[rt-users] Option to store attachments on the filesystem

[Thomas Sibley]

Please keep replies on the list.

For the record, I'm not claiming that core RT shouldn't support
attachments on disk in the future.  I'm just trying to give you the
relevant info for right now.

On 12/22/2011 08:58 PM, Geoff Mayes wrote:
> I searched but struck out.  Could you provide some links?  Why isn'
> it public?  Any way I can take a look at it?  :)

The extension was originally the result of customer work, and it hasn't
been made public.  Will it be made public?  We don't know yet.  For the
time being, you'll need to contact sales at bestpractical.com if you're
interested in it.

The mailing list threads I found just now with a search:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/rt/users/92667
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/rt/users/100964

> Is it that non-trivial?  The Bugzilla in-house Attachments.pm module
> we used to use was 200 lines of Perl and that handled the main 8TB
> attachments datastore as well as the archives 30TB datastore, sorting
> out discrepancies between the two.  And larger organizations will
> have the resources and expertise to do these kinds of things easily,
> so if RT really is for organizations of all sizes, then how does it
> cater to the non-trivial users in this matter?

Larger organizations take a variety of steps to help ensure RT performs
well.  Yes, occasionally that includes putting attachments on disk, but
it also includes good database tuning and many other tweaks before that.
 The fact is that a 15 or 20GB database is simply not large at all;
15-20GB fits on a single USB flash drive.

> I just don't see how keeping attachments in the database is *optimal*
> for backing up and restoring the database when the database gets
> beyond 10-20GB, especially when an organization hasn't paid Oracle
> $5,000 so they can run hotcopy on their InnoDB databases.

As Ken from rice.edu said earlier, there are smarter backup solutions
than dumping/restoring the entire DB every single time.  He named a couple.

As for Oracle's $5k tool, you can get similar results with Percona's
completely free, open-source hot backup/copy tool for InnoDB called
XtraBackup: http://www.percona.com/software/percona-xtrabackup/

> How big are their databases and attachment tables?  How do they do
> backups and restores?  What are their disaster recovery plans?

These are customers that we can't provide that information on.  There
was at least one thread in 2010 or 2011 on the mailing list asking
people to contribute stats about the sizes of their RT instance.  Some
notably large ones came up.

Thomas