Disadvantage of using external storage (e.g. via SFTP)

Hi all,

we are currently evaluating OC as replacement for our aging “File Drop/Exchange”. As we are receiving large files (multiple GB, some 50GB or even larger) and are hosting OC “off site” we are trying to figure out what the best way for attaching storage is. Since the Enterprise Edition is not an option at this point we are somewhat limited for now.

My thought was to add external storage via SFTP as this can be easily extended as needed. The SFTP storage is in the same data center as the OC installation hence bandwidth should not be an issue.

Are there any drawbacks of using SFTP storage vs local storage in the VM?

In my small scale test, everything went well but I’m looking for some real live examples/ideas.

Cheers,
Thomas

The external storage will be always slower than the local storage, hopefully not noticeable in your case.

I’d say the main drawback is while detecting changes in the backend. There might be some weird scenarios where the changes aren’t properly detected in the backend (it should work for the usual cases).
If you plan to use it as a “drop” storage where no change will be made in the backend, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Some extra recommendations are:

  • Make sure the connection with the storage is reliable. If the connection is unstable it could cause weird issues difficult to track.
  • The server should support the load. I don’t know if the protocol performance is acceptable for your needs. (I’m not saying the performance will be bad, I just don’t know)

Thanks for your feedback!

I’m keen to hear other ideas for setup. Our requirement is that we need up to 1.5 TB of storage but this will be fluctuating so having a VM running on Azure with that much storage doesnt make sense.

Are there any use cases on how to best deal with a setup like this?