The European XFEL beam delivery defines a unique time structure that requires acquiring and processing data in short bursts of up to 2700 images every 100 ms. The 2D pixel detectors being developed produce up to 10 GB/s of 1-Mpixel image data. Efficient handling of this huge data volume requires large network bandwidth and computing capabilities. The architecture of the DAQ system is hierarchical and modular. The DAQ network uses 10 GbE switched links to provide large bandwidth data transport between the front-end interfaces (FEI), data handling PC layer servers, and storage and analysis clusters. Front-end interfaces are required to build images acquired during a burst into pulse ordered image trains and forward them to PC layer farm. The PC layer consists of dedicated high-performance computers for raw data monitoring, processing and filtering, and aggregating data files that are then distributed to on-line storage and data analysis clusters. In this contribution we give an overview of the DAQ system architecture, communication protocols, as well as software stack for data acquisition pre-processing, monitoring, storage and analysis.