Help with Wasabi mounting

[privsec]

@girish Is there another mounting solution?

It is absolutely pivotal that I get the app directories off my servers drive.

[girish]

@privsec Is the goal here to have a large amount of space external (at correct price) to the server? If you are hosted on a VPS is there an option for you to attach external storage? For example, many VPS providers like time4vps, hetzner etc have quite cheap external disks that can be attached to a server. The reason I ask is even if s3fs or rclone mount does work, it's probably going to be quite slow - for example, I see posts like https://serverfault.com/questions/396100/s3fs-performance-improvements-or-alternative . We have no experience with how well these mounts work and if they work at all. Maybe files go missing, maybe it's unstable, we don't know.

[girish]

There is also https://forum.rclone.org/ , maybe you can ask there about rclone mounting issues.

[girish]

So I found some interesting posts:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/dplfoa/why_is_s3fs_such_a_bad_idea/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/a5jdth/what_are_peoples_thoughts_on_using_s3fs_in/

The point of both of them is that S3FS is not a file system and as such file permissions won't work. It's also not consistent (ie. if you write and read back, it may not be the same). This makes it pretty much unsuitable for making it an app data directory. What might work is if you make it as an external storage inside nextcloud - https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/external_storage_configuration_gui.html. I didn't suggest this earlier because I think you said you didn't want this in your initial post. Can you recheck this? Because I think it will provide what you want. You can just add the wasabi storage space inside nextcloud and it will appear as a folder for your users (you can create 1 bucket for each user or something).

@privsec So, I think it's best not to go down this s3fs route, it won't work reliably.

(If you were banking on s3fs somehow, for refunds etc, not a problem , just reach out to us on support@).

[privsec]

@girish

Thank you for your detailed responses.

Ill have to play around with the external storage options for nextcloud to see if that will work out or not.

Its an interesting workaround/hack, lol.

[robi]

There may be another "advanced" way via Minio.

Minio can be used as a storage gateway.

See if you can connect Minio to Wasabi, if you can in gateway mode, then see if you can mount the local Minio instance in Linux, even if s3fs, it would be local.

[privsec]

@robi But wouldnt that be un-ideal as S3 isnt a FS, and that is what I am wanting?

[marcusquinn]

@privsec We tried this once and it was unbearably slow. Personally I'd look for ways to reduce the Nextcloud storage needs and use a native mounted drive from the host, and just offer an Archive Wasabi S3 bucket for people to move things no longer needed for regular access to that to save space needs on the main NC.

[marcusquinn]

@marcusquinn Cyber Duck/Mountain Duck is very good as a platform to making Wasabi/S3 storage quite accessible to users if they need.

[privsec]

@marcusquinn
I can not get a mounted drive on my host to actually work. I have tried both Rclone and S3FS, both gave me the same result of no errors, but no syncing.

I have decided (atleast for now till I find a better solution) to give each user on nextcloud a wasabi bucket as a external storage drive, and restrict only them to be able to access that bucket.

I am now working on trying to figure out how to remove the built in files for nextcloud to just have the external storage folder listed with the nextcloud folders/files within the wasabi drive.

In regards to Cyber Duck/Mountain Duck, whats the difference between the external storage connection in nextcloud and them ? Is there a performance difference?

[marcusquinn]

@privsec Sorry, I mean just a mounted local host storage, not mounting external S3, which will have such high latency that it makes NC painful to use.

[marcusquinn]

@privsec I realise host local storage isn't cheap, and Wasabi is cheap, which is why we tried doing what you are once. Maybe you'll have a different experience but we just found the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, especially with large numbers of small files.

It might work for something like Video storage where there's fewer files but I just don't fancy the slow user experience costs and would always opt for speed over price since time is so much more expensive if users are spending too much waiting on their file services to show results.

[marcusquinn]

@privsec Just reading this, not sure if you've read? I'm not saying i can't be done, just that we gave up. Maybe this helps? I'm still reading: https://autoize.com/s3-compatible-storage-for-nextcloud/

[marcusquinn]

From reading the above article, is sounds like it might need to be that Cloudron has 2 x versions of Nextcloud packaged, or at least an option in installing to make it setup for S3 storage.

Probably needs one of the @appdev team to have a read and confirm or deny.

I agree it would be interesting and our past experience might have been what this article above solves.

Let's get more opinions on this, someone else might also have a need and interest and be willing to try themselves too.

[privsec]

@marcusquinn Ill have to give that article above a read.

Anything I can do to help make launching costs low is sought after, while keeping user experience high

[fbartels]

@marcusquinn said in Help with Wasabi mounting:

From reading the above article, is sounds like it might need to be that Cloudron has 2 x versions of Nextcloud packaged, or at least an option in installing to make it setup for S3 storage

Ihmo no second app necessary, the drawback is though that the s3 backend can only be enabled before any data is added to the app.

I am however sceptical if adding network latency for file access is such a smart idea. Especially for a php application.

[privsec]

So after reviewing this article, Cloudron does not respect the nextcloud config in this manner.

When I include that piece of info in the config file, nextcloud either error's out or it does not use the S3 bucket as its primary storage.

[robi]

@privsec
I am giving you advanced options, as you already know what is ideal.

ie. Get a VPS with a large amount of disk mounted locally.

[marcusquinn]

TBH I can see the advantages for having a separate Nextcloud instance with just the Files app enabled as web interface for S3 to allow users to have it available as a slower cold-storage option, with having a faster standard NC setup for their daily hot-storage needs.

So, I wouldn't dismiss this aim, just with speed cautions, and the cautions in the article that the storage would then be unbrowsable directly without the NC database metadata interface, so it also has mass disruption risks if that were lost.

[robi]

@marcusquinn said in Help with Wasabi mounting:

@privsec Just reading this, not sure if you've read? I'm not saying i can't be done, just that we gave up. Maybe this helps? I'm still reading: https://autoize.com/s3-compatible-storage-for-nextcloud/

This is along the same lines as my advanced object store usage option above.

I didn't know this was possible from within NC, but it appears they engineered it in. Very smart & clever.

They are essentially caching everything recent in /tmp and background syncing to the object store over time.
The user experience is good as it's all mostly local, and the capacity is greatly extended as the Object Store is vast.

I've designed this for other use cases at IBM, and wrote their Redbook on it, hence advanced prior knowledge.

For this article to be applied in Cloudron, we'd need a new packaged NC App that is configured for this before the setup/install. Then one can point it at a local Minio instance or external S3 object store.