10/Content Storage Service

This specification describes the Flux content storage service and the messages used to access it.

Name

github.com/flux-framework/rfc/spec_10.rst

Editor

Jim Garlick <garlick@llnl.gov>

State

raw

Language

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

Goals

The Flux content storage service is the storage layer for the Flux Key Value Store (KVS). The goals of the content storage service are:

  • Provide storage for opaque binary blobs.

  • Once stored from any broker rank, content is available to all broker ranks.

  • Stored content is immutable.

  • Content may not be removed while the Flux instance is running.

  • Stored content is addressable by its message digest, computed using a cryptographic hash.

  • The cryptographic hash algorithm is configurable per instance.

This kind of store has interesting and well-understood properties, as explored in Venti, Git, and Perkeep (see References below), for example:

  • Writes are idempotent

  • De-duplication is automatic

  • The address may be used to check the integrity of the addressed content

Implementation

The content service SHALL be implemented as a distributed cache with a presence on each broker rank. Each rank MAY cache content according to an implementation-defined heuristic.

Ranks > 0 SHALL make transitive load and store requests to their parent on the tree based overlay network to fill invalid cache entries, and flush dirty cache entries.

Rank 0 SHALL retain all content previously stored by the instance.

Rank 0 MAY extend its cache with an OPTIONAL backing store, the details of which are beyond the scope of this RFC.

The content service SHALL NOT be accessible by guest users.

Hash Algorithm

A Flux instance SHALL select a hash algorithm at startup. This selection MUST NOT change throughout the lifetime of the instance.

The configured algorithm SHALL be made available to Flux components via the content.hash broker attribute.

The hash algorithm:

  • MUST have a high enough collision resistance so that the probability of storing two different blobs with the same address is extremely unlikely

  • is RECOMMENDED to have high space efficiency

  • is RECOMMENDED to have low computational overhead

Content

Content SHALL consist of from zero to 1,048,576 bytes of data. Content SHALL NOT be interpreted by the content service.

Note: The blob size limit was temporarily increased to one gigabyte to avoid failures resulting from extreme workloads. The original limit will be restored once KVS hdir objects are implemented.

Address

Each unique, stored blob of content SHALL be addressable by its hash digest.

A human-readable blobref MAY be used as an alternate representation of the hash digest. A blobref SHALL consist of a string formed by the concatenation of:

  • the name of hash algorithm used to store the content

  • a hyphen

  • a message digest represented as a lower-case hex string

Example:

sha1-f1d2d2f924e986ac86fdf7b36c94bcdf32beec15

Note: “blobref” was shamelessly borrowed from Perkeep (see References below).

Store

A store request SHALL be encoded as a Flux request message with the blob as raw payload (blob length > 0), or no payload (blob length = 0).

A store response SHALL be encoded as a Flux response message with the message digest as raw payload, or an error response.

A request to store content that exceeds the maximum size SHALL receive error number 27, “File too large”, in response.

After the successful store response is received, the blob SHALL be accessible from any rank in the instance.

Load

A load request SHALL be encoded as a Flux request message with message digest as raw payload.

A load response SHALL be encoded as a Flux response message with blob as raw payload (blob length > 0), no payload (blob length = 0), or an error response.

A request to load unknown content SHALL receive error number 2, “No such file or directory”, in response.

Flush

A flush request SHALL cause the local rank content service to finish storing any dirty cache entries. A flush response SHALL NOT be sent until there are no dirty cache entries.

On rank 0, “dirty” SHALL be defined as “not stored on a backing store”. On rank > 0, “dirty” SHALL be defined as “not stored on rank 0”.

A flush request SHALL receive error number 38, “Function not implemented”, on rank 0 if a backing store is not configured.

Dropcache

A dropcache request SHALL cause the local content service to drop all non-essential entries from its cache.

Garbage Collection

References to content are the responsibility of the Flux Key Value Store. Content that the KVS no longer references MAY NOT be removed while the Flux instance is running.

A Flux instance that is configured to restart saves content before shutting down. The shutdown process, after the KVS service has been stopped, MAY choose to omit content that the final KVS root does not reference as a form of garbage collection.

References