Distributed Server Design Guide

This document explains the design, architecture and advanced use cases of the MinIO distributed server.

Command-line

NAME:
  minio server - start object storage server

USAGE:
  minio server [FLAGS] DIR1 [DIR2..]
  minio server [FLAGS] DIR{1...64}
  minio server [FLAGS] DIR{1...64} DIR{65...128}

DIR:
  DIR points to a directory on a filesystem. When you want to combine
  multiple drives into a single large system, pass one directory per
  filesystem separated by space. You may also use a '...' convention
  to abbreviate the directory arguments. Remote directories in a
  distributed setup are encoded as HTTP(s) URIs.

Common usage

Standalone erasure coded configuration with 4 sets with 16 disks each.

minio server dir{1...64}

Distributed erasure coded configuration with 64 sets with 16 disks each.

minio server http://host{1...16}/export{1...64}

Architecture

Expansion of ellipses and choice of erasure sets based on this expansion is an automated process in MinIO. Here are some of the details of our underlying erasure coding behavior.

Erasure coding used by MinIO is Reed-Solomon erasure coding scheme, which has a total shard maximum of 256 i.e 128 data and 128 parity. MinIO design goes beyond this limitation by doing some practical architecture choices.
Erasure set is a single erasure coding unit within a MinIO deployment. An object is sharded within an erasure set. Erasure set size is automatically calculated based on the number of disks. MinIO supports unlimited number of disks but each erasure set can be upto 16 disks and a minimum of 4 disks.
We limited the number of drives to 16 for erasure set because, erasure code shards more than 16 can become chatty and do not have any performance advantages. Additionally since 16 drive erasure set gives you tolerance of 8 disks per object by default which is plenty in any practical scenario.
Choice of erasure set size is automatic based on the number of disks available, let's say for example if there are 32 servers and 32 disks which is a total of 1024 disks. In this scenario 16 becomes the erasure set size. This is decided based on the greatest common divisor (GCD) of acceptable erasure set sizes ranging from 4 to 16.
If total disks has many common divisors the algorithm chooses the minimum amounts of erasure sets possible for a erasure set size of any N. In the example with 1024 disks - 4, 8, 16 are GCD factors. With 16 disks we get a total of 64 possible sets, with 8 disks we get a total of 128 possible sets, with 4 disks we get a total of 256 possible sets. So algorithm automatically chooses 64 sets, which is 16 * 64 = 1024 disks in total.
If total number of nodes are of odd number then GCD algorithm provides affinity towards odd number erasure sets to provide for uniform distribution across nodes. This is to ensure that same number of disks are pariticipating in any erasure set. For example if you have 2 nodes with 180 drives then GCD is 15 but this would lead to uneven distribution, one of the nodes would participate more drives. To avoid this the affinity is given towards nodes which leads to next best GCD factor of 12 which provides uniform distribution.
In this algorithm, we also make sure that we spread the disks out evenly. MinIO server expands ellipses passed as arguments. Here is a sample expansion to demonstrate the process.

minio server http://host{1...2}/export{1...8}

Expected expansion

> http://host1/export1
> http://host2/export1
> http://host1/export2
> http://host2/export2
> http://host1/export3
> http://host2/export3
> http://host1/export4
> http://host2/export4
> http://host1/export5
> http://host2/export5
> http://host1/export6
> http://host2/export6
> http://host1/export7
> http://host2/export7
> http://host1/export8
> http://host2/export8

A noticeable trait of this expansion is that it chooses unique hosts such the setup provides maximum protection and availability.

Choosing an erasure set for the object is decided during PutObject(), object names are used to find the right erasure set using the following pseudo code.

// hashes the key returning an integer.
func crcHashMod(key string, cardinality int) int {
        keyCrc := crc32.Checksum([]byte(key), crc32.IEEETable)
        return int(keyCrc % uint32(cardinality))
}

Input for the key is the object name specified in PutObject(), returns a unique index. This index is one of the erasure sets where the object will reside. This function is a consistent hash for a given object name i.e for a given object name the index returned is always the same.

Write and Read quorum are required to be satisfied only across the erasure set for an object. Healing is also done per object within the erasure set which contains the object.
MinIO does erasure coding at the object level not at the volume level, unlike other object storage vendors. This allows applications to choose different storage class by setting x-amz-storage-class=STANDARD/REDUCED_REDUNDANCY for each object uploads so effectively utilizing the capacity of the cluster. Additionally these can also be enforced using IAM policies to make sure the client uploads with correct HTTP headers.
MinIO also supports expansion of existing clusters in zones. Each zone is a self contained entity with same SLA's (read/write quorum) for each object as original cluster. By using the existing namespace for lookup validation MinIO ensures conflicting objects are not created. When no such object exists then MinIO simply uses the least used zone.

There are no limits on how many zones can be combined

minio server http://host{1...32}/export{1...32} http://host{5...6}/export{1...8}

In above example there are two zones

32 * 32 = 1024 drives zone1
2 * 8 = 16 drives zone2

Notice the requirement of common SLA here original cluster had 1024 drives with 16 drives per erasure set, second zone is expected to have a minimum of 16 drives to match the original cluster SLA or it should be in multiples of 16.

MinIO places new objects in zones based on proportionate free space, per zone. Following pseudo code demonstrates this behavior.

func getAvailableZoneIdx(ctx context.Context) int {
        zones := z.getZonesAvailableSpace(ctx)
        total := zones.TotalAvailable()
        // choose when we reach this many
        choose := rand.Uint64() % total
        atTotal := uint64(0)
        for _, zone := range zones {
                atTotal += zone.Available
                if atTotal > choose && zone.Available > 0 {
                        return zone.Index
                }
        }
        // Should not happen, but print values just in case.
        panic(fmt.Errorf("reached end of zones (total: %v, atTotal: %v, choose: %v)", total, atTotal, choose))
}

Other usages

Advanced use cases with multiple ellipses

Standalone erasure coded configuration with 4 sets with 16 disks each, which spawns disks across controllers.

minio server /mnt/controller{1...4}/data{1...16}

Standalone erasure coded configuration with 16 sets, 16 disks per set, across mounts and controllers.

minio server /mnt{1...4}/controller{1...4}/data{1...16}

Distributed erasure coded configuration with 2 sets, 16 disks per set across hosts.

minio server http://host{1...32}/disk1

Distributed erasure coded configuration with rack level redundancy 32 sets in total, 16 disks per set.

minio server http://rack{1...4}-host{1...8}.example.net/export{1...16}

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