ChironFS, filesystem redundancy made simple
It's a pity that some small, but very handy software don't get much coverage.
A cool package you might want to try is ChironFS. ChironFS is a FUSE module that replicates file systems. Write to any file server, and ChironFS will replicate the data on other servers.
Read data from a ChironFS mountpoint, and ChironFS will try to fetch it from any server.
That way, you can easily get fail-safe storage. Easily is the word, because ChironFS is very easy to set up, and it can deal with any filesystem supported by the kernel, and filesystems can even be mixed (even FUSE-based ones like MySQLFS can do the job).
ChironFS is nowhere a drop-in replacement for clustered storage filesystems like Starfish or GlusterFS. But ChironFS is wonderful to avoid reinventing the wheel at application-level in order to manage small, but redundant storage nodes.
Comments
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Is FUSE-FS stable enough to support this kind of thing? AFAIK these cluster stuff are complex because there are no trusty bricks to build upon.
Best.
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The FUSE framework is rock solid.
Having userspace fileystems has performance penalties, but OTOH, such filesystems are way easier to write and to debug than in-kernel filesystems. It doesn’t mean that they are bug-free either, but it helps a lot.
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Thanks!