From 6f6bf23bec5690df683622cd90c50d5303f124db Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Alex Auvolat Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 19:12:10 +0100 Subject: Move doc files here from Deuxfleur's site repo --- doc/Internals.md | 156 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ doc/Quickstart.md | 140 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ doc/Related Work.md | 38 +++++++++++++ 3 files changed, 334 insertions(+) create mode 100644 doc/Internals.md create mode 100644 doc/Quickstart.md create mode 100644 doc/Related Work.md (limited to 'doc') diff --git a/doc/Internals.md b/doc/Internals.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dd982460 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/Internals.md @@ -0,0 +1,156 @@ +#### Modules + +- `membership/`: configuration, membership management (gossip of node's presence and status), ring generation --> what about Serf (used by Consul/Nomad) : https://www.serf.io/? Seems a huge library with many features so maybe overkill/hard to integrate +- `metadata/`: metadata management +- `blocks/`: block management, writing, GC and rebalancing +- `internal/`: server to server communication (HTTP server and client that reuses connections, TLS if we want, etc) +- `api/`: S3 API +- `web/`: web management interface + +#### Metadata tables + +**Objects:** + +- *Hash key:* Bucket name (string) +- *Sort key:* Object key (string) +- *Sort key:* Version timestamp (int) +- *Sort key:* Version UUID (string) +- Complete: bool +- Inline: bool, true for objects < threshold (say 1024) +- Object size (int) +- Mime type (string) +- Data for inlined objects (blob) +- Hash of first block otherwise (string) + +*Having only a hash key on the bucket name will lead to storing all file entries of this table for a specific bucket on a single node. At the same time, it is the only way I see to rapidly being able to list all bucket entries...* + +**Blocks:** + +- *Hash key:* Version UUID (string) +- *Sort key:* Offset of block in total file (int) +- Hash of data block (string) + +A version is defined by the existence of at least one entry in the blocks table for a certain version UUID. +We must keep the following invariant: if a version exists in the blocks table, it has to be referenced in the objects table. +We explicitly manage concurrent versions of an object: the version timestamp and version UUID columns are index columns, thus we may have several concurrent versions of an object. +Important: before deleting an older version from the objects table, we must make sure that we did a successfull delete of the blocks of that version from the blocks table. + +Thus, the workflow for reading an object is as follows: + +1. Check permissions (LDAP) +2. Read entry in object table. If data is inline, we have its data, stop here. + -> if several versions, take newest one and launch deletion of old ones in background +3. Read first block from cluster. If size <= 1 block, stop here. +4. Simultaneously with previous step, if size > 1 block: query the Blocks table for the IDs of the next blocks +5. Read subsequent blocks from cluster + +Workflow for PUT: + +1. Check write permission (LDAP) +2. Select a new version UUID +3. Write a preliminary entry for the new version in the objects table with complete = false +4. Send blocks to cluster and write entries in the blocks table +5. Update the version with complete = true and all of the accurate information (size, etc) +6. Return success to the user +7. Launch a background job to check and delete older versions + +Workflow for DELETE: + +1. Check write permission (LDAP) +2. Get current version (or versions) in object table +3. Do the deletion of those versions NOT IN A BACKGROUND JOB THIS TIME +4. Return succes to the user if we were able to delete blocks from the blocks table and entries from the object table + +To delete a version: + +1. List the blocks from Cassandra +2. For each block, delete it from cluster. Don't care if some deletions fail, we can do GC. +3. Delete all of the blocks from the blocks table +4. Finally, delete the version from the objects table + +Known issue: if someone is reading from a version that we want to delete and the object is big, the read might be interrupted. I think it is ok to leave it like this, we just cut the connection if data disappears during a read. + +("Soit P un problème, on s'en fout est une solution à ce problème") + +#### Block storage on disk + +**Blocks themselves:** + +- file path = /blobs/(first 3 hex digits of hash)/(rest of hash) + +**Reverse index for GC & other block-level metadata:** + +- file path = /meta/(first 3 hex digits of hash)/(rest of hash) +- map block hash -> set of version UUIDs where it is referenced + +Usefull metadata: + +- list of versions that reference this block in the Casandra table, so that we can do GC by checking in Cassandra that the lines still exist +- list of other nodes that we know have acknowledged a write of this block, usefull in the rebalancing algorithm + +Write strategy: have a single thread that does all write IO so that it is serialized (or have several threads that manage independent parts of the hash space). When writing a blob, write it to a temporary file, close, then rename so that a concurrent read gets a consistent result (either not found or found with whole content). + +Read strategy: the only read operation is get(hash) that returns either the data or not found (can do a corruption check as well and return corrupted state if it is the case). Can be done concurrently with writes. + +**Internal API:** + +- get(block hash) -> ok+data/not found/corrupted +- put(block hash & data, version uuid + offset) -> ok/error +- put with no data(block hash, version uuid + offset) -> ok/not found plz send data/error +- delete(block hash, version uuid + offset) -> ok/error + +GC: when last ref is deleted, delete block. +Long GC procedure: check in Cassandra that version UUIDs still exist and references this block. + +Rebalancing: takes as argument the list of newly added nodes. + +- List all blocks that we have. For each block: +- If it hits a newly introduced node, send it to them. + Use put with no data first to check if it has to be sent to them already or not. + Use a random listing order to avoid race conditions (they do no harm but we might have two nodes sending the same thing at the same time thus wasting time). +- If it doesn't hit us anymore, delete it and its reference list. + +Only one balancing can be running at a same time. It can be restarted at the beginning with new parameters. + +#### Membership management + +Two sets of nodes: + +- set of nodes from which a ping was recently received, with status: number of stored blocks, request counters, error counters, GC%, rebalancing% + (eviction from this set after say 30 seconds without ping) +- set of nodes that are part of the system, explicitly modified by the operator using the web UI (persisted to disk), + is a CRDT using a version number for the value of the whole set + +Thus, three states for nodes: + +- healthy: in both sets +- missing: not pingable but part of desired cluster +- unused/draining: currently present but not part of the desired cluster, empty = if contains nothing, draining = if still contains some blocks + +Membership messages between nodes: + +- ping with current state + hash of current membership info -> reply with same info +- send&get back membership info (the ids of nodes that are in the two sets): used when no local membership change in a long time and membership info hash discrepancy detected with first message (passive membership fixing with full CRDT gossip) +- inform of newly pingable node(s) -> no result, when receive new info repeat to all (reliable broadcast) +- inform of operator membership change -> no result, when receive new info repeat to all (reliable broadcast) + +Ring: generated from the desired set of nodes, however when doing read/writes on the ring, skip nodes that are known to be not pingable. +The tokens are generated in a deterministic fashion from node IDs (hash of node id + token number from 1 to K). +Number K of tokens per node: decided by the operator & stored in the operator's list of nodes CRDT. Default value proposal: with node status information also broadcast disk total size and free space, and propose a default number of tokens equal to 80%Free space / 10Gb. (this is all user interface) + + +#### Constants + +- Block size: around 1MB ? --> Exoscale use 16MB chunks +- Number of tokens in the hash ring: one every 10Gb of allocated storage +- Threshold for storing data directly in Cassandra objects table: 1kb bytes (maybe up to 4kb?) +- Ping timeout (time after which a node is registered as unresponsive/missing): 30 seconds +- Ping interval: 10 seconds +- ?? + +#### Links + +- CDC: +- Erasure coding: +- [Openstack Storage Concepts](https://docs.openstack.org/arch-design/design-storage/design-storage-concepts.html) +- [RADOS](https://ceph.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/weil-rados-pdsw07.pdf) diff --git a/doc/Quickstart.md b/doc/Quickstart.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6d0993a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/Quickstart.md @@ -0,0 +1,140 @@ +# Quickstart on an existing deployment + +First, chances are that your garage deployment is secured by TLS. +All your commands must be prefixed with their certificates. +I will define an alias once and for all to ease future commands. +Please adapt the path of the binary and certificates to your installation! + +``` +alias grg="/garage/garage --ca-cert /secrets/garage-ca.crt --client-cert /secrets/garage.crt --client-key /secrets/garage.key" +``` + +Now we can check that everything is going well by checking our cluster status: + +``` +grg status +``` + +Don't forget that `help` command and `--help` subcommands can help you anywhere, the CLI tool is self-documented! Two examples: + +``` +grg help +grg bucket allow --help +``` + +Fine, now let's create a bucket (we imagine that you want to deploy nextcloud): + +``` +grg bucket create nextcloud-bucket +``` + +Check that everything went well: + +``` +grg bucket list +grg bucket info nextcloud-bucket +``` + +Now we will generate an API key to access this bucket. +Note that API keys are independent of buckets: one key can access multiple buckets, multiple keys can access one bucket. + +Now, let's start by creating a key only for our PHP application: + +``` +grg key new --name nextcloud-app-key +``` + +You will have the following output (this one is fake, `key_id` and `secret_key` were generated with the openssl CLI tool): + +``` +Key { key_id: "GK3515373e4c851ebaad366558", secret_key: "7d37d093435a41f2aab8f13c19ba067d9776c90215f56614adad6ece597dbb34", name: "nextcloud-app-key", name_timestamp: 1603280506694, deleted: false, authorized_buckets: [] } +``` + +Check that everything works as intended (be careful, info works only with your key identifier and not with its friendly name!): + +``` +grg key list +grg key info GK3515373e4c851ebaad366558 +``` + +Now that we have a bucket and a key, we need to give permissions to the key on the bucket! + +``` +grg bucket allow --read --write nextcloud-bucket --key GK3515373e4c851ebaad366558 +``` + +You can check at any times allowed keys on your bucket with: + +``` +grg bucket info nextcloud-bucket +``` + +Now, let's move to the S3 API! +We will use the `s3cmd` CLI tool. +You can install it via your favorite package manager. +Otherwise, check [their website](https://s3tools.org/s3cmd) + +We will configure `s3cmd` with its interactive configuration tool, be careful not all endpoints are implemented! +Especially, the test run at the end does not work (yet). + +``` +$ s3cmd --configure + +Enter new values or accept defaults in brackets with Enter. +Refer to user manual for detailed description of all options. + +Access key and Secret key are your identifiers for Amazon S3. Leave them empty for using the env variables. +Access Key: GK3515373e4c851ebaad366558 +Secret Key: 7d37d093435a41f2aab8f13c19ba067d9776c90215f56614adad6ece597dbb34 +Default Region [US]: garage + +Use "s3.amazonaws.com" for S3 Endpoint and not modify it to the target Amazon S3. +S3 Endpoint [s3.amazonaws.com]: garage.deuxfleurs.fr + +Use "%(bucket)s.s3.amazonaws.com" to the target Amazon S3. "%(bucket)s" and "%(location)s" vars can be used +if the target S3 system supports dns based buckets. +DNS-style bucket+hostname:port template for accessing a bucket [%(bucket)s.s3.amazonaws.com]: garage.deuxfleurs.fr + +Encryption password is used to protect your files from reading +by unauthorized persons while in transfer to S3 +Encryption password: +Path to GPG program [/usr/bin/gpg]: + +When using secure HTTPS protocol all communication with Amazon S3 +servers is protected from 3rd party eavesdropping. This method is +slower than plain HTTP, and can only be proxied with Python 2.7 or newer +Use HTTPS protocol [Yes]: + +On some networks all internet access must go through a HTTP proxy. +Try setting it here if you can't connect to S3 directly +HTTP Proxy server name: + +New settings: + Access Key: GK3515373e4c851ebaad366558 + Secret Key: 7d37d093435a41f2aab8f13c19ba067d9776c90215f56614adad6ece597dbb34 + Default Region: garage + S3 Endpoint: garage.deuxfleurs.fr + DNS-style bucket+hostname:port template for accessing a bucket: garage.deuxfleurs.fr + Encryption password: + Path to GPG program: /usr/bin/gpg + Use HTTPS protocol: True + HTTP Proxy server name: + HTTP Proxy server port: 0 + +Test access with supplied credentials? [Y/n] n + +Save settings? [y/N] y +Configuration saved to '/home/quentin/.s3cfg' +``` + +Now, if everything works, the following commands should work: + +``` +echo hello world > hello.txt +s3cmd put hello.txt s3://nextcloud-bucket +s3cmd ls s3://nextcloud-bucket +s3cmd rm s3://nextcloud-bucket/hello.txt +``` + +That's all for now! + diff --git a/doc/Related Work.md b/doc/Related Work.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c1a4eed4 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/Related Work.md @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +## Context + +Data storage is critical: it can lead to data loss if done badly and/or on hardware failure. +Filesystems + RAID can help on a single machine but a machine failure can put the whole storage offline. +Moreover, it put a hard limit on scalability. Often this limit can be pushed back far away by buying expensive machines. +But here we consider non specialized off the shelf machines that can be as low powered and subject to failures as a raspberry pi. + +Distributed storage may help to solve both availability and scalability problems on these machines. +Many solutions were proposed, they can be categorized as block storage, file storage and object storage depending on the abstraction they provide. + +## Related work + +Block storage is the most low level one, it's like exposing your raw hard drive over the network. +It requires very low latencies and stable network, that are often dedicated. +However it provides disk devices that can be manipulated by the operating system with the less constraints: it can be partitioned with any filesystem, meaning that it supports even the most exotic features. +We can cite [iSCSI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISCSI) or [Fibre Channel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_Channel). +Openstack Cinder proxy previous solution to provide an uniform API. + +File storage provides a higher abstraction, they are one filesystem among others, which means they don't necessarily have all the exotic features of every filesystem. +Often, they relax some POSIX constraints while many applications will still be compatible without any modification. +As an example, we are able to run MariaDB (very slowly) over GlusterFS... +We can also mention CephFS (read [RADOS](https://ceph.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/weil-rados-pdsw07.pdf) whitepaper), Lustre, LizardFS, MooseFS, etc. +OpenStack Manila proxy previous solutions to provide an uniform API. + +Finally object storages provide the highest level abstraction. +They are the testimony that the POSIX filesystem API is not adapted to distributed filesystems. +Especially, the strong concistency has been dropped in favor of eventual consistency which is way more convenient and powerful in presence of high latencies and unreliability. +We often read about S3 that pioneered the concept that it's a filesystem for the WAN. +Applications must be adapted to work for the desired object storage service. +Today, the S3 HTTP REST API acts as a standard in the industry. +However, Amazon S3 source code is not open but alternatives were proposed. +We identified Minio, Pithos, Swift and Ceph. +Minio/Ceph enforces a total order, so properties similar to a (relaxed) filesystem. +Swift and Pithos are probably the most similar to AWS S3 with their consistent hashing ring. +However Pithos is not maintained anymore. More precisely the company that published Pithos version 1 has developped a second version 2 but has not open sourced it. +Some tests conducted by the [ACIDES project](https://acides.org/) have shown that Openstack Swift consumes way more resources (CPU+RAM) that we can afford. Furthermore, people developing Swift have not designed their software for geo-distribution. + +There were many attempts in research too. I am only thinking to [LBFS](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/lbfs:sosp01/lbfs.pdf) that was used as a basis for Seafile. But none of them have been effectively implemented yet. -- cgit v1.2.3