Components
The services that make up a BlixtFS deployment, what each is responsible for, and the ports they use.
In a single-node deployment all the services below run inside one process, in
the blixtfs/standard or blixtfs/enterprise image. In a scale-out deployment
each has its own image, named blixtfs/<service>, and runs as its own container
or pod.
All communication between services is authenticated with a shared token (see Security model).
Core services
Config server
The single source of truth for the deployment’s configuration.
The config server never distributes cloud credentials. Every server must be given credentials directly.
Image: blixtfs/config · Port: 4711
File server
The heart of BlixtFS. File servers implement the file operations the gateways need: lookup, list, open, read, write, commit, rename, delete, and extended attributes. It owns the metadata attributes for files, reads data from the cache and the bucket, and uploads written data.
Image: blixtfs/file · Port: 4712
Indexing server
Creates the database schema, builds the file system index, and runs periodic consistency checks.
Image: blixtfs/indexing
Updater
Receives change notifications from the cloud provider, persists them and forwards each one to the file servers.
Image: blixtfs/updater · Port: 4716
Data tiers (scale-out)
Cache servers
A distributed cache of data chunks, spread across servers by consistent hashing. Each chunk is read from the bucket once and then shared.
Image: blixtfs/cache · Port: 4713
Write servers
Stores and replicates written data from file clients. On single server failure, data is replicated to between write servers.
Image: blixtfs/write · Port: 4715
Replication orchestrator
Orchestrates replication of cached read data chunks and write data, to maintain the configured replication factor.
Image: blixtfs/replication · Port: 4714
Optional services
Notifier
Relays a bucket’s native change-notification stream into the event log, so other deployments can read changes with storage credentials alone. Runs as a single replica.
Image: blixtfs/notifier · Port: 4732 (metrics only)
Monitoring
Prometheus and Grafana, preconfigured with BlixtFS dashboards. Built into the Enterprise single-node image, and a separate image for scale-out.
Image: blixtfs/monitoring · Ports: 9090 (Prometheus), 3000 (Grafana)
Protocol gateways
| Gateway | Implementation | Image | Port |
|---|---|---|---|
| NFSv4 | NFS-Ganesha with a BlixtFS backend | blixtfs/nfs |
2049 |
| SMB | Samba with a BlixtFS VFS module | blixtfs/smb |
445 |
| SFTP | OpenSSH internal-sftp |
built into the Enterprise images | 2222 |
| WebDAV | BlixtFS WebDAV gateway | built into the Enterprise images | 8080 |
| Kubernetes CSI | FUSE-based node plugin | see Kubernetes | none |
Port reference
Ports lists every port, including metrics ports.