On 06/07/2014 09:08 PM, Matthew Caron wrote: [snip] > 2.) Actual hardware/uptime/connectivity problems - I know from personal > experience (having built a few) that building high availability systems > in a single location is vastly easier than distributed amongst several > locations. Pulling in multiple network feeds and using a router that > supports connection failover, and getting a generator that will keep > your datacenter up during a power failure is also pretty trivial. > > By comparison, having several home servers, with residential power, > residential Internet[1], and commodity hardware stuck on a shelf or in a > dusty basement somewhere is likely to have greater downtime (even with > distributed server to server sync) even if it was supported. After all, > not only would they have to sync, but you'd have to have site A be able > to fail over to site B in the event of a server failure in site A, which > requires additional infrastructure such as, for example, DNS which > checks server availability.
My use case is two fold, one for home and one for work. In the case of work, having a SPOF is huge for us. While having a single location is easier and I have tons of replication for power and switches in the data center, I still need an off-site system to replicate against. All the difficulty associated with that is part of the accepted risk for multi-site replication. We can't afford to have data be down just because a hurricane hit the east coast, or a tornado hit our corridor data center, or a fire knocking out power on the west coast (all events that are easily Google-able). In the case of home, sure it is a bit more work then the average person could probably deal with in terms of ensuring hardware is running and what not, but for a good chunk of the admin geeks on this mailing list the question is not 'can they do it' but 'do they *want* to do it'. I can say for certain that _I_ want and would do it. But as of right now, both use cases depend on owncloud having the ability to support a multi-server configuration. Even if I just go back to my two servers joined by unison. That worked for an /extremely/ lightly tested use case in a controlled environment, but there was still a *single* database being replicated. It should be trivial to realize that won't work for an active-active system. The moment there is data loss due to a sync going bad...eek. I haven't had a chance to test the distributed file system Tahoe-LAFS yet, but I am still researching it. I have plenty of doubts though. Even if I get the file system working perfectly with owncloud, I am not sure how multiple instances of owncloud on the same database is going to work...This currently worries me more then getting Tahoe-LAFS integration. > [1] On which, running a publicly accessible server is likely a violation > of your terms of service, and your ISP can shut you off if you do this. > (At least, for most residential ISPs in the US). Very true. I don't recommend this for most. However, my ISP at the moment doesn't care as long as it isn't a ton of data (I've asked), I am in one of the lucky cities for Google Fiber and hope it comes to my neighborhood within the next year (also verified it is ok with them), the *one* cable company in my dad's neighborhood provides terrible service...until he upgraded to a business class connection then all of the reasons they gave for terrible connection suddenly disappeared (Thanks US cable monopoly!). So the only one I *might* have issues with is my sister. So I am not concerned about that. Besides, think about this scenario for a second. It is my pie-in-the-sky wish list. It isn't terribly difficult to set up a multi-point encrypted VPN tunnel. You can do it for really cheap with a bunch of old Linksys routers + DD-WRT/tomato [I did it back in college as a private LAN for gaming because our provider at the time blocked the game ports...it wasn't blazing fast but it worked]. Then take a bunch of Raspberry Pi's, and a external USB hard drive. ~100$ total per setup. I have friends in most of the states in the US + Europe + Asia + one in Africa. How cool would it be to have a privately-owned massively distributed owncloud system? It would /truly/ be a cloud! A cloud of people we trust! But that is a long ways off still. :-) Anyway, I appreciate all the comments/discussion. The more people who might be interested in this means the more likely this gets worked on. :-) ~Stack~
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