The File Connector enables users to access files as objects using the Swift API. It has been packaged as a docker container to provide easy deployment.
Files and directories are exposed following the same path hierarchy as they are
laid out on the Filesystem. For example, an NFS share mounted under
/mnt/nfs_share/dir/foo could be accessed with the URL
http://host:port/fileconnector/nfs_share/dir/foo.
The File Connector can be especially useful together with 1space to move data between a NAS share and a Swift cluster.
The File Connector has two modes of metadata persistence. When targetting Filesystems that support extended attributes (i.e. xattr), metadata can be saved together with with the file as extended attributes (This is similar to how Openstack Swift persists metadata).
Another mode developed for Filesystems without xattr support is to save
metadata in hidden json files. For example:
The file /mnt/nfs_share/dir/foo will have its metadata saved under /mnt/nfs_share/dir/.fc_meta/foo/obj_metadata.json
File Connector is packaged as a docker container. You can run it as a single
instance or in clustered mode. There are sample Compose files
under the examples directory to quickly get started or read below for
details on the different options that can be set to run.
Just run the docker container, substituting the configuration between brackets
<>:
docker run -d \
-v </path/to/sharename>:/srv/fileconnector/<sharename> \
-p 8083:8083 \
-e FILE_CONNECTOR_SECRET=<choose_your_secret> \
--name file-connector \
swiftstack/file-connector
You can now access a NAS share using the swift client
for example. The credentials are: account: fileconnector,
user: fcuser, password: <choose_your_secret>
To run in clustered mode you will need to run a load balancer and an instance
of memcached. Then just launch as many File Connector containers as you would
like, making sure to update the port mapping but re-use the same
FILE_CONNECTOR_SECRET for all containers. You will also need to pass a new
environment variable to set the memcache server in the File Connector.
Refer to examples/cluster as an example of how to run all services as docker containers.