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Hi<br>
<br>
Having been trialling sheepdog for a number of days now. It's a
really good concept, and has moved on a lot since the last time I
tried it (around 0.40 version). After a fair few hiccups getting it
properly set up and working, version 0.80 is working reasonably
well. I'd like to offer some initial feedback on some of the
challenges I faced:<br>
<br>
1. The README says you need a minimum of 3 nodes, which must be
x86_64. Sheepdog compiles for i386, and it appears possible to
format a cluster with 'dog cluster format -c 2' and I seem to have
been able to run a cluster with two copies, on i386, quite stably.
Is this line in the README just out of date? If so this is
misleading and it would be helpful to correct it.<br>
<br>
2. Having formatted a cluster with 'dog cluster format' I am not
aware of a way to determine the format options used (e.g. number of
copies). It would be helpful if e.g. 'dog cluster info' would
display this information.<br>
<br>
3. I couldn't find documentation of the existence/functionality of
the sheep gateway option anywhere on
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/sheepdog/sheepdog/wiki">https://github.com/sheepdog/sheepdog/wiki</a> or
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.sheepdog-project.org/doc/">http://www.sheepdog-project.org/doc/</a>. Maybe I missed it (though I
have grepped the former and searched the latter). This is such a
useful option, that it does sheepdog a disservice that it's not
highlighted better. The manpage only says '-g make the progam run as
a gateway mode' which doesn't explain what gateway mode is. In the
end, I found out by emailing this list. It would be helpful to have
this option better and more widely documented.<br>
<br>
4. The manual/help says that 'dog vdi check <vdi>' must not be
performed on an actively used vdi, presumably because if it has to
repair the vdi it could cause corruption. If that's the case, it
might be helpful if it prompted the user and gave a warning before
beginning. It might also be helpful if 'check' were renamed 'repair'
(to avoid the ambiguity). I'd also suggest a pure 'check' option,
that does not repair. This would all be more akin to what an fsck
user would expect. The same comments go for 'dog cluster check' too.<br>
<br>
5. The manual/help says in bold letters: "Remember: DO NOT shut down
any of node before deactivating the cluster! DO NOT shut down / kill
a node after the other.". Yet isn't the point of sheepdog to be a
distributed highly available storage system, and isn't it intended
to withstand individual nodes going down, or crashing, or being shut
down by errant sysadmins? If so, then I'm finding this warning
misleading and off-putting. Unless I misunderstand, sheepdog
*should* be resilient to rebooting of a limited number of nodes,
depending on the total number of nodes, and the number of copies,
shouldn't it? It would be helpful to clarify this as there may be
times one needs to shut down the cluster safely, after a limited
number of nodes have already crashed (and the data in the cluster is
therefore still valid).<br>
<br>
That's my initial feedback. If I can reproduce the setup hiccups I
had on the latest version of sheepdog, I'll submit reports about
that separately.<br>
<br>
Kind regards<br>
<br>
Struan<br>
<br>
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NewsNow Publishing Limited
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