Nginx Cache Config with Multiple Disk Drives

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 04:33:56PM +0000, Johns, Kevin wrote:

> 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.

There are two basic options:

- create one filesystem over multiple disks, using software RAID 
  or something like

- use symlinks to spread nginx's proxy cache path hierarchy over 
  multiple filesystems, see levels= description at 
  http://nginx.org/r/proxy_cache_path

-- 
Maxim Dounin
http://nginx.org/en/donation.html