Usiung a distributed filesystem

Rails
1

Hello list,

I wonder if anyone around uses or ever used a distributed filesystem for
a
Rails app (or any other platform). If so:

  • Do I need any explicit code in the application to use a distributed
    filesystem or is its use transparent ?
  • Could you give an example of an architecture of servers for
    high-peformance Rails application with a dist. filesystem? (how many
    servers, their roles, protocols, server layout, etc).

Could you share your experiences and thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Marcelo.

2

Hi Marcelo,

There are different types of distributed filesystems out there. If you
want to use one with Rails or any other “normal” application, that is
not aware of distributed nature of files it’s using (99% of apps?),
you have to choose one that provides virtual filesystem abstraction.
For example in Linux, these would be mounted somewhere in your root
filesystem, like /mnt/distributed and all of your apps (ans shell)
could access files like they were local.

I know that Kosmos file system uses FUSE this way and provides nice
abstraction layer to your applications, but I’m lacking further
experience/knowledge in this field.

On Aug 7, 9:50 am, “Marcelo de Moraes S.” [email protected]

3

Thanks a bunch Hubert.

The weird thing is that I don’t see much Rails’ developers talking about
using a dist. filesystem. I think hat it can be the best thing since
slice
bread, at least for applications that make heavy use of file assets. I
don’t
think that storing in the database is better.

Marcelo.

4

Marcelo -

On 7-Aug-08, at 4:16 PM, Marcelo de Moraes S. wrote:

Thanks a bunch Hubert.

The weird thing is that I don’t see much Rails’ developers talking
about using a dist. filesystem. I think hat it can be the best thing
since slice bread, at least for applications that make heavy use of
file assets. I don’t think that storing in the database is better.

Marcelo.

I suggest you take a tour over to the Rails Deployment list - the
topic has been raised before, and Ezra has some opinions on what
filesystems they decided to roll out at Engine Y…

Jodi

5

On Aug 7, 2008, at 1:40 PM, Jodi S. wrote:

I suggest you take a tour over to the Rails Deployment list - the
topic has been raised before, and Ezra has some opinions on what
filesystems they decided to roll out at Engine Y…

I agree that the Rails Deployment list is a good place for this. :slight_smile:

We use GFS (Red Hat, not Google), but it’s a clustered filesystem, not
a distributed filesystem.

Marcelo, which distributed FS were you thinking of?

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