NAME

       sheepfs  -  A  pseudo  file  system  exports  both  Sheepdog's  internal  state as well as
       Sheepdog's storage

SYNOPSIS

       sheepfs [OPTION]... MOUNTPOINT

DESCRIPTION

       sheepfs - Sheepdog is a distributed storage system for QEMU. It provides highly  available
       block  level  storage  volumes  to  virtual  machines.   Sheepdog supports advanced volume
       management features such as snapshot, cloning, and thin provisioning. The architecture  of
       Sheepdog is fully symmetric; there is no central node such as a meta-data server.

       The  server  daemon is called sheep(8).  A command line utility is available via dog(8). A
       pseudo file system is available via sheepfs(8). QEMU virtual machines use the sheep daemon
       via a block driver available in qemu(1).

       Sheepfs  is a FUSE-based pseudo file system in userland to access both Sheepdog's internal
       state (for e.g, cluster info, vdi list) as well as Sheepdog's high reliable storage.

       The idea here is that its sometimes useful that we can envision our  interaction  with  an
       Sheepdog's object in terms of a directory structure and filesystem operations.

       People  might  be  mostly  interested  into  sheepfs's volume directory, which export VM's
       volume as a pseudo block file in your local file system hierarchy, which can be used as

       1. a big file abstraction, which is actually backed by Sheepdog's storage, distributed  in
       the cluster.

       2.  a  loop  device file, which you can mount wherever you want to use it as a file system
       backed up by Sheepdog.

       3. a loop device file for some VM's image, which you want to access(RW) its internal data.

       4. storage media for other hypervisor, such as XEN

       This file abstraction integrates well into kernel's pagecache.

OPTIONS

       -a, --address
              specify the sheep address (default: localhost)

       -d, --debug
              enable debug output (implies -f)

       -f, --foreground
              sheepfs run in the foreground

       -k, --pagecache
              use local kernel's page cache to access volume

       -n, --noobjectcache
              disable object cache of the attached volumes

       -p, --port
              specify the sheep port (default: 7000)

       -h, --help
              display this help and exit

DEPENDENCIES

       Sheepdog requires QEMU 0.13.z or later and Corosync 1.y.z.

FILES

       none

SEE ALSO

       sheep(8), dog(8), qemu(1), corosync_overview(8)

AUTHORS

       This software is developed by the Sheepdog community which may be reached via mailing list
       at <sheepdog@lists.wpkg.org>.

                                            2013-11-21                                SHEEPDOG(8)