images in database performance question

Anon

I need a solution where many servers in a load balancing setup can access images in one place. I want to stay away from NFS because of the security holes it presents. I was going to use a MySQL database but I just recently read that using this method is a major performance destroyer.

Is this true that using MySQL to store millions of images will seriously hurt the performance (I was planning to use a dedicated MySQL server just to handling of images). If so are there other solutions that I should be considering that allows any of my load-balancing web servers to let my users store images for their web pages in one location so if while browsing the web and the load balancing bounces them to a different server that it will know where to find them?

[deleted]

My motto: don't use a database as a filesystem.

Fetching images from a database give loads of overhead and hardly adds any functionality.
If you are using one dedicated server for it, remember that that server will be hit with many times the load of a single webserver. (so it'll have to be a big server)

NFS is much faster (and easier to do in html/php) and shouldn't be a safety issue if you configure your servers correctly.

Anon

Thanks for the prompt reply. At this point I'm not worried about the size of the servers at this point. More security and speed. We expect our web servers to need access to 10 million images in a fixed location.

Is this too much to ask of a filesystem?

If not is there a place you know of where I can find good information on setting up NFS securely as many have warned me that servers running NFS usually have big holes to hack into.

Thanks

[deleted]

10 million records of 10k each, that's 100GB
That's one big load of data.

Security holes can be plugged, either by common sense on the server itself, or by a firewall.

Anyway, if you do want to go for a database with such huge tables, I'd go for PG-sql or (if you are rich) oracle or informix.

And ofcourse there is a third option:
Create your own fileserver-ish server.
You can use PHP sockets to create a listening server that the other scripts can send simple commands to.
Use the tcp-wrapper on your server to restrict access so only your webservers can access it.

Anon

I think I've found the solution to my problem/concerns. I've had a few people relieve my anxiety stating that NFS really can be set up securely on a private network behind a firewall. I was worried after reading a couple articles that stated that is how hackers got in.

To suppliment that, someone has suggested a Raidzone OpenNAS 1TB file server to use for my images. 1 terabyte should be plenty enough for now and it's realitively affordable. So I can simply call the files in the fileserver. Because of the high number of files I will use a database only to keep track of the names, locations and owners of the files for easier management (clients are limited to what they can upload).

If my site grows larger than this then I fully expect some large company will be wanting to take this off my hands anyway 🙂

Thanks for your help.

[deleted]

Peachy! :-)