Connecting two servers together - How to?

Question

I am using AMWS s3 in a ruby on rails project to store images for my models. Everything is working fine. I was just wondering if it okay/normal that if someone right clicks an image, it shows the following url:

https://mybucketname.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/photo/picture/100/batman.jpg

Is this a hacking risk, letting people see your bucket name? I guess I was expecting to see a bunch of randomized letters or something. /Noob

Solution

If you are using a domain, you can use DFS (distributed file system) to virtualize the namespace and make all the resources appear they come from one server. With DFS you can present shares \\server1\share1 and \\server2\share2 as \\domainname\share1 and \\domainname\share2.
There are many features available when you do this.

• two shares can service the same files from different locations
• you can maintain a redundant copy of a share
• you can move share from one server to another without changing names

More here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753479(v=ws.10).aspx

Comments

[jscott]

Is one, or more, of these a virtual machine? You question is vague, and lacking details. Would you please edit to include more information about what you want to achieve?

[Chris]

Edited..........

[jscott]

So are you looking for something like a distributed file system?

[Chris]

Yes, in other words, a server cluster.

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

"Server cluster" is meaningless. Did you mean a FILE STORAGE CLUSTER?

[Chris]

Yes..................

[OhadM]

Yes it is. You can create a short URL if you want.

[Michael - sqlbot]

@OhadM, no, a short URL will necessarily redirect to the real URL, and anyone who wants to know it can just as easily see it. Also, the assertion that revealing the bucket name is a security risk is dubious, and needs to be justified.

[Chris]

Thank you for the reply. DFS is an option however how is it that organisations such as Facebook, Google etc combine their HDD space instead of just using DFS to just create namespaces for shares?

[uSlackr]

Why do you believe that's what they are doing? Those apps are data-base driven apps with the database partitioned over many machines and the so-called "combination" of HDD space is a artifact of the application design. There are other methods besides DFS, but for windows shares, that one is straight forward to implement.

[MDMarra]

Google has a custom file system called Big Table that was designed internally by some of the world's top engineers at millions of R&D dollars. They also don't run Windows on their servers. Trying to make your two windows boxes behave like Google's multi-billion dollar custom designed setup is ludicrous.

[MDMarra]

Basically, if you have to ask how a company like Facebook or Google distributes their massively parallel custom workload, then you're not in a position to do it yourself. You have two servers. Keep it simple. Use DFS, that's what it was designed for.