IPFS is a protocol and implementation of the distributed web. SeaweedFS is an open source version of Facebook's Haystack, a centralized filesystem (with redunda

IPFS is a protocol and implementation of the distributed web. SeaweedFS is an open source version of Facebook's Haystack, a centralized filesystem (with redundancy across multiple servers). See https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi10/tech/full_papers/Beaver.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi10/tech/full_papers/... TLDR, Haystack implements a sort of append-only journal design where smaller files are concatenated into a single large "journal" file. After adding, you get a "filename" back that is based on the information needed to locate the data you are interested in. volumename_seekposition.jpg, for example. Essentially, you eliminate the need for FS metadata this way, which leads to less disk hits for read operations. Open volume, seek to position, read contents (including metadata) until end of file, you're done. There is then a single-master database that controls the location of the volumes (with a redundant failover), which is possible because managing volumes is less difficult than managing the position of every single file in all the volumes in the system. I think they just use MySQL, amazingly. Pretty neat idea. It's designed very specifically for photo storage at Facebook. The main drawback with this design is that it doesn't support binding filesystem paths well - to do that you need a K/V database to match the name you want to the filename needed for Haystack/SeaweedFS. SeaweedFS can do this with a separate Redis and Cassandra "filer" database, but the Redis and Cassandra backends are currently implemented as "flat namespace" stores, so filers using them may not perform directory listings at this time. Huge drawback if you need to 'ls' subdirectories of files, for example. That was a dealbreaker for me for neocities.org implementation, also maintenance was still an open question with SeaweedFS (when things fail, what do I do to fix them?) so I ended up going with CephFS.