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2 LabKeys sharing file storage?

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2 LabKeys sharing file storage? fcf  2017-02-21 10:09
Status: Closed
 
We are splitting one of our LabKey sites in two. One will be for customers and the other will be the internal lab use. They and their databases will be hosted on separate VMs, however we want them to share the same directory for file storage -- the same one they are using before the split. The idea is to allow us to reference the same data from both sites without duplicating storage.
 1. Does anyone see a problem with this?
 2. If we remove a project from one site would it delete the data files even if we wanted to continue to access them from the other site?
 
 
Jon (LabKey DevOps) responded:  2017-02-21 16:56
Hello,

This is an unusual request, but I can tell you that it would have some serious issues.

1.) The files would be seen from both VMs if both VMs are pointing to the same Project/Folder. So there would be no way to hide files from the customer side without it being in a folder that was unique to one VM verses the other.

2.) If a Project gets deleted in one site, it wouldn't delete the LabKey Project from the other site. However, you would lose all of the files on the file server.

In the end, I would recommend putting everyone on their own separate root directories, if not separate storage servers. It would create duplicates at first, but it would be way safer to handle.

Regards,

Jon
 
Ben Bimber responded:  2017-02-21 17:02
I'd just add one thing: if you are using file storage in an extremely basic manner (i.e. LabKey as a webserver to upload/download files), then it might be worth thinking about it in the following terms. Agreed with jon that it's really problematic for 2 servers to share the same default file root. However, lots of servers have mounted additional directories so specific projects/folders can view and interact with another directory on the filesystem. If specific folders should have joint access from both servers, it wouldnt seem crazy to me to make that folder visible on both servers as an alternate file root. Again, this really only makes sense for pretty basic file storage, and not for the main file root.