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Building a "Distributed" FTP Server?

Posted by Cliff on from the spreading-the-load-around dept.

austad asks: "At my company, we run a fairly large Web site. It's distributed on multiple servers in three geographic locations. In each of these locations, we have several Real Video servers which all serve the same content for redundancy, and load balancing. We have a central FTP server in one geographic location that files get uploaded to, and then replicated out to the Real Video servers. The problem with this model is that there is a single point of failure. We would like to put an identical FTP server in each location, and when a producer wants to upload a file, they are randomly directed to an active FTP server (we use a distributed DNS system that will direct users to machines that are marked as "up"), and they upload the file." (Continued in body...)

"The problem is keeping the other two FTP servers current. How does each FTP server know who has the most current file tree? What if multiple producers are uploading simultaneously, and each has been directed to a different FTP server? Keep in mind that when replicating, we need to delete files on the Realservers that are no longer in the file tree on the FTP server. "

13 comments

  1. hurm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    how about turbolinux clustering, they are open sourceing it pretty soon, I dunno may be worth a show though http://www.turbolinux.com/product/cluster.html

  2. Ummmm.... load balancing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    i think is, having multiple boxen with their content presupplied before runtime, be enabled to efficiently share the work of pushing the data to whatever place.

    Whereas rsync i think, allows multiple machines to stay highly concurrent when presented new content at runtime.

    or i might be wrong :)

  3. What I've been using by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2
    I have a somewhat similar problem. I have two FTP servers that need to be kept in sync, and people can upload to either of the two servers. I don't control one of the two servers so I don't think I could run rsync on it. I wrote a quick and dirty perl script that seems to work alright. Perhaps you can use that as a basis for your own sync-control program.

    --
    matthewg {matthewg@zevils.com} (Matthew Sachs), not at home

  4. You need some intelligence in the uploading by davew · · Score: 3

    The other comments about rsync et. al. are spot on for replicating (rsync is great), but they don't address the problem of authority; if a file exists on a particular server, is it new (so replicate) or old (so delete)?

    I think you need an upload procedure to get around that. Try this:

    • Restrict uploads to a particular "upload" directory, on every server.
    • Wait for a file to be uploaded to this dir.
    • Use a separate rsync to copy this file to the appropriate place on the nominal master server
    • Use your regular rsync to synchronise the mirrors with the master.

    There are a couple of issues with this, but you can get around them with a little added complexity in your uploading-to-master algorithm. If the master server goes down then it's true, you can't update; but the master doesn't need to be static, it just needs to be consistent. If uploads are that critical, you can use another protocol - say DNS? - to designate an arbitrary server as master.

    Dave

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    1. Re:You need some intelligence in the uploading by austad · · Score: 1

      There can be no single point of failure though. Regular operations must be able to carry on even if an entire Data Center explodes.

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  5. Re:Well, it sounds to me... by True+Dork · · Score: 2

    I love rsync. I have a client who cannot handle rotating backup tapes (I know... I know) so I took their tape drive from them and I rsync their fileserver to mine and backup from my local machine once a day. And you dont HAVE to have a rsync server running on each end, just the executable. It can launch itself over rsh (ewww) or ssh (woohoo!) Depending on the size of the ftp server you will have some lag before all the sites update.

  6. Well, it sounds to me... by Zaffle · · Score: 3
    like you need rysnc. From what little I know of it, it basically maintains a mirror of directories. I think its normaly used one way (as in, mirroring from a central server), but I can't see why you couldn't use it both ways. Run rsync in a cron job, say every 10 mins, and that should be fine. I would definatly take a close look at rsync if I were you.

    Taking a very quick look at the documentation myself, I see that you'd probably have a rsync server running on each site, and then have a cronjob run on each site that mirrors every other site. If all 3 sites do this, it should mirror pretty well. The lag time will probably be something like 2T, where T is the time between cronjob runs.

    In regards to your specific what-if questions, I think the best way to answer those will be to try it out yourself. :) Hope that helps

    ---

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    I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
    1. Re:Well, it sounds to me... by austad · · Score: 1

      This will work, but only if I don't use the --delete option. If a file doesn't exist on the ftp server, it must be deleted from the other machines also.

      So if server A gets a file uploaded to it, and server B tries to do an rsync on it, server B is going to see this file that doesn't exist on itself, and delete it from server A. This gets more complicated when you have 3 or more servers trying to stay current.

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  7. Well.. by jclarke · · Score: 1

    How about some Cisco DistributedDirector love along with Veritas clustering/mirroring solutions. If you're running Solaris, you can't go wrong with this combination. If you're running Linux or something else, then s/Veritas/CODA/ or something.

    1. Re:Well.. by austad · · Score: 1

      We are already using a product like Distributed Director.

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  8. Re:Isn't this what RH 6.1 provides? by Zurk · · Score: 2

    RedHat provides piranha which can load balance FTP sessions..what he is looking for is really coda with piranha...or commercial AFS with piranha if you have 15K to blow.

  9. Isn't this what RH 6.1 provides? by Cpyder · · Score: 1

    There you can build identical "points of failiure", so that if one falls out, the other one takes over. Or something like that. Good luck!
    _
    / /pyder.....
    \_\ sig under construction

  10. If you have the time, resources, and trust... by kcarnold · · Score: 2

    Your own FTP server would do nicely. Log all incoming files in a special place and then set up a cron job that mirrors these files to the other servers (you'd have to use a special user whose transfers were not logged in the same way so you wouldn't be mirroring hundreds of times). Similarly, a delete request would pass to the other servers.

    There is quite likely an FTP server available that is flexible enough with its logging to do this. The capability would not have to be in the FTP server; it could be a script that searched the server's log files. However, implementing it on the server side allows you to ensure that the mirroring is accurate and keep any parsing scripts from worrying about parsing date/times (unless you have a server that logs in Unix ticks; in that case you would just store the tick when the script last mirrored it, and only be concerned about the transfers after that date).

    I would suggest running an rsync every so often just to make sure.

    The key here would be to ensure that everything you are doing is accurate. This is a "high-profile" environment. You might want to consider something other than FTP, e.g., HTTP POSTs. (Yes, there are problems with using this method to upload large files. (No progress indication.) However, considering most users will be on a fast network, this should not be too much of a problem. A Java(Script) applet that broke the upload into managable chunks and displayed the progress to the user might cut it.) An HTTP POST would let you keep track of other information along with the file, such as specific user comments.

    Kenneth