[Gluster-users] GlusterFS Object Storage

[Prashanth Pai]

Hi Gandalf,

Adding to what Niels said...

Swift is unique. Unlike other openstack projects, one does not have to install rest of OpenStack to use Swift.

There are two ways to use Swift to provide object interface to GlusterFS volume:
1. swiftonfile project
2. gluster-swift project (resides in icehouse branch: https://github.com/openstack/swiftonfile/tree/icehouse)

While swiftonfile requires you to maintain sqlite DBs like vanilla Swift does, it results in faster object listings. However, with swiftonfile, you will have to exclusively access files over object API only as it currently has no capability to keep the DBs in sync with the real-time filesystem view. In other words, one cannot create objects over FUSE/NFS and expect them to be seen in object listings.

gluster-swift is an older project (we're reviving it soon) which does not require you to maintain any DBs, has a much simpler setup (easier than RadosGW) but at the cost of slower object listings. It does a "ls -lR" equivalent on container directory. Hence the slow listing.

The rationale of using Swift to provide object interface as against implementing our own radosgw sort of thing is simple. There are only two popular object APIs: S3 and Swift. Swift is open source, has a vibrant community and has no hard dependency on the rest of openstack. It also provides a crude way to plug-in any backend storage system. Further, using the swift3 (https://github.com/openstack/swift3) middleware, one can also provide access to files in glusterfs volume over Amazon S3 API.

Please feel free to reach out for any further help.

Regards,
 -Prashanth Pai

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Niels de Vos" <ndevos at redhat.com>
> To: "Gandalf Corvotempesta" <gandalf.corvotempesta at gmail.com>
> Cc: gluster-users at gluster.org
> Sent: Friday, December 18, 2015 10:00:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [Gluster-users] GlusterFS Object Storage
> 
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 12:46:16PM +0100, Gandalf Corvotempesta wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I would like to test Gluster as Object Storage with APIs
> > 
> > Based on official docs, object storage is done by Swift. Is swift
> > really a requirements ? Should I install the whole swift stack with
> > keyrings and so on ?
> 
> The project that you would use is called SwiftOnFile. The Quick Start
> Guide should give you a relatively simple setup:
> 
>   https://github.com/openstack/swiftonfile/blob/master/doc/markdown/quick_start_guide.md
> 
> > Any plans to integrate an easier approch to object storage without
> > swift requirements, something like Ceph with native RadosGW ?
> 
> Not that I am aware of.
> 
> > I don't like OpenStack, I prefere to not use Swift at all.
> 
> If you do not require a full featured object API, you could use the
> libgfapi-python bindings (there are Java and Ruby ones too) or the
> glusterfs-coreutils for shell scripting:
> 
>   https://github.com/gluster/libgfapi-python
>   https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs-coreutils
> 
> HTH,
> Niels
> 
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