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

[sickness]

> 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.
> 

the mobile phone upload problem could be solved by the helper, that will
then be able to properly upload the shares to all the storage nodes...

IMHO the real problem here is that even if you have a rebalancer, which could
basically be the repairer, it should still honor happyness, which it doesn't
as of now, expecially for mutable files, you could some day discover that
your files are OK but your root directory is screwed because it with k=2
both shares ended on 1 provider, and 0 shares on the other, what if the first
provider goes out of business? :/
I think that tahoe-lafs is the best distributed fs out there, the most usable,
and one of the few with integrated crypto "done right", and I'm already using it for some
tasks, but before using it in production, those 2 things should be accomplished:
(all in the 1.11.0 milestone)
- robustify mutable files
- improve peer selection to achieve happiness whenever possible, including in repair 
(so basically https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1382 )

P.S.: I'm not a programmer, otherwise I'd be already looking on it, but I've started
      studying a python book... not that I'd trust my skills to accomplish those milestones
      anyway, but If someone is intersted, I could put a bounty on #1382, if someone
      has the skills and the time to fix those, just tell me how much you want ;)