We are currently setting up a site in a distributed environment for a client. There are a number of great articles on this for setting up the frontend nodes, but in the setup we are looking at, the client has previously had a huge amount of issues with replicating or syncing files in the media-folder between the different webservers/node handling the requests. Their current (soon to be previous) version of umbraco is 4.5.2 and we are working with a new umbraco v. 6.1.5.
So we are currently looking at setting up the webservers/node with access to a SAN, and want them to use/share the media library (and maybe other files) here. The setup has separate nodes for content management and serving traffic.
I can see that the version of umbraco we are using has the /config/FileSystemProviders.config file, where it seems to be possible to set up the media folder path. However I cannot find any documentation on how to use this feature and what is required.
We recommend using a SAN as that has proven to be the most reliable option.
I think it's worth investigating why replication doesn't work for you (which replication are you using? DFS, other?).
First of all thank you for your quick response!!! :)
I have just had a look at the link you sent, which does cover some of the questions we are faced with, but unfortunately not all. The article mentions that the recommended approach is file system replication, whereas you reccomend using a SAN above. Is the documentation in need of a recommendation update? :) Unfortubately we have not been involved with their current setup, so I do not know how their current replication setup works - but DFS could be the culprit. I only know that they have had a lot of issues with it, with replication time being up to an hour for media files.
My idea here is not that all umbraco files are located in the SAN, but only the media-library. There are a number of reasons why the client want it this way, which I do not think are interesting in this context. I will of course be happy to share if it will help.
However I'm interested in hearing if it is possible to configure umbraco to use a folder on a SAN for media out of the box using the current FileSystemProvider with configuration done in /config/FileSystemProviders.config using these settings:
Or you think we will have to write our own FileSystemProvider as the linked Amazon S3 FileSystemProvider suggested above to make the wanted scenario work?
Once again thanks a lot for your answer and hope my follow up will spur additional feedback.
Set up media library on SAN in distributed setup
Hi everybody,
We are currently setting up a site in a distributed environment for a client. There are a number of great articles on this for setting up the frontend nodes, but in the setup we are looking at, the client has previously had a huge amount of issues with replicating or syncing files in the media-folder between the different webservers/node handling the requests. Their current (soon to be previous) version of umbraco is 4.5.2 and we are working with a new umbraco v. 6.1.5.
So we are currently looking at setting up the webservers/node with access to a SAN, and want them to use/share the media library (and maybe other files) here. The setup has separate nodes for content management and serving traffic.
I can see that the version of umbraco we are using has the /config/FileSystemProviders.config file, where it seems to be possible to set up the media folder path. However I cannot find any documentation on how to use this feature and what is required.
The following is the standard setup:
<Provider alias="media" type="Umbraco.Core.IO.PhysicalFileSystem, Umbraco.Core">
<Parameters>
<add key="virtualRoot" value="~/media/" />
</Parameters>
</Provider>
I would like to be able to do something like this to point the media library to a different location:
<Provider alias="media" type="Umbraco.Core.IO.PhysicalFileSystem, Umbraco.Core">
<Parameters>
<add key="virtualRoot" value="D:\Umbraco\media\" />
</Parameters>
</Provider>
I hope the above is sufficient description of the setup and issues we are trying to solve. Any inputs on a setup like this is much appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance - Kim :)
While I know little to nothing about FileSystemProviders, I would recommend you have a look at the LB documentation first: http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Installation/load-balancing
We recommend using a SAN as that has proven to be the most reliable option.
I think it's worth investigating why replication doesn't work for you (which replication are you using? DFS, other?).
For inspiration, here's the source of an Amazon S3 FileSystemProvider (which is from this package).
Hi Sebastiaan,
First of all thank you for your quick response!!! :)
I have just had a look at the link you sent, which does cover some of the questions we are faced with, but unfortunately not all. The article mentions that the recommended approach is file system replication, whereas you reccomend using a SAN above. Is the documentation in need of a recommendation update? :) Unfortubately we have not been involved with their current setup, so I do not know how their current replication setup works - but DFS could be the culprit. I only know that they have had a lot of issues with it, with replication time being up to an hour for media files.
My idea here is not that all umbraco files are located in the SAN, but only the media-library. There are a number of reasons why the client want it this way, which I do not think are interesting in this context. I will of course be happy to share if it will help.
However I'm interested in hearing if it is possible to configure umbraco to use a folder on a SAN for media out of the box using the current FileSystemProvider with configuration done in /config/FileSystemProviders.config using these settings:
<Provider alias="media" type="Umbraco.Core.IO.PhysicalFileSystem, Umbraco.Core">
<Parameters>
<add key="virtualRoot" value="~/media/" />
</Parameters>
</Provider>
Or you think we will have to write our own FileSystemProvider as the linked Amazon S3 FileSystemProvider suggested above to make the wanted scenario work?
Once again thanks a lot for your answer and hope my follow up will spur additional feedback.
Cheers Kim :)
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