# alibaba/tfs

TFS (Taobao File System) is a distributed file system similar to GFS.

Repository: https://github.com/alibaba/tfs
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/alibaba-tfs
Homepage: http://tfs.taobao.org
Language: C++
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Archived: true
Last push: 2017-02-14T10:56:39+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5152, "days_push": 3487, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1244, forks 452 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:06.800702+00:00)

## What it is
TFS (Taobao File System) is a distributed file system developed by Taobao, designed similar to Google File System. It is optimized for storing and serving large numbers of small files (under 1MB) with high availability, redundancy, and load balancing on Linux.

## Use cases
- store billions of small files like images and thumbnails
- build a GFS-like distributed storage cluster on Linux
- serve user-uploaded files with generated unique filenames
- achieve high availability storage through redundancy and backup
- distribute storage load across many commodity servers

## When to choose
- you need to store massive numbers of small files (<1MB) cheaply
- you run Linux servers and want a GFS-style flat-namespace file store
- you can maintain C++ infrastructure yourself

## When to avoid
- you need active maintenance or recent bug fixes - the project is abandoned since 2017
- you need large file support or a traditional directory hierarchy
- you want a modern storage system with an active community

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: abandoned
- function: file-system, object-storage
- domain: microservices, files, infrastructure-as-code
- platform: cpp
- tags: distributed-file-system, gfs-like, small-files, storage, linux

## Member repositories
- alibaba/tfs (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:06.800702+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T05:08:13.969978+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/alibaba/tfs (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:06.800702+00:00, sha 471732408830)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.