Michael Dale wrote:
I think thumbnail and transformation servers (they should also do stuff like rotating things on demand) are separate from how we store things, and will just be acting on behalf of the user anyway. So they don't introduce new requirements to image storage. Anybody see anything problematic about that?
I think managing storage of procedural derivative assets differently than original files is pretty important. Probably one of the core features of a Wikimedia Storage system.
Yes, I think we should treat them as different "image clusters", optionally sharing servers (unless there's a better equivalent available in the dfs).
Assuming finite storage it would be nice to specify we don't care as much if we lose thumbnails vs losing original assets. For example when doing 3rd party backups or "dumps"we don't need all the derivatives to be included.
We don't' need need to keep random resolutions derivatives of old revisions of assets around for ever, likewise improvements to SVG rasterization or improvements to transcoding software would mean "expiring" derivatives
A good point.