Shared Storage with NFS and SSHFS

FUSE and SSHFS on Linux

The first step for any FUSE-based filesystem is to make sure that FUSE itself is included in the kernel or supplied as a module. Many distributions already come with FUSE built-in. A simple way to know whether FUSE has been built for your distro or kernel is to check whether the modules are loaded into memory.

$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
fuse                   73530  0
...

The next step is to install SSHFS, either with the package management tools for your distribution or from source. If you need to build it from source, the same simple build steps of many open source applications apply,

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
% make install

where the last step is performed as root. Just be sure to read the SSHFS page for package prerequisites. Notice that I installed SSHFS into /usr . The SSHFS binary is installed into /usr/bin , which is in the standard path (handy tip).

To make sure everything is installed correctly, you can simply try the sshfs -V command as a user (no root needed):

$ sshfs -V
SSHFS version 2.5
FUSE library version: 2.8.3
fusermount version: 2.8.3
using FUSE kernel interface version 7.12

This example is on an old desktop system, so the software versions are on the old side.

Testing SSHFS with Linux

Now that SSHFS is installed, you can test it. For this example, I will use SSHFS to mount a directory named CLUSTERBUFFER2 (Listing 1) from the desktop onto a test system as /home/laytonjb/DATA . First, I need to create the directory on the test system:

[laytonjb@test8 ~]$ mkdir DATA
[laytonjb@test8 ~]$ cd DATA
[laytonjb@test8 DATA]$ ls -s
total 0

Listing 1: CLUSTERBUFFER2 Content

[laytonjb@home4 CLUSTERBUFFER2]$ ls -s
total 3140
   4 BLKTRACE/                       4 NFSIOSTAT/   296 SE_strace.ppt
   4 CHECKSUM/                       4 NPB/           4 STRACE/
  32 Data_storage_Discussion.doc     4 OLD/           4 STRACE_NEW_PY/
   4 FS_AGING/                       4 OTHER2/        4 STRACENG/
   4 FS_Scan/                        4 PAK/           4 STRACE_PY/
 324 fs_scan.tar.gz                164 pak.tar.gz     4 STRACE_PY2/
   4 IOSTAT/                         4 PERCEUS/       4 STRACE_PY_FILE_POINTER/
1300 LWESFO06.pdf                    4 REAL_TIME/   944 Using Tracing Tools.ppt
   4 LYLE_LONG/                      4 REPLAYER/

An empty mountpoint (directory) is recommended, because when the remote filesystem is mounted, it will “cover up” any files in the directory (this is also true for NFS).

Mounting a filesystem using SSHFS can be done by any user with no admin intervention. The basic form of the SSHFS command is:

$ sshfs user@home:[dir] [local dir]

For this example, the following command was used:

[laytonjb@test8 ~]$ sshfs 192.168.1.4:/home/laytonjb/DATA /home/laytonjb/DATA
laytonjb@192.168.1.4's password:

Notice that the full paths for both the remote directory and the local directory were used. Also notice that that the password on the desktop (the storage server) had to be used. This could be avoided with the use of passwordless SSH and SSH keys.

To make sure everything was mounted correctly, take a look at the content of the local directory on the test system (Listing 2).

Listing 2: Local Directory on Test System

[laytonjb@test8 ~]$ cd DATA
[laytonjb@test8 DATA]$ ls -s
total 3140
   4 BLKTRACE                        4 NFSIOSTAT    296 SE_strace.ppt
   4 CHECKSUM                        4 NPB            4 STRACE
  32 Data_storage_Discussion.doc     4 OLD            4 STRACE_NEW_PY
   4 FS_AGING                        4 OTHER2         4 STRACENG
   4 FS_Scan                         4 PAK            4 STRACE_PY
 324 fs_scan.tar.gz                164 pak.tar.gz     4 STRACE_PY2
   4 IOSTAT                          4 PERCEUS        4 STRACE_PY_FILE_POINTER
1300 LWESFO06.pdf                    4 REAL_TIME    944 Using Tracing Tools.ppt
   4 LYLE_LONG                       4 REPLAYER

SSHFS can be used on both secured and unsecured networks and by users without administrator intervention. As long as the user has permissions for the remote directory, then SSHFS can be used. Most importantly, you should pay attention to the mapping of user IDs (UIDs) and group IDs (GIDs) between systems. If the permissions on the client system don’t match the server system, some mapping may be required between the two systems. SSHFS has the ability to read a file that contains mapping information and then take care of the mapping between the systems if needed.

Both SSHFS and SSH have a number of tuning options that affect performance. In a previous exercise, multiple options were tested and compared with NFS on two systems. Using the defaults for SSHFS, SSH, and NFS, NFS had much better streaming and input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance than SSHFS. With caching, large reads, and the use of a fast compression algorithm named Arcfour, SSH performance matched that of NFS for both streaming and IOPS tests.

A second round of tests was performed by adjusting network and TCP tuning options. When coupled with the previous SSHFS and SSH parameters, SSHFS performance exceeded NFS for both streaming and IOPS tests. However, Arcfour is not recommenced for use anymore, so when the encryption algorithm was changed to the default AES-128 encryption, the resulting SSHFS performance could not meet that of NFS in streaming or IOPS tests.

To try to regain the performance, a “compress” SSHFS option was used, which brought the SSHFS performance close to NFS, but not quite. However, it does illustrate that you can get very close to NFS performance with some tuning options.