The Gluster Blog

Gluster blog stories provide high-level spotlights on our users all over the world

How Picture Marketing is Using and Extending GlusterFS

Gluster
2013-12-17

Louis Zuckerman, CTO of Picture Marketing, is working on not one, but two interesting projects for Gluster. Zuckerman is working on a Java filesystem backed by GlusterFS and Java Native Interface (JNI) bindings for GlusterFS’s native library (libgfapi).

Zuckerman says he’s using GlusterFS with storing media for Picture Marketing. “Brand ambassadors use our mobile apps to take pictures and videos at events and upload them to our online platform. After processing the uploads our system stores the media in a GlusterFS cluster. From there it is served to event attendees through custom web sites made specifically for the events.”

According to Zuckerman GlusterFS “is ideal for our use case.”

“Over the last two years we’ve enjoyed excellent reliability and superb performance from our cluster in EC2,” says Zuckerman. “Thanks to GlusterFS’ scale-out architecture we can grow our processing and web app clusters to accommodate increased demand for our online services. This is critical for our business since our system has been used by over half the top 100 brands in the US, at major sports venues, retail stores, and all kinds of events where brand ambassadors interact with customers.”

Scratching The Itch

While GlusterFS provided the features and stability that Picture Marketing needs, Zuckerman had to roll up his sleeves a bit to ensure he could run it on his system of choice.

Zuckerman began working with GlusterFS in late 2010 on EC2, and worked on packaging Gluster for 32-bit systems because the Gluster only provided 64-bit packages. “At that time Gluster only provided 64-bit packages, and the downstream packages provided by Debian (and thus Ubuntu) were stuck at a version a year older due to bugs. I fixed the bugs in Debian and became co-maintainer of the Debian project’s GlusterFS packages (helping out lead maintainer Patrick Matthaei whenever I can). I’ve also been providing my own packages specially tailored for Ubuntu since that time.”

That work led to Zuckerman being tapped as the official Debian and Ubuntu packager for GlusterFS, and to a seat on Gluster’s community advisory board. Not that he wants to keep all the fun and glory to himself. “I’d like to see more people get involved with the packaging process. I’m grateful for those who take the time to report bugs in the packages, and try to help anyone interested in rolling their own based on my or Debian’s sources.”

After tackling the packaging problem, Zuckerman started working on a few projects of interest around Java and GlusterFS.

Building a Filesystem Service Provider for Java 7

Currently, Zuckerman says that the projects are for fun. “Java is one of the languages I know fairly well and I thought that implementing an NIO.2 filesystem provider would be a fun challenge. (It sure is!) The project is actually a pair of related software packages: a Java JNI wrapper around the libgfapi C library (libgfapi-jni), and an implementation of the NIO.2 filesystem service provider API (glusterfs-java-filesystem) that uses the JNI library.”

He notes that Hiram Chirino was “instrumental” in getting the libgfapi-jni off the ground, and “probably would not have been able to make a JNI wrapper for the libgfapi C library without his support and the JNI code generator, HawtJNI” which is written by Chirino.

He also says he’d like to find a few co-contributors for the projects. “The Java projects are still in infancy and I have lots of plans for new features. Unfortunately I don’t have as much free time to put into coding as I would like so things are progressing slowly.”

Working with the Gluster Community

Overall, Zuckerman says that he’s had a good experience working with the Gluster community. “I have enjoyed a good rapport with the GlusterFS developers, and other community members, since I first began using GlusterFS back in late 2010,” says Zuckerman.

“I’ve asked lots of questions over the years and the developers are extremely knowledgeable, helpful, and kind in their support of users. That was a big motivation for me to get involved, and stay involved, with the project. I like the software and get along well with the people who make it.”

Have questions about Zuckerman’s projects? You can find him on Freenode as semiosis and on Twitter as @pragmaticism. Questions about Gluster development in general? Check out the #gluster channel on irc.gnu.org, or join the mailing lists to get help from the Gluster community.

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