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Setup Seafile cluster with NFS

In a Seafile cluster, one common way to share data among the Seafile server instances is to use NFS. You should only share the files objects (located in seafile-data folder) and user avatars as well as thumbnails (located in seahub-data folder) on NFS. Here we'll provide a tutorial about how and what to share.

How to setup nfs server and client is beyond the scope of this wiki. Here are few references:

  • Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNFSHowTo
  • CentOS: http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/ch-nfs.html

Supposed your seafile server installation directory is /data/haiwen, after you run the setup script there should be a seafile-data and seahub-data directory in it. And supposed you mount the NFS drive on /seafile-nfs, you should follow a few steps:

  • Move the seafile-data and seahub-data folder to /seafile-nfs:
mv /data/haiwen/seafile-data /seafile-nfs/
mv /data/haiwen/seahub-data /seafile-nfs/
  • On every node in the cluster, make a symbolic link to the shared seafile-data and seahub-data folder 
cd /data/haiwen
ln -s /seafile-nfs/seafile-data /data/haiwen/seafile-data
ln -s /seafile-nfs/seahub-data /data/haiwen/seahub-data

This way the instances will share the same seafile-data and seahub-data folder. All other config files and log files will remain independent.