Standalone ubuntu installation, filesystem setup for couchbase data

My purpose is to install couchbase server on a standalone ubuntu server in order to develop a new application.

I didn’t find any info on the filesystem type to choose!!??

URGENT: Please advice me on the filesystem type to select/create (ext3/ext4/…) for the bucket data.

Your demos convinced me of using couchbase but all your documentation/white papers are directed towards big companies with big clusters.
What about a white paper for small companies/startups with a standalone couchbase server that will later evolve to a cluster, small companies that think big and noSql!!!??

Phase 1:

Starting with all in one server (web-server/application server/couchbase server = datacenter)

Phase 2:

Moving couchbase server to a second server, dedicated to couchbase server/datacenter.
Still standalone couchbase but on dedicated server.

Phase 3:

Adding another server to form a couchbase cluster.

Your help will be appreciated.

Thanks

Fred

Hi Fred,

The filesystem for the data directory shouldn’t be a significant factor in cluster node performance. Couchbase’s storage engine creates a fixed number of files when a bucket is first created, and then operates in an append-only mode; only creating new files (and deleting old ones) when performing compaction, so it’s not particularly filesystem intensive.

Our whitepapers are pretty generic, there’s nothing to stop you starting with a small cluster and expanding (or contracting) on demand. In general we do however recommend at least two (ideally three) nodes to ensure availability of data in the event of a node outage.

First thank you for your quick response.
I understand the operations are not filesystem intensive, but still what would you RECOMMEND?
I read (see below) your advice of using EBS storage, which is a special file system for cloud computing and though not relevant in my case
http://docs.couchbase.com/couchbase-manual-2.2/#couchbase-bestpractice-sizing-disk => Local Storage

I’m organizing my 120gb disk for Ubuntu server installation from scratch.
I will use LVM for most of my partitions, except /tmp which will be an ext filesystem.
Now for my partition that will be dedicated to the Couchbase data, my choice would be ext4 and it will NOT be part of the LVM.
Your opinion interests me.

Regards

Fred

Hi Fred,

ext4 is a fine choice, and commonly used by customers. I’m not aware of any specific recommendations we have for filesystems; although we do make recommendations on the type of block-level storage used (e.g. as you mentioned, for write heavy workloads SSDs can be beneficial over HDDs).

Certainly putting the Couchbase data directory on it’s own different partition is a good way to help manage your disk usage.

Dave, we’ve recently had a very sad situation with data loss on power outage.
I’ve recorded all details and ideas here
https://issues.couchbase.com/browse/MB-38482

Posting it for googlers mainly.
In short:
Couchbase does not do enough steps to prevent data loss.
Couchbase does some bad steps after it happened, which caused additional loss :frowning:

Things can be fixed.