Frequently Asked Questions #
What is the difference between Seaweed Admin and SeaweedFS? #
Seaweed Admin is a closed-source project that provides additional features to SeaweedFS. It is designed to ensure the safety and integrity of your data on SeaweedFS.
We want to keep SeaweedFS Apache 2.0 licensed and open-source. Seaweed Admin is a separate project that provides additional features for enterprise users.
What is the difference between Seaweed Point-in-Time Recovery and normal backup systems? #
Seaweed Point-in-Time Recovery only backs up metadata snapshots and delays file content deletion. It does not require setting up additional storage to store file content data.
Normal backup systems need additional storage to store the file content data, and can only recover from the scheduled backup time. Seaweed Point-in-Time Recovery can recover from any point in time.
What is not protected by PITR? #
TTL files are not guaranteed to be protected. The TTL files are deleted after the TTL expires.
Collection deletion is not protected. The collection deletion is irreversible. Although the metadata is continuously protected, the data in the deleted collection could not be recovered.
Since buckets in object store are implemented by collections, bucket deletion is also not reversible.
How much metadata storage does Seaweed Admin use? #
Seaweed Admin runs on a server separate from the SeaweedFS cluster. It uses local disk space on the separate server to store metadata.
The total metadata storage usage is linear to the number of snapshots multiplied by the number of files in each snapshot.
Metadata snapshots are automatically created every 24 hours. There could be on-demand snapshots as well.
Each snapshot is a full copy of the metadata, and the storage cost is linear to the number of files.
How much storage does Seaweed PITR incur on the SeaweedFS cluster? #
Seaweed PITR would delay purging garbage data on the SeaweedFS cluster.
The storage cost depends on the number of files protected, the update frequency, and the retention period.
How to upgrade Seaweed Admin? #
Just stop it and start the new binary.
Is it safe to pause Seaweed Admin? #
It is fine to pause Seaweed Admin for a short period of time. The metadata replication will resume from where it pauses.
It is not fine to pause Seaweed Admin for a period of time longer than the retention period.
Can I delete a snapshot? #
The snapshots will be automatically deleted after the retention period.