Hail usable as a "limited local AWS S3" and doc contribution?

Hail usable as a "limited local AWS S3" and doc contribution?

[Zack Perry]

Hi,

While trying to find a less expensive way to validate my application targeting AWS S3, I stumbled across Project Hail. 

After reading the wiki, I downloaded cld, chunkd, and tabled tar balls, built them on my Ubuntu 9.04 based VPS successfully. Both cld and chunkd passed the built-in tests too (make check). Not having cld up, I haven't tested tabled yet.

My intention is to set up all 3 components on my Xen based VPS (Ubuntu 9.04, 2.6.24-19-xen kernel, 512Mb RAM, 1G swap/16G disk space, 1 vcpu) as a "local AWS S3".

Looking at the bundled docs, it seems to me that only chunkd and tabled has a setup.txt in their respective doc file. For cld, I don't see a corresponding file, although I suppose I can consult scripts/c codes in the test subdirectory to get some ideas.

Before diving in further, two questions:

0. Can either Jeff or Pete tell me whether the project is already usable for what I would like to do with it? i.e. a setup that one can use something like S3fox Organizer to interact with?  
1. Am I correct in assuming that I can run all three components on a single VPS with the resources outlined above?

If yes to both, can you outline the steps that you would setup the three components for such a purpose?  

I am happy to do a full setup and share my experience and details here for others' future reference.  

Thanks,

--Zack

Re: Hail usable as a "limited local AWS S3" and doc contribution?

[Jeff Garzik]

On 10/13/2009 01:27 PM, Zack Perry wrote:
> Hi,
>
> While trying to find a less expensive way to validate my application targeting AWS S3, I stumbled across Project Hail.
>
> After reading the wiki, I downloaded cld, chunkd, and tabled tar balls, built them on my Ubuntu 9.04 based VPS successfully. Both cld and chunkd passed the built-in tests too (make check). Not having cld up, I haven't tested tabled yet.
>
> My intention is to set up all 3 components on my Xen based VPS (Ubuntu 9.04, 2.6.24-19-xen kernel, 512Mb RAM, 1G swap/16G disk space, 1 vcpu) as a "local AWS S3".
>
> Looking at the bundled docs, it seems to me that only chunkd and tabled has a setup.txt in their respective doc file. For cld, I don't see a corresponding file, although I suppose I can consult scripts/c codes in the test subdirectory to get some ideas.

Yep.  cld setup is intentionally simple, designed so the daemon may be 
started from the command line or a simple script, rather than requiring 
a ton of preparation.

Basically you need to set the data directory, and then run the daemon. 
The daemon will create a new filesystem database if none exists already.

Run "cld --help" for command line info (ditto for the other daemons), 
and ask plenty of questions here on the list ;)


> Before diving in further, two questions:
>
> 0. Can either Jeff or Pete tell me whether the project is already usable for what I would like to do with it? i.e. a setup that one can use something like S3fox Organizer to interact with?

Useable, yes.

Production ready, not yet.


> 1. Am I correct in assuming that I can run all three components on a single VPS with the resources outlined above?

Assuming your disk space requirements work, yes, that should be fine. 
The daemons themselves do not require a ton of memory; we prefer that 
the OS disk cache be an integral part of our caching scheme.


> If yes to both, can you outline the steps that you would setup the three components for such a purpose?

It's pretty much just creating data directories (or pointing tabled to a 
chunkd instance, in tabled's case) and other small details like PID file 
location.

Ideally a chunkd or tabled configuration is stored inside a CLD filesystem.


> I am happy to do a full setup and share my experience and details here for others' future reference.

If you were motivated to contribute information to the wiki, that would 
be quite useful.  http://hail.wiki.kernel.org/

	Jeff

Re: Hail usable as a "limited local AWS S3" and doc contribution?

[Pete Zaitcev]

On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:27:00 -0700 (PDT), Zack Perry <zack.perry@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> While trying to find a less expensive way to validate my application
> targeting AWS S3, I stumbled across Project Hail. 

I'm not sure if the assumptions are sound. The S3 is extremely
cheap. For example, my personal use of it comes to less than a
dollar a month.

> 0. Can either Jeff or Pete tell me whether the project is already
> usable for what I would like to do with it? i.e. a setup that one
> can use something like S3fox Organizer to interact with?

I don't know (see below).

> 1. Am I correct in assuming that I can run all three components on
> a single VPS with the resources outlined above?

Yes.

Two things you might want to keep in mind:

 - The tabled's implementation is not the canon, S3 is. If the S3fox
   fails with tabled but works with S3, it's likely a bug in tabled.
   I fixed up quite a bunch of them when I started running Boto.

   For example, parsing of arbitrary ACPs is absent and only canned
   forms are supported for now.

 - You're likely to run into bugs with stability, or something not
   starting... I just barely have it all working. Don't trust tabled
   with your backups just yet (I don't). Maybe in a few months.

> If yes to both, can you outline the steps that you would setup
> the three components for such a purpose?  

I hope that tabled's setup.txt should be sufficient. CLD does not
really need any setup, just an empty directory. Ask away if you
have a specific question, no matter how detailed.

-- Pete

Re: Hail usable as a "limited local AWS S3" and doc contribution?

[Zack Perry]

Hi Pete and jeff,

Thanks for you two's replies.

> 
> > While trying to find a less expensive way to validate my application
> > targeting AWS S3, I stumbled across Project Hail. 
> 
> I'm not sure if the assumptions are sound. The S3 is
> extremely cheap. For example, my personal use of it comes to less
> than a dollar a month.

For my own personal use, indeed that's the case.  However, S3's carries quite significant charges for HTTP PUT requests.  That's an area where I am trying to test thoroughly before testing it live against the AWS S3 itself.


[...]
> 
> > 1. Am I correct in assuming that I can run all three components on
> > a single VPS with the resources outlined above?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> Two things you might want to keep in mind:
> 
>  - The tabled's implementation is not the canon, S3 is. If the S3fox
>    fails with tabled but works with S3, it's likely a bug in tabled.
>    I fixed up quite a bunch of them when I started running Boto.
> 
>    For example, parsing of arbitrary ACPs is absent and only canned
>    forms are supported for now.
> 
>  - You're likely to run into bugs with stability, or something not
>    starting... I just barely have it all working. Don't trust tabled
>    with your backups just yet (I don't). Maybe in a few months.

Noted.  Thanks for the warning.

> 
> > If yes to both, can you outline the steps that you would setup
> > the three components for such a purpose?  
> 
> I hope that tabled's setup.txt should be sufficient. CLD
> does not really need any setup, just an empty directory. Ask away if
> you have a specific question, no matter how detailed.

I have been tied up in this past week and half by routine workload (don't we all have such?).  I will try to squeeze sometime in the next week to see if I can make some headway.  Will keep the list posted.

Thanks,

--Zack