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Leil FS
The Engine of Open Hyperscale Storage

The truly open-source distributed file system. GPL-3.0 licensed. Commercially ready. Built for petabytes scale.

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Why Leif FS?

Truly Open

No “Business Source License” restrictions. GPL-3.0 means you can build, deploy, and profit freely. Your code, your infrastructure, your rules.

Commercially Ready

Battle-tested in production at petabyte scale. Enterprise features: erasure coding, uRaft HA, CoW snapshots, SMB, S3, NFSv4 ACLs — all included in the open-source core.

The Leil FS Advantage

GPL-3.0 Freedom

No business source restrictions. Commercial-ready under GPL-3.0. Fork it, ship it, profit from it.

POSIX Compliant

Seamlessly integrates with Linux and Windows environments. Standard filesystem semantics.

Petabytes scale ready

Petabytes to exabytes with zero downtime. Chunk-based architecture inspired by Google File System.

Virtualization Ready

Native Proxmox plugin and Kubernetes Operator with CSI driver for seamless orchestration.

Universal Packaging

Apt-repo, Docker Hub (multi-arch), and RPM. Built for Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora.

Hacker-Friendly

Direct engineering communication. No fluff. Just high-performance storage. Join Matrix and talk to the developers.

Technical Core

Inspired by Google FS. Built for Petabytes.

Leil FS is a distributed POSIX file system inspired by the Google File System, comprising Metadata Servers (Master, Shadows, Metaloggers), Data Servers (Chunkservers), and Clients (supporting multiple operating systems and NFS). It employs a chunk-based storage architecture, segmenting files into 64 MiB chunks subdivided into 64 KiB blocks, each with 4 bytes of CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) for data integrity.

Protocol Stack

NFSv3/NFSv4 (Ganesha FSAL) · Samba · S3 (Versity gateway) · Native LeilFS POSIX client for Linux.

Enterprise Features

NFSv4 + POSIX ACLs · Granular quotas (user/group/directory) · Async recursive deletion · Automatic rebalancing · HDD/SSD tiering.

Monitoring & Observability

Prometheus-native storage exporter. Kubernetes-ready with CSI driver and Operator. Automated disk management.

Technical Core Diagram

Client-Side Erasure Coding Architecture

Leil FS™ eliminates legacy performance bottlenecks by utilizing a Parallel HDD-Native™ Architecture that fundamentally separates data and metadata paths. This decoupled approach allows the client to communicate with the Master for metadata operations while simultaneously interacting with Chunkservers in parallel for raw I/O. By performing Erasure Coding (EC) directly within the client-side process, data is protected the moment it leaves the host, distributing the computational “cost” across your entire network of clients rather than taxing the storage tier. For any individual client, the CPU resources required for EC are a tiny fraction of its total capacity, preventing storage servers from becoming a bottleneck even in dense configurations with 100+ drives per node.

The Architectural Advantage

Leaner Hardware Footprint

Chunkservers focus exclusively on I/O, not computation. Lower CPU requirements per node mean more cost-effective, specialized infrastructure.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Reduced hardware specifications at the storage tier translate directly to lower procurement and operational costs.

Superior Scalability

Adding storage capacity no longer adds proportional compute overhead; the architecture scales linearly to meet exabyte-scale demands.

Choose your edition

While most softwares do not support SMRs, Leil OS brings hyperscale-level efficiency to on-premise environments—unlocking the industry’s most widely deployed, high-capacity, and efficient drives for broader adoption. Our advanced file system handles HM-SMR write management natively, with no firmware hacks, no performance penalties, and no forked software stacks. LEIL OS includes every core feature of LEIL FS — plus the enterprise capabilities you need at exabyte scale.

Open source core. 
Enterprise everything.

OPEN SOURCE

GPL-3.0

LEIL FS

The engine. Battle-tested at petabyte scale, free to deploy and modify.

CORE FEATURES

  • Resilient Architecture
  • High Availability
  • Seamless Hardware Refresh & Expansion
  • Data Integrity
  • Erasure Coding & Replication
  • Instant Copy-on-Write Snapshots
  • NFS / Native Client / Samba / S3
  • Advanced ACL Framework
  • POSIX & Flock Advisory Locking
  • Granular Quota Management
  • Fast Recursive Deletion
  • SSD & CMR HDD Support
  • Periodic Scrubbing
  • Automatic Data Rebalancing
  • Variable Capacity Support

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ENTERPRISE

Full platform

LEIL OS

Everything LEIL FS does — plus the orchestration, scale, and hardware support production fleets demand.

Everything in LEIL FS, included

All 15 core features above ship inside LEIL OS — same engine, same APIs, same protocols.

ONLY IN LEIL OS

Windows Client Console

Native Windows management UI

Flexible Mounting Modes

User- or system-level mount

Host-Managed SMR Support

HM-SMR drives, no firmware hacks

ICE — Infinite Cold Engine

Hyperscale cold-tier economics

Leil Connect

Multi-site federation layer

Leil Navigator

Cluster-wide data exploration

Exabyte Scale

Engineered for EB-class clusters

Double-Level Erasure Coding

Cross-rack + local protection

HDD NATIVE FEATURE SET

Head Depopulation

Run drives past partial failure

Advanced SMR Support

Production-grade SMR write path

Extra Local Erasure Coding

Per-node EC for fast rebuilds

Hardware Top Performance Pack

Tuned for dense NVMe/HDD nodes

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