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diff --git a/content/blog/2022-fosdem.md b/content/blog/2022-fosdem.md index 0fbc453..8f1f24e 100644 --- a/content/blog/2022-fosdem.md +++ b/content/blog/2022-fosdem.md @@ -8,6 +8,8 @@ On next Sunday, Febuary 6th, 2022, we will be there to present Garage.* <!-- more --> +--- + In 2000, a belgian free software activist going by the name of Raphael Baudin set out to create a small event for free software developpers in Brussels. This event quickly became the "Free and Open Source Developers' European Meeting", diff --git a/content/blog/2022-who-we-are.md b/content/blog/2022-who-we-are.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2e3f10e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2022-who-we-are.md @@ -0,0 +1,168 @@ ++++ +title="Who we are and what we're doing" +date=2022-02-01 ++++ + +*Deuxfleurs is a non-profit based in France that aims to defend and promote +individual freedom and rights on the Internet. In their quest to build a +decentralized, resilient self-hosting infrastructure, they have found that +currently existing software is often ill suited to such a particular deployment +scenario. In the context of data storage, Garage was built to provide a highly +available data store that exploits redundancy over different geographical +locations, and does its best to not be too impacted by network latencies.* + +<!-- more --> + +--- + +Hello! We are Deuxfleurs, a non-profit based in France working to promote +self-hosting and small-scale hosting. + +What does that mean? Well, we figured that big tech monopolies such as Google, +Facebook or Amazon today hold disproportionate power and are becoming quite +dangerous to us, citizens of the Internet. They know everything we are doing, +saying, and even thinking, and they are not making good use of that +information. The interests of these companies are those of the capitalist +elite: they are mostly interested in making huge profits by exploiting the +Earth's precious resources, producing, advertising and selling us massive +amounts of stuff we don't need. They don't truly care about the needs of the +people, nor do they care that planetary destruction is under way because of +them. + +Big tech monopolies are in a particularly strong position to influence our +behaviors, consciously or not, because we rely on them for selecting the online +content we read, watch, or listen to. Advertising is omnipresent, and because +they know us so well, they can subvert us into thinking that a mindless +consumer society is what we truly want, whereas we most likely would choose +otherwise if we had the chance to think by ourselves. + +We don't want that. That's not what the Internet is for. Freedom is freedom +from influence: the ability to do things by oneself, for oneself, on one's own +terms. Self-hosting is both the means by which we reclaim this freedom on the +Internet – by not using services of big tech monopolies and thus removing +ourselves from their influence – and the result of applying our critical +thinking and our technical abilities to build the Internet that suits us. + +Self-hosting means that we don't use cloud services. Instead, we store our +personal data on computers that we own, which we run at home. We build local +communities to share the services that we run with non-technical people. We +communicate with other groups that do the same (or, sometimes, that don't) +thanks to standard protocols such as HTTP, e-mail, or Matrix, that allow a +global community to exist outside of big tech monopolies. + +### Self-hosting is a hard problem + +As I said, self-hosting means running our own hardware at home, and providing +24/7 Internet services from there. We have many reasons for doing this. One is +because this is the only way we can truly control who has access to our data. +Another one is that it helps us be aware of the physical substrate of which the +Internet is made: making the Internet run has an environmental cost which we +want to evaluate and keep under control. The physical hardware also gives us a +sense of community, calling to mind all of the people that could currently be +connected and making use of our services, and reminding us of the purpose for +which we are doing this. + +If you have a home, you know that bad things can happen there too. The power +grid is not infallible, neither is your Internet connection. Fires and floods +happen. And the computers we are running can themselves crash at any moment, +for any number of reasons. Self-hosted solutions today are often not equipped +to face such challenges, and might suffer from unavailability or data loss +as a consequence. + +If we want to grow our communities, and attract more people that might be +sympathetic to our vision of the world, we need a baseline of quality for the +services we provide. Users can tolerate some flaws or imperfections, in the +name of defending and promoting their ideals, but if the services are +catastrophic, being unavailable at critical times, or losing users' precious +data, the compromise is much harder to make and people will be tempted to go +back to a comfortable lifestyle bestowed by big tech companies. + +Fixing availability, making services reliable even when hosted at unreliable +locations or on unreliable hardware, is one of the main objectives of +Deuxfleurs, and in particular of the project Garage which we are building. + +### Distributed systems to the rescue + +Distributed systems, or distributed computing, is a set of techniques that can +be applied to make computer services more reliable, by making them run on +several computers at once. It so happens that a few of us have studied +distributed systems, which helps a lot (some of us even have PhDs!) + +The following concepts of distributed computing are particularly relevant to +us: + +- **Crash tolerance** is when a service that runs on several computers at once + can continue operating normally even when one (or a small number) of the + computers stops working. + +- **Geo-distribution** is when the computers that make up a distributed system + are not all located in the same facility. Ideally, they would even be spread + over different cities, so that outages affecting one region do not prevent + the rest of the system from working. + +We set out to apply these concepts at Deuxfleurs to build our infrastructure, +in order to provide services that are replicated over several machines in several +geographical locations, so that we are able to provide good availability guarantees +to our users. We try to use as most as possible software packages that already +existed and are freely available, for example the Linux operating system +and the HashiCorp suite (Nomad and Consul). + +Unfortunately, in the domain of distributed data storage, the available options +weren't entirely satisfactory in our case, which is why we launched the +development of our own solution: Garage. We will talk more in other blog +posts about why Garage is better suited to us than alternative options. In this +post, I will simply try to give a high-level overview of what Garage is. + +### What is Garage, exactly? + +Garage is a distributed storage solution, that automatically replicates your +data on several servers. Garage takes into account the geographical location +of servers, and ensures that copies of your data are located at different +locations when possible for maximal redundancy, a unique feature in the +landscape of distributed storage systems. + +Garage implements the Amazon S3 protocol, a de-facto standard that makes it +compatible with a large variety of existing software. For instance it can be +used as a storage back-end for many self-hosted web applications such as +NextCloud, Matrix, Mastodon, Peertube, and many others, replacing the local +file system of a server by a distributed storage layer. Garage can also be +used to synchronize your files or store your backups with utilities such as +Rclone or Restic. Last but not least, Garage can be used to host static +websites, such as the one you are currently reading, which is served directly +by the Garage cluster we host at Deuxfleurs. + +Garage leverages the theory of distributed systems, and in particular +*Conflict-free Replicated Data Types* (CRDTs in short), a set of mathematical +tools that help us write distributed software that runs faster, by avoiding +some kinds of unnecessary chit-chat between servers. In a future blog post, +we will show how this allow us to significantly outperform Minio, our closest +competitor (another self-hostable implementation of the S3 protocol). + +On the side of software engineering, we are committed to making Garage +a tool that is reliable, lightweight, and easy to administrate. +Garage is written in the Rust programming language, which helps us ensure +the stability and safety of the software, and allows us to build software +that is fast and uses little memory. + +### Conclusion + +The current version of Garage is version 0.6, which is a *beta* release. +This means that it hasn't yet been tested by many people, and we might have +ignored some edge cases in which it would not perform as expected. + +However, we are already actively using Garage at Deuxfleurs for many uses, and +it is working exceptionally well for us. We are currently using it to store +backups of personal files, to store the media files that we send and receive +over the Matrix network, as well as to host a small but increasing number of +static websites. Our current deployment hosts about 200 000 files spread in 50 +buckets, for a total size of slightly above 500 GB. These number can seem small +when compared to the datasets you could expect your typical cloud provider to +be handling, however these sizes are fairly typical of the small-scale +self-hosted deployments we are targeting, and our Garage cluster is in no way +nearing its capacity limit. + +Today, we are proudly releasing Garage's new website, with updated +documentation pages. Poke around to try to understand how the software works, +and try installing your own instance! Your feedback is precious to us, and we +would be glad to hear back from you on our issue tracker, by e-mail, or on our +Matrix channel (`#garage:deuxfleurs.fr`). |