe that developing open-source software in collaboration with our community benefits both users and our company, resulting in a trustworthy and reliable product.

On that note, we’d like to inform you that we are currently working on the MooseFS 4.x open-source version. It will take some time, as source code development is a time-consuming process, but please be patient!

MooseFS open-source version is well-suited for individual users and small organizations. However, when it comes to more prominent entities, such as public institutions and business companies, we are well aware that they may have different needs. Bigger organizations require solutions tailored to a larger scale and end users’ specific needs. To those users, we dedicate MooseFS Pro, a licensed and technically supported professional version of our software. Of course, your data are equally safe in both versions, the open-source and the professional one of MooseFS.

Thank you,
MooseFS Team

Saglabs SA & Tappest sp. z o.o. – companies merger

January 1st, 2023 | MooseFS Team

We would like to kindly inform you that as of January 1, 2023, as a result of a merger of Saglabs SA (Company Registration Number (KRS): 0000020672) and Tappest sp. z o.o. (Company Registration Number (KRS): 0000431953) through the acquisition of Tappest sp. z o.o. by Saglabs SA (incorporation), the entire enterprise of Tappest sp. z o.o., including all of its assets, rights and obligations, in particular – all of its rights, obligations and legal relationships related to the development and support of MooseFS and MooseFS Pro systems have been transferred to Saglabs SA by operation of law. The reason for this merger was to simplify the ownership structure of companies owned by the same shareholders.

In connection with the above, we would like to inform you that the entire team involved hitherto in MooseFS and MooseFS Pro systems development and support at Tappest sp. z o.o. will remain unchanged and continue to work in the same capacity and on the same terms within Saglabs SA. Thus, we will continue to provide the same high level of professional customer support for MooseFS and MooseFS Pro. In particular, we will continue to maintain the open-source version of MooseFS and develop both systems on an ongoing basis for the benefit of our customers.

As the merger was effected through the acquisition of Tappest sp. z o.o. by Saglabs SA (incorporation), all obligations of Tappest sp. z o.o. to existing customers have been automatically transferred to Saglabs SA. Consequently, we will continue to honor our long-term service commitments to our customers using MooseFS and MooseFS Pro systems.

Company registration details:

Saglabs SA
26A Wejnerta St.
02-619 Warszawa
Poland

VAT ID (NIP): PL 6571011425
Company Registration Number (KRS): 0000020672

Email addresses and phone numbers remain unchanged.

Thank you,
MooseFS Team

Free MooseFS Pro license & support for COVID-19 fighters

April 2nd, 2020 | Piotr Konopelko

Due to growing COVID-19 outbreak, as Software Defined Storage vendor, we would like to help as much as we can during these tough times. We hereby offer license and support for our software, MooseFS Pro, completely free of charge – to all the laboratories and organizations dealing with combating the causes of the pandemic and mitigating its effects. MooseFS Pro helps to build reliable and efficient storage clusters in minutes – and it may be a great help when time matters.

MooseFS Pro is software that allows you to build fast and reliable petabyte file systems on any type of servers. It is used worldwide in many bioinformatics laboratories, computer modelling facilities, research institutes, etc.

We believe that it can also be useful in other cases where constant fight with pandemic is taking place every day, such as hospitals, laboratories, public health institutions, dealing with large amounts of data.

This action is directed to any organization dealing with direct research on viruses, vaccines, pandemic modelling, crisis management etc. We will provide a license for any required cluster size and any required time. If it is necessary, we can help with setting up and and starting the cluster quickly, too.

If you are interested, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at contact@moosefs.com. Please briefly describe your needs and let us know how MooseFS Pro storage cluster will help to fight against the pandemic in your case.

This is what we can do to mitigate COVID-19 crisis.

MooseFS Team

[COVID-19] MooseFS Pro Customer Channels

March 16th, 2020 | Joanna Piętka

Dear Customers,

Due to the risk of spreading coronavirus, we would like to inform you that our company will run as before and some of our employees work remotely.

We do not expect any delays in responding to service requests.

We encourage you to contact us via the form on the website or directly at contact@moosefs.com.

For technical issues, we are at your disposal at support@moosefs.com.

Best regards,
MooseFS Team

MooseFS Pro welcomes you @ IoT Tech Expo North America 2019 in Santa Clara!

November 4th, 2019 | Piotr Konopelko

MooseFS Pro is participating in IoT Tech Expo North America 2019 and we would like to extend a personal invitation for you to join us at booth #638 on November 13-14th, 2019 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Silicon Valley, United States.

Nothing beats face to face interaction and the opportunity to have a chat about Software Defined Storage with our experts. Visit us at IoT Tech Expo North America 2019 and meet MooseFS Pro! Register to get your free ticket here

Here are a few reasons why connecting with us will be worth your time.
You can:

Discuss your storage needs with our experts and find a solution,
Get insights from our team about MooseFS Pro and its features,
See how MooseFS Pro can be scaled out from a single node to a multi-petabyte cluster!

Book your tickets for IoT Tech Expo North America 2019 and meet us at booth #638 – we are looking forward to welcoming you on November 13-14th, 2019 in Santa Clara!

See you!
MooseFS Team

Seminar at the Research and Technology Transfer Center, NASK

October 23rd, 2019 | Joanna Piętka

Dear MooseFS Users,

We would like to show our appreciation to NASK – Research and Academic Computer Network for inviting MooseFS Pro to the seminar at the Research and Technology Transfer Center about distributed file systems in public sector, which took part on October 23rd, 2019 in NASK, Warsaw. See more details on Twitter