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What is SeaweedFS

SeaweedFS is an open-source distributed storage system designed for object storage, file systems, and massive small-file workloads. It was originally built to store and serve large numbers of files efficiently. By distributing file metadata to volume servers, SeaweedFS reduces pressure on the central master and improves file access with near O(1) disk reads.

SeaweedFS is compatible with the Amazon S3 API, so it can work with common S3 tools, SDKs, and applications as an object storage service. It also provides Filer, WebDAV, FUSE mount, and other access methods, making it suitable for storing unstructured data such as images, logs, backups, archives, and data lake assets in Kubernetes or cloud native environments.

The DCE SeaweedFS module is built on open-source SeaweedFS for workloads that need lightweight and horizontally scalable object storage. Users can deploy SeaweedFS instances in containerized environments and provide dedicated object storage services for applications.

SeaweedFS provides the following capabilities:

  1. High scalability.

    SeaweedFS can scale storage capacity horizontally by adding volume servers, making it suitable for both single-node test environments and multi-node production deployments.

  2. Massive-file support.

    SeaweedFS distributes file content and file metadata across volume servers, reducing the concurrency pressure on centralized metadata services and making it suitable for large numbers of small files or objects.

  3. S3 compatibility.

    SeaweedFS provides an Amazon S3-compatible API, allowing applications to upload, download, and manage objects through standard S3 tooling.

  4. Multiple access methods.

    In addition to the S3 API, SeaweedFS can provide directory and file semantics through Filer and supports HTTP, WebDAV, FUSE mount, and other access methods.

  5. Cloud native friendly.

    SeaweedFS can run in Kubernetes and integrate with cloud native infrastructure through components such as Operator and CSI Driver.

  6. Flexible data protection.

    SeaweedFS supports replication, erasure coding, cross-cluster replication, and hot/cold data tiering, so users can balance performance, cost, and reliability based on business requirements.

Core components

A typical SeaweedFS architecture includes the following components:

  • Master: Manages volume servers and volume allocation information, and coordinates write locations.
  • Volume Server: Stores file content and file metadata. It is the core component that holds data.
  • Filer: Provides directory, file name, permission, and other file system semantics, and can connect to different metadata stores.
  • S3 Gateway: Provides an Amazon S3-compatible object storage interface for applications to access SeaweedFS as object storage.

Use cases

SeaweedFS is suitable for the following scenarios:

  • Providing lightweight object storage for cloud native applications.
  • Storing unstructured data such as images, audio and video files, logs, and backups.
  • Managing massive numbers of small files while reducing pressure on traditional centralized metadata services.
  • Providing an S3-compatible storage backend for analytics, data lake, or archive workloads.
  • Tiering or asynchronously replicating hot and cold data between local clusters and cloud storage.

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