📄️ Overview
FlexFS is an innovative file system created by Paradigm4 that can easily transform any network-accessible key-value store with get, put, delete, list operations into a POSIX-compliant network file system which can be mounted across several hosts concurrently. A flexFS volume, when mounted on a host, appears to an end-user as an ordinary folder. FlexFS can be used in a variety of environments: on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration that straddles both. In practice, flexFS is typically backed by an object storage system (e.g. S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob, Wasabi, MinIO, Scality) and derives performance characteristics of that sytem (e.g. throughput, durability, latency, cost).
📄️ Advantages
What primarily sets flexFS apart from traditional parallel file systems is its ability to directly target object storage as a native block storage. Object storage systems typically have thousands of always-on servers, high aggregate throughput, low usage costs, and high durability. Since flexFS mount clients can load / store file data blocks directly to an object storage service, without passing all I/O operations through a storage service, it is possible for flexFS to have as much aggregate throughput as the underlying object storage service itself.
📄️ Performance
Aggregate read throughput
📄️ Cost
Due to the high dimensionality of AWS file system pricing, it is difficult to make a perfect cost comparison between file systems. However, it is possible to chart the cost ranges from absolute minimum to absolute maximum. In this context, we can look at relative cost ranges one might expect to pay on a monthly basis to store 100 TB of data.
📄️ Quick Start
Deploying flexFS is a relatively easy three-step process.