The BeaST is the FreeBSD based reliable storage system concept, it consists of two major families: the BeaST Classic and the BeaST Grid.

The BeaST Classic family has dual-controller architecture with RAID Arrays or ZFS storage pools. It turns two commodity servers into a pair of redundant active-active/asymmetric storage controllers which use iSCSI protocol (Fibre Channel in the future) to provide clients with simultaneous access to volumes on the storage system. Both controllers have access to all drives on one or several SATA or SAS drive enclosures. Depending on particular configuration, it allows the BeaST Classic to create wide range of GEOM based software or hardware RAID array types along with ZFS storage pools.

The BeaST Classic uses BeaST Quorum (BQ) software in conjunction with CTL High-Availability (CTL HA) or the BeaST Arbitrator (BA) for the fail-over and fail-back operations.

The BeaST Grid family utilise computer nodes instead of drive enclosures.

The BeaST Grid with RAID arrays The BeaST Grid with zpools CTL HA + BQ BA + BQ CTL HA + BQ BA + BQ

Color depicts the current development state of the branches. For example, you can achieve success testing the BeaST Classic with RAID arrays and the BeaST Arbitator + BeaST Quorum, but you will have troubles with ZFS implementations.

Current documentation

Warning! The BeaST storage system is the study of the storage systems technology. All the ideas, algorithms and solutions are at concept, development and testing stages. Do not implement the BeaST in production as there is no guarantee that you will not lose data.