[Gluster-devel] lookup caching

[Olivier Le Cam]

Hi -

I am evaluating glusterfs for a replacement of an NFS server which acts 
as a backend storage for a webcluster, in order to take advantage of its 
very interesting features in term of high-availability and scalability.

That said, I'm experiencing (like everybody in the same situation) 
performance issues due to the large number of small files a webserver 
have to deal with.

The io-cache translator does not help so much in this situation because 
(as far as I understood) the clients always have to check the mtime of 
the target file before delivering it in order to known if the cache is 
up-to-date. This intensive network traffic is quite penalizing in term 
of performance (especially on a Gb-E).

Following to a recent talk on the IRC channel, it came to my mind that 
caching lookups could (in this particular situation) greatly improve the 
performances.

I have observed the GlusterFS code carefully and TBH I haven't been able 
to see how/where such a translator could be integrated in.

Would it be possible to get some help? Are other users/developers 
already involved in such a development?

I don't want to bother you more than necessary, getting few advices 
would be enough in order to put me on the way.

I'll appreciate any comments or pointers.

Thanks and best regards,
--
Olivier