Nexfs Quickstart Guide
IMPORTANT: It is currently recommended that Nexfs be installed and run as the root user, while running nexfs as another user may be possible, doing so is currently not officially tested or supported by Nexustorage. It is also recommended that replication of Nexfs Structure data is configured on a production system.
This guide shows how to install and configure a basic Nexfs server using the Admin Portal and the Nexfscli command line utility, if you prefer to configure Nexfs using only nexfscli please follow the Nexfs Quickstart Guide (Nexfscli Only)
Step 1: Before installing Nexfs you need a running base Linux system that meets the minimum requirements detailed in Nexfs Public Preview System Requirements.
Step 2: Download the nexfscli management utility
All available releases nexfscli are available to download here
You may also directly download the latest release at:
http://nexfscli.nexustorage.com
Direct download example using wget
wget http://nexfscli.nexustorage.com -O nexfscli
Make the downloaded utility root executable
chmod u+x nexfscli
and group executable
chmod g+x nexfscli
It is recommended that you place the Nexfs binaries within the Linux command search path, for example, move nexfscli into /usr/bin
Example commands:
mv nexfscli /usr/bin
Step 3: Install Nexfs
Nexfs will be directly downloaded and installed by nexfscli, if the server which Nexfs is being installed on does not have direct internet access use the "--nosoftwareinstall" option as documented in the advanced installation guide and continue
Run:
nexfscli install
When prompted confirm that you have read and that you accept the Nexustorage Nexfs Terms & Conditions
Step 4: (Optional) Load Tier-3 Cloud / Object Storage Template
If the Nexfs server will utilise AWS S3 or MinIO Tier-3 storage, you can use nexfscli to load a default T3 configuration.
To load AWS S3 defaults run:
nexfscli configfile set defaults s3
To load “out of the box” MinIO defaults run:
nexfscli configfile set defaults minio
To load “out of the box” Filebase defaults run:
nexfscli configfile set defaults filebase
Review the defaults shown, for more information on which default values are loaded see Sample S3 Nexfs Configurations.
If you are connecting to other compatible S3 storage, see Nexfs System Settings for a list S3 related settings and Sample S3 Nexfs Configurations for examples
Step 5: Create the Nexfs filesystem mountpoint
By default, the Nexfs server will mount its filesystem to /mnt/nexfs
Create the mountpoint folder, run:
mkdir /mnt/nexfs
Start the Nexfs server
Using nexfscli start Nexfs
Run:
nexfscli server start
You should receive a message that nexfs.server has started similar to:
nexfs.server started, mounted to /mnt/nexfs
Check that Nexfs is running:
Run:
nexfscli server status
You should see a status message (Server Status: InERR is expected) returned similar to:
Nexfs Mountpoint: /mnt/nexfs
Server Status: InERR
Hostname: test-u01
Release: 0.99.0
Software Expires: Fri 2027-03-19 18:38:17
License: Core 5TB
Managed Capacity: 0TB (0GB)
Process ID: 188914
Uptime: 0 days 0 hours 4 minutes 28 seconds
Open Files: 1/7281
Structure Replication Status: OK
Tier1 Struct Status: OK
Tier2 Struct Status: OK
Tier1 Status: OK
Tier1 Threshold Level: OK
Tier1 Floor Level: OK
Tier2 Status: Disabled
Tier2 Threshold Level: Unknown
Tier2 Floor Level: Unknown
Tier3 Status: InERR
iSCSI Status: OK
NFS Status: Disabled
Mgmt Web Server: OK
Job Scheduler: Enabled
BG Migration Scheduler: Enabled
Deletion Scheduler: Enabled
Manual Commands: Enabled
Step 6: Connect to the integrated Admin Webconsole
Using a web browser connect to https://nexfsserver:9200/nexfsconsole
where nexfsserver is the DNS resolvable hostname or the ipaddress of the server Nexfs is running on
Login using the defaults:
Login Name: nexfsadmin
Password: nexfsadminsecret
More information on using the integrated admin web console is available here
Step 7: Configure the local Nexfs Datastores
1. First, configure the local filesystem where Nexfs will store its structure (file) information.
Select "Nexfs Configuration" from the left menu, then the "Storage" section, you will automatically be on the "Index Data" tab.
Enter the local block storage location that Nexfs will use to store Index data (file structure and metadata), if required you can configure index data replication at the same time. Click "Update" to save the new configuration
In this example, Nexfs is configured to store structure data into /nexfs/s1
2. Next select the Tier-1 (Block) tab and enter the location Nexfs will use to storage Tier-1 file data
3. (Optional) select the Tier-3 (Cloud/Object) tab, configure and enable tier-3 storage
Step 8: Wait for Nexfs status to become "OK"
Click on the "System Status" section on the left menu, with a couple of minutes the system status should show as OK
Step 9: (Optional) Use nexfscli to setup the datastores
For performance the best practice is to use nexfscli to setup the Nexfs datastores before starting the Nexfs server. Note: datastoresetup will require around 5GB on a ext4 system, this space is not needed on an xfs file system.
Run:
nexfscli setupdatastores
Step 11: Verify that Nexfs is mounted
Check the Nexfs file system is mounted:
Run:
df /mnt/nexfs
If all is working the results of the df command should be similar to:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
nexfs.server 99037956 1284104 97753852 2% /mnt/nexfs
Congratulations, your new Nexfs server is running and ready to use.
