Changes between Version 34 and Version 35 of FAQ


Ignore:
Timestamp:
2011-01-27T19:55:39Z (13 years ago)
Author:
zooko
Comment:

edits

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  • FAQ

    v34 v35  
    33A1: Tahoe-LAFS is the first Free !Software/Open Source storage technology to offer ''provider-independent security''.  ''Provider-independent security'' means that the integrity and confidentiality of your files is guaranteed by mathematics computed on the client side, and is independent of the servers, which may be owned and operated by someone else.  To learn more, read [http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html our one-page explanation].
    44
    5 A2: Tahoe-LAFS is an extremely reliable, distributed, fault-tolerant storage system. Even if you do not need its security properties, you might want to use Tahoe-LAFS as a very robust and flexible storage platform. (Tahoe-LAFS's security features do an excellent job of staying out of your way when you don't need them.)
     5A2: Tahoe-LAFS is an extremely reliable, fault-tolerant storage system. Even if you do not need its security properties, you might want to use Tahoe-LAFS as a very robust and flexible storage platform. (Tahoe-LAFS's security features do an excellent job of staying out of your way when you don't need them.)
    66
    77'''Q: "Erasure-coding"?  What's that?'''
    88
    9 A: You know how with RAID-5 you can lose any one drive and still recover?  And there is also something called RAID-6 where you can lose any two drives and still recover.  Erasure coding is the generalization of this pattern: you get to configure it for how many drives you could lose and still recover.  Tahoe-LAFS is typically configured to upload each file to 10 different drives, where you can lose any 7 of them and still recover the entire file.  This gives radically better reliability than typical RAID setups, at a cost of only 3.3 times the storage space that a single copy takes. (This technique is also known as "forward error correction" and as an "information dispersal algorithm".)
     9A: You know how with RAID-5 you can lose any one drive and still recover?  And there is also something called RAID-6 where you can lose any two drives and still recover.  Erasure coding is the generalization of this pattern: you get to configure it for how many drives you could lose and still recover.  Tahoe-LAFS is typically configured to upload each file to 10 different drives, where you can lose any 7 of them and still recover the entire file.  This gives radically better reliability than comparable RAID setups, at a cost of only 3.3 times the storage space that a single copy takes. (This technique is also known as "forward error correction" and as an "information dispersal algorithm".)
    1010
    1111'''Q: Is there a way to disable the encryption phase and just use the encoding on the actual content? Won't that save a lot of CPU cycles?'''
    … …  
    1919'''Q: Does Tahoe-LAFS work on embedded devices such as a [http://www.pogoplug.com PogoPlug] or an [http://openwrt.org OpenWRT] router?'''
    2020
    21 A: Probably! François Deppierraz contributes [http://tahoe-lafs.org/buildbot/builders/FranXois%20lenny-armv5tel a buildbot] which shows that Tahoe-LAFS builds and all the unit tests pass on his Intel SS4000-E NAS box running under Debian Squeeze.  There seems to be a lot of interest in this sort of deployment -- someone joins the mailing list and asks about this approximately every month (see [http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/ the archives]).  Zandr Milewski [http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-November/003157.html reported] that it took him only an hour to build, install, and test Tahoe-LAFS on a !PogoPlug.
     21A: Yes! François Deppierraz contributes [http://tahoe-lafs.org/buildbot/builders/FranXois%20lenny-armv5tel a buildbot] which shows that Tahoe-LAFS builds and all the unit tests pass on his Intel SS4000-E NAS box running under Debian Squeeze.  Zandr Milewski [http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-November/003157.html reported] that it took him only an hour to build, install, and test Tahoe-LAFS on a !PogoPlug.
    2222
    2323'''Q: Does Tahoe-LAFS work on Windows?'''
    2424
    25 A: Yes.  Follow [http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/quickstart.html the standard quickstart instructions] to get Tahoe-LAFS running on Windows.  (There was also an "Allmydata Windows client", but that is not actively maintained at the moment, and relied on some components that are not open-source.)
     25A: Yes.  Follow [http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/quickstart.html the standard quickstart instructions] to get Tahoe-LAFS running on Windows. (There was also an "Allmydata Windows client", but that is not actively maintained at the moment, and relied on some components that are not open-source.)
    2626
    2727'''Q: Does Tahoe-LAFS work on Mac OS X?'''