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File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

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21–30 of 37 posts

Re: File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

#22
post #21
post #19

Was it Ceph they were using at CERN (ATLAS Project, at least?) they were using some kind of file system federation.

Googling isn't much help. You can find references to AFS, DFS, VM-FS, and EOS...all being used at CERN.

Oh I see, I was thinking of AFS, I'm sure, I thought it was built on ceph or vice versa.

Re: File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

#25
post #20

Yes it really cannot emphasized enough that the legacy filesystem system interface with it's too-simple 1970s origin and then far, far, far too complex decades of duck tape is a disasterous albatros. C.f. What linus is saying in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21673372 except turn it around. When an interface has devolved into two sides hating and Postel's-law-enabling each other ad infinitum, and a statement li…

> Yes it really cannot emphasized enough that the legacy filesystem system interface with it's too-simple 1970s origin and then far, far, far too complex decades of duck tape is a disasterous albatros. Except that nobody will sign on. Look at what happened to FreeBSD in the 5.0 timeframe when they reworked their storage layers into GEOM. It was a NIGHTMARE . Most people agreed it needed to be done, but there was an e…

Maybe the OS is not the right layer for this?

Re: File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

#26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes it really cannot emphasized enough that the legacy filesystem system interface with it's too-simple 1970s origin and then far, far, far too complex decades of duck tape is a disasterous albatros. Except that nobody will sign on. Look at what happened to FreeBSD in the 5.0 timeframe when they reworked their storage layers into GEOM. It was a NIGHTMARE . Most people agreed it needed to be done, but there was an e…

Maybe the OS is not the right layer for this?

What other layer could it be in? (Legitimately curious)

Re: File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

#27
post #4

I found the story of how Backblaze stores things "on top of", versus "in" filesystems similarly interesting. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architect... It seems like they could go one further and eliminate the ext4 underneath.

You'd love this: https://maisonbisson.com/post/object-storage-prior-art-and-l... Talks about Facebook, Instagram, S3 and other Object Store services and how they deal with storage at scale.

thanks for the link!

Re: File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

#28

Yes it really cannot emphasized enough that the legacy filesystem system interface with it's too-simple 1970s origin and then far, far, far too complex decades of duck tape is a disasterous albatros. C.f. What linus is saying in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21673372 except turn it around. When an interface has devolved into two sides hating and Postel's-law-enabling each other ad infinitum, and a statement li…

Do you have an opinion on whether filesystem in Windows is a comparable mess?

Re: File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

#29
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the OS is not the right layer for this?

What other layer could it be in? (Legitimately curious)

In userland, for one. Or an unprivileged service in a microkernel O/S. There are a lot of concerns jammed into the current concept of filesystem.

Re: File systems unfit as distributed storage back ends: 10 years of Ceph

#30

This all makes me grateful that I use sqlite3 instead of FS for storage, even for fairly trivial projects.

Could you expand a little on how you're doing that?

I've been thinking about transitioning entirely to sqlite for all my data.

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