[doc-updates] doc: be slightly more critical of LMDB
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3 changed files with 53 additions and 31 deletions
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@ -53,9 +53,9 @@ to store 2 TB of data in total.
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### Best practices
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- If you have fast dedicated networking between all your nodes, and are planing to store
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very large files, bump the `block_size` configuration parameter to 10 MB
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(`block_size = 10485760`).
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- If you have reasonably fast networking between all your nodes, and are planing to store
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mostly large files, bump the `block_size` configuration parameter to 10 MB
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(`block_size = "10M"`).
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- Garage stores its files in two locations: it uses a metadata directory to store frequently-accessed
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small metadata items, and a data directory to store data blocks of uploaded objects.
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@ -68,20 +68,29 @@ to store 2 TB of data in total.
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EXT4 is not recommended as it has more strict limitations on the number of inodes,
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which might cause issues with Garage when large numbers of objects are stored.
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- If you only have an HDD and no SSD, it's fine to put your metadata alongside the data
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on the same drive. Having lots of RAM for your kernel to cache the metadata will
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help a lot with performance. Make sure to use the LMDB database engine,
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instead of Sled, which suffers from quite bad performance degradation on HDDs.
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Sled is still the default for legacy reasons, but is not recommended anymore.
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- For the metadata storage, Garage does not do checksumming and integrity
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verification on its own. If you are afraid of bitrot/data corruption,
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put your metadata directory on a ZFS or BTRFS partition. Otherwise, just use regular
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EXT4 or XFS.
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- Servers with multiple HDDs are supported natively by Garage without resorting
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to RAID, see [our dedicated documentation page](@/documentation/operations/multi-hdd.md).
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- For the metadata storage, Garage does not do checksumming and integrity
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verification on its own. Users have reported that when using the LMDB
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database engine (the default), database files have a tendency of becoming
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corrupted after an unclean shutdown (e.g. a power outage), so you should use
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a robust filesystem such as BTRFS or ZFS for the metadata partition, and take
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regular snapshots so that you can restore to a recent known-good state in
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case of an incident. If you cannot do so, you might want to switch to Sqlite
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which is more robust.
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- LMDB is the fastest and most tested database engine, but it has the following
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weaknesses: 1/ data files are not architecture-independent, you cannot simply
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move a Garage metadata directory between nodes running different architectures,
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and 2/ LMDB is not suited for 32-bit platforms. Sqlite is a viable alternative
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if any of these are of concern.
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- If you only have an HDD and no SSD, it's fine to put your metadata alongside
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the data on the same drive, but then consider your filesystem choice wisely
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(see above). Having lots of RAM for your kernel to cache the metadata will
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help a lot with performance.
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## Get a Docker image
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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).
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@ -187,7 +196,7 @@ upgrades. With the containerized setup proposed here, the upgrade process
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will require stopping and removing the existing container, and re-creating it
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with the upgraded version.
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## Controling the daemon
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## Controlling the daemon
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The `garage` binary has two purposes:
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- it acts as a daemon when launched with `garage server`
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@ -245,7 +254,7 @@ You can then instruct nodes to connect to one another as follows:
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Venus$ garage node connect 563e1ac825ee3323aa441e72c26d1030d6d4414aeb3dd25287c531e7fc2bc95d@[fc00:1::1]:3901
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```
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You don't nead to instruct all node to connect to all other nodes:
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You don't need to instruct all node to connect to all other nodes:
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nodes will discover one another transitively.
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Now if your run `garage status` on any node, you should have an output that looks as follows:
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@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ to generate unique and private secrets for security reasons:
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cat > garage.toml <<EOF
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metadata_dir = "/tmp/meta"
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data_dir = "/tmp/data"
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db_engine = "lmdb"
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db_engine = "sqlite"
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replication_mode = "none"
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@ -264,18 +264,31 @@ Performance characteristics of the different DB engines are as follows:
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- Sled: tends to produce large data files and also has performance issues,
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especially when the metadata folder is on a traditional HDD and not on SSD.
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- LMDB: the recommended database engine on 64-bit systems, much more
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space-efficient and slightly faster. Note that the data format of LMDB is not
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portable between architectures, so for instance the Garage database of an
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x86-64 node cannot be moved to an ARM64 node. Also note that, while LMDB can
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technically be used on 32-bit systems, this will limit your node to very
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small database sizes due to how LMDB works; it is therefore not recommended.
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- LMDB: the recommended database engine for high-performance distributed
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clusters, much more space-efficient and significantly faster. LMDB works very
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well, but is known to have the following limitations:
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- The data format of LMDB is not portable between architectures, so for
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instance the Garage database of an x86-64 node cannot be moved to an ARM64
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node.
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- While LMDB can technically be used on 32-bit systems, this will limit your
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node to very small database sizes due to how LMDB works; it is therefore
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not recommended.
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- Several users have reported corrupted LMDB database files after an unclean
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shutdown (e.g. a power outage). This situation can generally be recovered
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from if your cluster is geo-replicated (by rebuilding your metadata db from
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other nodes), or if you have saved regular snapshots at the filesystem
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level.
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- Sqlite: Garage supports Sqlite as an alternative storage backend for
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metadata, and although it has not been tested as much, it is expected to work
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satisfactorily. Since Garage v0.9.0, performance issues have largely been
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fixed by allowing for a no-fsync mode (see `metadata_fsync`). Sqlite does not
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have the database size limitation of LMDB on 32-bit systems.
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metadata, which does not have the issues listed above for LMDB.
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On versions 0.8.x and earlier, Sqlite should be avoided due to abysmal
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performance, which was fixed with the addition of `metadata_fsync`.
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Sqlite is still probably slower than LMDB due to the way we use it,
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so it is not the best choice for high-performance storage clusters,
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but it should work fine in many cases.
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It is possible to convert Garage's metadata directory from one format to another
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using the `garage convert-db` command, which should be used as follows:
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