The report is written in LaTeX, and can be compiled using a standard distribution like TeXlive. A Makefile is available, so the report can be generated using:

$ cd report
$ make

To compile the bibliography, Biber is needed.

This project is a Java application that provides an interface between FUSE and different erasure code implementations. The backend used to store individual blocks can be replaced.

The Gradle building system is used to compile and run the project. The easiest way to mount an instance of the tester is to fire up some Docker containers.

Under a Debian GNU/Linux (Jessie) system, all needed dependencies can be installed and configured through the following commands:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://p80.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys 58118E89F3A912897C070ADBF76221572C52609D
$ echo 'deb https://apt.dockerproject.org/repo debian-jessie main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install docker-engine nfs-common
$ sudo pip install docker-compose
$ sudo usermod -a -G docker <YOUR-USERNAME>
$ sudo systemctl start docker

You then have to log-off and then back on to apply the group modification.

In order to orchestrate multiple containers at once, we use the Docker compose tool that needs to be installed separately from the main Docker engine.

Then, the entire application, including a cluster of 3 Redis servers, can be started using:

$ cd projects/erasure-tester
$ ./run_in_docker.sh

When the containers are started, the exposed FUSE filesystem can be mounted in the host computer via NFS:

$ sudo mount `docker inspect erasuretester_erasure_1 | grep IPAddress | grep -Eo '[0-9.]{7,}' | head -n 1`:/mnt/erasure /mnt/<host-mountpoint>

Do not forget to unmount the NFS filesystem from the host before stopping the containers!

$ sudo umount /mnt/my-mountpoint

As an alternative to mounting the exposed filesystem in the host, a separate "benchmark" container containing benchmarks against the filesystem can be used. It can be launched similarly to the run_in_docker.sh script. The following will run the benchmarks along with all their dependencies:

$ cd projects/erasure-tester
$ ./benchmark_in_docker.sh

The methodology mentioned above make the containers run on the local machine. When a large number of containers are needed, there is the possibility to use Docker Swarm. It aggregates multiple Docker hosts into a single Docker endpoint.

Instructions on how to use that technology are available in a separate file.

The Failure Trace Archive is a website hosting failure traces. They can be used when running benchmarks in the erasure tester. The FTA parser provides scripts that plot each trace file. Experimenters can then see which part of which trace is of interest to them.