Further to Direct access to EOS data on CephFS in k8s
The direct cephfs access via xrootd redirection discussed and implemented there works nicely and fits the use case for HEP data access. Now we are also investigating EOS deployments on k8s for the SKAO astronomy project, which is employing a kubernetes-centric approach for deploying SRC sites (aka grid sites). In this context, it is required for end users to have POSIX access to their data files. Moreover, the potential benefit of direct access is even higher, because the prohibitively large size of the astro data files prevents stage in to local disk. Instead, the users would be forced to stage in their data from EOS (cephfs) to their home directories (a different cephfs filesystem, obviously redundant and inefficient to copy data from one place in cephfs to another).
One nice solution would be to implement direct access via a simple symlink, e.g. eos cp --link /eos/data.root ~/ would be a “copy” operation that would instantly complete by creating a symlink pointing to the underlying data file. What do you think @apeters ?
Another option could be the FUSE interfaces but it seems there would be challenges getting this to work in a k8s pod.
Thanks!