Fast and scalable ownCloud Infinite Scale

Everything Must Go

Prometheus to the Rescue

Prometheus itself is a well-established standard by now. By following the pull principle, other components must make their metric data available through a pre-defined API interface to be fetched by Prometheus. If you enable the Prometheus interface in oCIS, every oCIS instance will allow the Prometheus instances of a setup to fetch metric data from port 8001 through the oCIS debug endpoint.

Available metrics include a number of different values related to Go, different memory statistics, threads in use, and more of the like. Additionally, ownCloud recommends deploying Telegraf on oCIS servers for general-purpose system metrics, such as disk space in use, CPU usage, or other vital parameters. Combined with the Jaeger client, it even becomes possible to do in-depth performance debugging of individual oCIS components in case some parts of the environment do not live up to expectations.

Long story short, MAT functionality is now at the core of oCIS and much more easily available than it was in previous ownCloud versions. Admins should absolutely leverage that new functionality.

Tough Call and a Risk to Take

The technical aspects of oCIS that are visible are already nothing short of spectacular. The software is very easily installed, and its completely redesigned components are faster than its predecessor and offer much better scalability. The modular design with microservices and APIs, even for extensions, looks promising. The biggest risk for ownCloud appears to be that, while taking big technological steps, they might loose a significant part of their PHP-based community. Community management in terms of Go and Vue.js (and EOS) is surely a big task for the company now and in the years to come.

Infos

Nextcloud: https://github.com/nextcloud
oCIS: https://github.com/owncloud/ocis
EOS: https://information-technology.web.cern.ch/services/eos-service
XRootD: https://xrootd.slac.stanford.edu
Reva storage engine: https://github.com/cs3org/reva
ownCloud Web: https://owncloud.dev/clients/web/
Traefik: https://doc.traefik.io/traefik/
oCIS documentation: https://owncloud.dev/ocis/
Example extension: https://owncloud.github.io/extensions/ocis_hello/
Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/u/owncloud/
ownCloud EOS docs: https://owncloud.dev/ocis/storage-backends/eos/
oCIS data flow: https://owncloud.github.io/ocis/flow-docs/public-upload-flow/

The Author

Markus Feilner is a Linux specialist from Regensburg, Germany. He has worked with Linux as an author, trainer, consultant, and journalist since 1994. For many years, he has worked as deputy editor-in-chief of German Linux Magazine and Heise iX. His company Feilner IT helps companies and administrations with their OSS strategy, documentation and leadership consulting.