2df6b670c6
There is probably a better place for this documentation but we'd like to move this elsewhere than a github issue. We can move this to a more appropriate location with the documentation effort. Signed-off-by: Stephen J Day <stephen.day@docker.com>
50 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
# Architecture
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**TODO(stevvooe):** Discuss the architecture of the registry, internally and
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externally, in a few different deployment scenarios.
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## Design
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### Eventual Consistency
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> **NOTE:** This section belongs somewhere, perhaps in a design document. We
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> are leaving this here so the information is not lost.
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Running the registry on eventually consistent backends has been part of the
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design from the beginning. This section covers some of the approaches to
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dealing with this reality.
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There are a few classes of issues that we need to worry about when
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implementing something on top of the storage drivers:
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1. Read-After-Write consistency (see this [article on
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s3](http://shlomoswidler.com/2009/12/read-after-write-consistency-in-amazon.html)).
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2. [Write-Write Conflicts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write%E2%80%93write_conflict).
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In reality, the registry must worry about these kinds of errors when doing the
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following:
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1. Accepting data into a temporary upload file may not have latest data block
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yet (read-after-write).
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2. Moving uploaded data into its blob location (write-write race).
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3. Modifying the "current" manifest for given tag (write-write race).
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4. A whole slew of operations around deletes (read-after-write, delete-write
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races, garbage collection, etc.).
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The backend path layout employs a few techniques to avoid these problems:
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1. Large writes are done to private upload directories. This alleviates most
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of the corruption potential under multiple writers by avoiding multiple
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writers.
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2. Constraints in storage driver implementations, such as support for writing
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after the end of a file to extend it.
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3. Digest verification to avoid data corruption.
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4. Manifest files are stored by digest and cannot change.
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5. All other non-content files (links, hashes, etc.) are written as an atomic
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unit. Anything that requires additions and deletions is broken out into
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separate "files". Last writer still wins.
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Unfortunately, one must play this game when trying to build something like
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this on top of eventually consistent storage systems. If we run into serious
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problems, we can wrap the storagedrivers in a shared consistency layer but
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that would increase complexity and hinder registry cluster performance.
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