# What distributed storage are you using?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-distributed-storage-are-you-using/103896>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [May 11, 2007, 1:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-distributed-storage-are-you-using/103896 "2007-05-11T13:22:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/f6c823/32.png) [@Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philippe_J)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 1:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-distributed-storage-are-you-using/103896/1 "2007-05-11T13:22:49Z")

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Hey all,

I’ve been using NFS for some months now to share user-uploaded files on  
a Rails-based music community site. The files are mainly MP3 and images.

I’m currently investigating alternative systems to share the files  
between the systems, because of poor performance of NFS in our setup and  
to better scale in the future.

MogileFS seems interesting, scales well and is heavily used on some Web  
sites. I also want to test some distributed file systems (at the  
OS-level) as it would be less intrusive.

What are your experiences? Do you have any hints?

Thanks,

Philippe

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**Author:** ![Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/f6c823/32.png) [@Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philippe_J)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 6:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-distributed-storage-are-you-using/103896/2 "2007-05-11T18:29:52Z")

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You might also want to look at Amazon’s S3. Inexpensive, and by default  
it  
is replicated.

On 5/11/07, Philippe J. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> –  
> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).
> 
> >

–  
Chris B.  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

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**Author:** ![Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/f6c823/32.png) [@Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philippe_J)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 6:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-distributed-storage-are-you-using/103896/3 "2007-05-11T18:39:53Z")

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On May 11, 2007, at 4:22 AM, Philippe J. wrote:

> setup and
> 
> Philippe

Hi Philippe-

Your best bet for a shared posix compliant clustering filesystem  
that will not require you to change your code to use it is GFS

> **[All Red Hat products](https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/all-products)**
>
> See all of Red Hat’s open source products, including platform, cloud, application services, app development, automation, and data services products.

We use this heavily as a shared filesystem between app server nodes.  
It holds the rails app code as well as all the page and fragment  
caches. So any one node in the cluster can generate or expire a cache  
and its instantly mirrored to all nodes.

GFS is in every way superior to NFS. But it does require SAN.

Cheers-  
– Ezra Z.  
– Lead Rails Evangelist  
– removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
– Engine Y., Serious Rails Hosting  
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)

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**Author:** ![Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/f6c823/32.png) [@Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philippe_J)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 11:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-distributed-storage-are-you-using/103896/4 "2007-05-14T11:18:34Z")

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Hi,

GFS seems very interesting but unfortunately I’m not sure shared  
storage is a possibility for now. I hope it would. Ezra, your setup  
looks amazing 🙂

> Right now were using GPFS and evaluating lustre. The admins haven’t  
> really come to a conclusion as to which direction were going. The  
> permissions required to run GPFS have a bad smell in my opinion.

GPFS is not free, I’ll try the other alternatives before evaluating  
it. Lustre seems a very good option. What do you think?

Ezra, do you have any experience with options not requiring shared  
storage?

Thanks all for your feedback,

Philippe

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/f6c823/32.png) [@Philippe\_J](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philippe_J)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 11:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-distributed-storage-are-you-using/103896/5 "2007-05-11T23:56:34Z")

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Right now were using GPFS and evaluating lustre. The admins haven’t  
really come to a conclusion as to which direction were going. The  
permissions required to run GPFS have a bad smell in my opinion.

–R