Introduction to Active File Management (AFM)

Active File Management (AFM) enables sharing of data across clusters, even if the networks are unreliable or have high latency.

The following figure is a sample of an AFM relationship.

Figure 1. Sample of an AFM relationship

AFM allows you to create associations between IBM Spectrum Scale™ clusters or between IBM Spectrum Scale clusters and NFS data source. With AFM, you can implement a single name space view across sites around the world making your global name space truly global.

Using AFM, you can build a common name space across locations and automate the flow of file data. You can duplicate data for disaster recovery purposes without suffering from WAN latencies.

Individual files in the AFM filesets can be compressed. Compressing files saves disk space. For more information, see File compression.

Snapshot data migration is also supported. For more information, see ILM for snapshots.

Name space maintenance with AFM occurs asynchronously so that applications can continue operating without being constrained by network bandwidth.

Note: AFM does not offer any feature to check consistency of files across source and destination. However you can use any third-party utility to check consistency, after files are replicated.