GlusterFS, how to server files using http or https? - distributed-computing

I am very new to glusterfs and I am trying to set up a 3 node combination. I have done the setup for 3 nodes and a client machine which has the volume mounted. Now after this I am stuck to find answers for these 3 questions:
How to serve the files over http (something like https://gfs1.com/1.jpg)?
Secondly, every time I have to put a file inside glusterfs cluster, I
have to do it through client server (placing inside volume) and then it getting replicated and distributed automatically?
What happens in case the client server dies? I can't access the volume or upload new files?
Questions may sound very naive, but I am stuck with them and need help.

How to serve the files over http (something like https://gfs1.com/1.jpg)?
It depends on your content. If you want to serve them as static resources, you can serve them via reverse proxy Nginx, Apache httpd,... by pointing resource URL to your mounted volume (FUSE module). Something like:
location /images {
root /mounted_point/;
}
If it is secret content, needs authorization and so on, you can serve them by your own web API
Secondly, every time I have to put a file inside glusterfs cluster, I have to do it through client server (placing inside volume) and then it getting replicated and distributed automatically?
There are two ways to deal with files from Gluster. It is FUSE modules using Gluster Native Client and libgfapi interact directly with Gluster. You can read more about it here https://staged-gluster-docs.readthedocs.io/en/release3.7.0beta1/Features/libgfapi/
By the first one with FUSE module, the only thing you need to do is put your files into the mounted volume in your Glusterfs Client server. Glusterfs will take care of the rest (distributed, replicate,...)
What happens in case the client server dies? I can't access the volume or upload new files?
You can keep the availability of your Glusterfs Client by adding more Glusterfs Client server. All of it would show the same files from your Gluster.
libgfapi, interact directly to your Gluster server, no client needed.

Related

What are the best practices for accessing a kubernetes pod with sftp or ssh?

I have deployed a wordpress pod on Kubernetes and I want to be able to use sftp or ssh to access it.
Containers is a bit different from whole Virtual Machines. With containers you typically only run a single process - your app. Unless your app is a ssh-daemon or an FTP server, it does not support sftp or ssh protocol. It is common for apps in Kubernetes only to use HTTP.
That said, it is possible to run one-off commands in containers using kubectl exec, see Get a Shell to a Running Container
so what are the best practices for managing the files of a webserver type pod? You have to publish the files and their updates
There are two common way to do this:
Copy the files to a Dockerfile and build a new container image (this also contains the web server).
Upload the files to a Bucket, e.g. AWS S3 or Google Cloud Storage and let the server serve those files.

Mapping local directory to kubernetes

I am using Docker desktop to run a application in kubernetes platform where i need location to store files how can i use my local directory(c:\app-data) to be pointed to application running in kubernetes.
I had a similar problem. Docker contains are usually meant to be throwaway/gateway containers normally, so people don't usually use them for storing files.
That being said, you have two options:
Add path and files to docker container, which will cause your docker container to be massive in size (NOT RECOMMENDED). Docker build will require substantial time and memory, as all the files will be copied. Here's an example of creating a local ubuntu container with docker. https://thenewstack.io/docker-basics-how-to-share-data-between-a-docker-container-and-host/
Host your files through another server/api, and fetch those files using simple requests in your app. I used this solution. The only caveat is you need
to be able to host your files somehow. This is easy enough, but may require extra payment. https://www.techradar.com/best/file-hosting-and-sharing-services
You can't really do this. The right approach depends on what the data you're trying to store is.
If you're just trying to store data somewhere – perhaps it's the backing data for a MySQL StatefulSet – you can create a PersistentVolumeClaim like normal. Minikube includes a minimal volume provisioner so you should automatically get a PersistentVolume created; you don't need to do any special setup for this. But, the PersistentVolume will live within the minikube container/VM; if you completely delete the minikube setup, it could delete that data, and you won't be able to directly access the data from the host.
If you have a data set on the host that your container needs to access, there are a couple of ways to do it. Keep in mind that, in a "real" Kubernetes cluster, you won't be able to access your local filesystem at all. Creating a PersistentVolume as above and then running a pod to copy the data into it could be one approach; as #ParmandeepChaddha suggests in their answer, baking the data into the image is another reasonable approach (this can be very reasonable if the data is only a couple of megabytes).
If the data is the input or output data to your process, you can also consider restructuring your application so that it transfers that data over a protocol like HTTP. Set up a NodePort Service in front of your application, and use a tool like curl to HTTP POST the data into the service.
Finally, you could be considering a setup where all of the important data is local: you have some batch files on the local system, the job's purpose is to convert some local files to other local files, and it's just that the program is in minikube. (Or, similarly, you're trying to develop your application and the source files are on your local system.) In this case Kubernetes, as a distributed, clustered container system, isn't the right tool. Running the application directly on your system is the best approach; you can simulate this with a docker run -v bind mount, but this is inconvenient and can lead to permission and environment problems.
(In theory you can use a hostPath volume too, and minikube has some support to mount a host directory into the VM. In practice, the setup required to do this is as complex as the rest of your Kubernetes setup combined, and it won't be portable to any other Kubernetes installation. I wouldn't attempt this.)
You can mount your local directory to your kubernetes Pod using hostPath. Your path c:\app-data on your Windows host should be represented as either /C/app-data or /host_mnt/c/app-data, depending on your Docker Desktop version as suggested in this comment.
You may also want to take a look at this answer.

Kubernetes: strategy for out-of-cluster persistent storage

I need a piece of advice / recommendation / link to tutorial.
I am designing a kubernetes cluster and one of the projects is a Wordpress site with lots of pictures (photo blog).
I want to be able to tear down and re-create my cluster within an hour, so all "persistent" pieces need to be hosted outside of cluster (say, separate linux instance).
It is doable with database - I will just have a MySQL server running on that machine and will update WP configs accordingly.
It is not trivial with filesystem storage. I am looking at Kubernetes volume providers, specifically NFS. I want to setup NFS server on a separate machine and have each WP pod use that NFS share through volume mechanism. In that case, I can rebuild my cluster any time and data will be preserved. Almost like database access, but filesystem.
The questions are the following. Does this solution seem feasible? Is there any better way to achieve same goal? Does Kubernetes NFS plugin support the functionality I need? What about authorization?
so I am using a very similar strategy for my cluster where all my PVC are placed on a standalone VM instance with a static IP and which has an NFS-server running and a simple nfs-client-provisioner helm chart on my cluster.
So here what I did :
Created a server(Ubuntu) and installed the NFS server on it. Reference here
Install a helm chart/app for nfs-client-proviosner with parameters.
nfs.path = /srv ( the path on server which is allocated to NFS and shared)
nfs.server = xx.yy.zz.ww ( IP of my NFS server configured above)
And that's it the chart creates an nfs-client storage class which you can use to create a PVC and attach to your pods.
Note - Make sure to configure the /etc/exports file on the NFS server to look like this as mentioned in the reference digital ocean document.
/srv kubernetes_node_1_IP(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)
/srv kubernetes_node_2_IP(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)
... and so on.
I am using the PVC for some php and laravel applications, seem to work well without any considerable delays. Although you will have to check for your specific requirements. HTH.

How to get files into pod?

I have a fully functioning Kubernetes cluster with one master and one worker, running on CoreOS.
Everything is working and my pods and services are running fine. Now I have no clue how to proceed in a webserver idea.
Before I go further: I have no configs at the moment about my idea I am going to explain. I just did a lot of research.
When setting up a pod (nginx) with a service. You get the default nginx page. After that you can setup a mount volume with a hostvolume (volume mapping from host to container).
But lets say I want to seperate every site (multiple sites separated with different pods), how can I let my users add files to their pod/nginx document root? Having FTP in the CoreOS node removes the Kubernetes way and adds security vulnerabilities.
If someone can help me shed some light on this issue, that would be great.
Thanks for your time.
I'm assuming that you want to have multiple nginx servers running. The content of each nginx server is managed by a different admin (you called them users).
TL;DR:
Option 1: Each admin needs to build their own nginx docker image every time the static files change and deploy that new image. This is if you consider these static files as a part of the source-code of the nginx application
Option 2: Use a persistent volume for nginx, the init-script for the nginx image should use something like s3 to sync all its files with s3 and then start nginx
Before you proceed with building an application with kubernetes. The most important thing is to separate your services into 2 conceptual categories, and give up your desire to touch the underlying nodes directly:
1) Stateless: These are services that are built by the developers and can be released. They can be stopped, started, moved from one node to another, their filesystem can be reset during restart and they will work perfectly fine. Majority of your web-services will fit this category.
2) Stateful: These services cannot be stopped and restarted willy nilly like the ones above. Primarily, their underlying filesystem must be persistent and remain the same across runs of the service. Databases, file-servers and similar services are in this category. These need special care and should use k8s persistent-volumes and now stateful-sets.
Typical application:
nginx: build the nginx.conf into the docker image, and deploy it as a stateless service
rails/nodejs/python service: build the source code into the docker image, configure with env-vars, deploy as a stateless service
database: mount a persistent volume, configure with env-vars, deploy as a stateful service.
Separate sites:
Typically, I think at a k8s deployment and a k8s service level. Each site can be one k8s deployment and k8s service set. You can then have separate ways to expose them (different external DNS/IPs)
Application users storing files:
This is firmly in the category of a stateful service. Use a persistent volume to mount to a /media kind of directory
Developers changing files:
Say developers or admins want to use FTP to change the files that nginx serves. The correct pattern is to build a docker image with the new files and then use that docker image. If there are too many files, and you don't consider those files to be a part of the 'source' of the nginx, then use something like s3 and a persistent volume. In your docker image init script, don't directly start nginx. Contact s3, sync all your files onto your persistent volume, then start nginx.
While the options and reasoning listed by iamnat are right, there's at least one more option to add to the list. You could consider using ConfigMap objects, maintain your file within the configmap and mount them to your containers.
A good example can be found in the official documentation - check the Real World Example configuring Redis section to get some actionable input.

What are the options for syncing static content to Nginx within Kubernetes?

I'm currently building a Kubernetes cluster. I plan on using Nginx containers as a server for static content, and to act as a web socket proxy. If you restart Nginx, you lose your web socket connection, so I do not want to restart the containers. But I will want to update the content within the container.
I do that same exact thing in my Kubernetes cluster. Our solution is for application to handle the web socket disconnect with consistent state kept intact.
However, other options you have are mount a volume to serve from the host; however, you cannot guarantee all nginx pods will have that volume on multi hosts, unless you use a kubernetes' persistent volume http://kubernetes.io/v1.1/docs/user-guide/persistent-volumes.html.
Another option you have is to have your static content on an object store like S3, Google Cloud Storage or Ceph, and then proxy the object store through nginx along with the websocket.