Nginx Cache Config with Multiple Disk Drives

[Johns, Kevin]

Hi,

I am looking for guidance on how best to configure Nginx Proxy Cache in a multi-disk drive environment. Our typical server setup is such that each drive is its own partition, for example, if we have a 10 drive server we may setup drives 4-10 for storage such as:

/dev/sdd1 /nginx/cached
/dev/sde1 /nginx/cachee
/dev/sdf1 /nginx/cachef
/dev/sdg1 /nginx/cacheg
/dev/sdh1 /nginx/cacheh
/dev/sdi1 /nginx/cachei
/dev/sdj1 /nginx/cachej

I see that in the Nginx Proxy config, you can have multiple proxy_cache_path directives, each of which can point to the various disk drives. The proxy_cache directive is then used to determine which zone is used for a given configuration block (http, server, location). However, I am unable to determine how to spread the cache across the multiple drives as essentially a shared resource. Having to define which disk to use for each server or location block is undesirable as we don't want to leave some disks underutilized and others over utilized.

Any guidance as to how best configure Nginx for this situation would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Kevin