Bluearc - File System

The BlueArc File System Technology

BlueArc's patented hardware-based file system provides the performance and scalability to meet the demands of today's NAS requirements, without the legacy of slower software-based file servers.

Unlike traditional file servers that use common operating systems and file systems on standard PC-based hardware, BlueArc started from the ground up to develop a unique hardware based, object-oriented file system. Using programmable logic chips and a patented file system design, the Titan manages all the essential elements of the file system in a series of state machines, completely in hardware. Unlike common software-based file systems, the BlueArc file system enables massive parallelism in file system operations, performing thousands of operations in each clock cycle. This enables unparalleled scalability and flexibility to work with a wide range of file system requirements. The Titan file system can handle up to16 million objects per directory, resulting in an overall capacity of billions of files in a single file system.

With file systems this large, BlueArc needed to insure that performance is maintained at high levels even with millions of files, large or small, in each directory. Our unique object-oriented design is highly efficient regardless of file system size. All file system elements are kept as objects, each identified and indexed with a unique 64-bit Object Identifier, allowing Titan to locate any object without searching through disk-based file system structures.

Although unique on the inside, Titan is designed with standards in mind, and all data access is accomplished using industry-standard protocols such as CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, and NDMP. This eliminates the need to have specialized drivers or hardware on the hundreds or thousands of client servers, which can be costly and difficult to manage.

To learn more about the Titan system and the object-based file system, download BlueArc's Titan Architecture White Paper.