aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/doc/book/cookbook/real-world.md
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/book/cookbook/real-world.md')
-rw-r--r--doc/book/cookbook/real-world.md46
1 files changed, 39 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/doc/book/cookbook/real-world.md b/doc/book/cookbook/real-world.md
index 4fcb5cf7..6fe7e547 100644
--- a/doc/book/cookbook/real-world.md
+++ b/doc/book/cookbook/real-world.md
@@ -11,8 +11,9 @@ We recommend first following the [quick start guide](@/documentation/quick-start
to get familiar with Garage's command line and usage patterns.
+## Preparing your environment
-## Prerequisites
+### Prerequisites
To run a real-world deployment, make sure the following conditions are met:
@@ -21,10 +22,6 @@ To run a real-world deployment, make sure the following conditions are met:
- Each machine has a public IP address which is reachable by other machines.
Running behind a NAT is likely to be possible but hasn't been tested for the latest version (TODO).
-- Ideally, each machine should have a SSD available in addition to the HDD you are dedicating
- to Garage. This will allow for faster access to metadata and has the potential
- to significantly reduce Garage's response times.
-
- This guide will assume you are using Docker containers to deploy Garage on each node.
Garage can also be run independently, for instance as a [Systemd service](@/documentation/cookbook/systemd.md).
You can also use an orchestrator such as Nomad or Kubernetes to automatically manage
@@ -49,6 +46,42 @@ available in the different locations of your cluster is roughly the same.
For instance, here, the Mercury node could be moved to Brussels; this would allow the cluster
to store 2 TB of data in total.
+### Best practices
+
+- If you have fast dedicated networking between all your nodes, and are planing to store
+ very large files, bump the `block_size` configuration parameter to 10 MB
+ (`block_size = 10485760`).
+
+- Garage stores its files in two locations: it uses a metadata directory to store frequently-accessed
+ small metadata items, and a data directory to store data blocks of uploaded objects.
+ Ideally, the metadata directory would be stored on an SSD (smaller but faster),
+ and the data directory would be stored on an HDD (larger but slower).
+
+- For the data directory, Garage already does checksumming and integrity verification,
+ so there is no need to use a filesystem such as BTRFS or ZFS that does it.
+ We recommend using XFS for the data partition, as it has the best performance.
+ Ext4 is not recommended as it has more strict limitations on the number of inodes,
+ which might cause issues with Garage when large numbers of objects are stored.
+
+- If you only have an HDD and no SSD, it's fine to put your metadata alongside the data
+ on the same drive. Having lots of RAM for your kernel to cache the metadata will
+ help a lot with performance. Make sure to use the LMDB database engine,
+ instead of Sled, which suffers from quite bad performance degradation on HDDs.
+ Sled is still the default for legacy reasons, but is not recommended anymore.
+
+- For the metadata storage, Garage does not do checksumming and integrity
+ verification on its own. If you are afraid of bitrot/data corruption,
+ put your metadata directory on a BTRFS partition. Otherwise, just use regular
+ EXT4 or XFS.
+
+- Having a single server with several storage drives is currently not very well
+ supported in Garage ([#218](https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage/issues/218)).
+ For an easy setup, just put all your drives in a RAID0 or a ZFS RAIDZ array.
+ If you're adventurous, you can try to format each of your disk as
+ a separate XFS partition, and then run one `garage` daemon per disk drive,
+ or use something like [`mergerfs`](https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs) to merge
+ all your disks in a single union filesystem that spreads load over them.
+
## Get a Docker image
Our docker image is currently named `dxflrs/garage` and is stored on the [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/dxflrs/garage/tags?page=1&ordering=last_updated).
@@ -81,6 +114,7 @@ A valid `/etc/garage/garage.toml` for our cluster would look as follows:
```toml
metadata_dir = "/var/lib/garage/meta"
data_dir = "/var/lib/garage/data"
+db_engine = "lmdb"
replication_mode = "3"
@@ -90,8 +124,6 @@ rpc_bind_addr = "[::]:3901"
rpc_public_addr = "<this node's public IP>:3901"
rpc_secret = "<RPC secret>"
-bootstrap_peers = []
-
[s3_api]
s3_region = "garage"
api_bind_addr = "[::]:3900"