[tahoe-dev] Announcing RentaNode.nl: Tahoe-LAFS storage nodes for rent

[Guido Witmond]

On 15-06-12 21:53, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:
> Welcome to the world, rentanode.nl!
>
> I'm delighted to hear that there is another company focused on helping
> customers use Tahoe-LAFS.

Thanks Zooko. Glad to feel the warm welcome. :-)

> I've already had two potential customers ask (on twitter) if it would
> be possible for someone to lease service from both rentanode.nl *and*
> leastauthority.com and spread the ciphertext across both services.

Customers already* have that opportunity. And they don't even need our
cooperation. They can open an account at both firms and configure the
way you specified. That should work out of the box.

The most important thing then is the settings of the k-of-n parameters**
so that the shares get spread out over both providers.

In case one of the providers gets treated like a MegaUpload the customer
still can access all his data.

*Now, that's provider independent security.*


With regards, Guido Witmond.


PS. *already: I'll open the shop soon. If there is really a hurry, I can
set it up over email.  I have two servers up and running, awaiting more
nodes.
 
PPS. ** For now the customer would need to set k=1, n=2 and happy=2 to
make sure the shares get spread out evenly or not at all. It's better to
get an error than silently store all shares on one node.

A rebalancer that distributes the shares at verify/repair-time would be
needed to handle a k=5, n=10, happy=3 configuration to give the provider
independence while also sporting a good accessibility. The price is that
is can take a while before the ideal spread has been reached so new data
would be more at risk than old. I remember seeing some tickets on this
issue.

That rebalancer opens new use cases. One could set happy=1 when one
would run a storage node on a mobile phone. You get to keep shooting
pictures without getting errors and let the rebalancer do the dirty job
once in reach of the cheap wifi-access, saving on the expensive 3G.