# Set up server infrastructure with IPFS Cluster

If you want to install IPFS in a server environment and offer IPFS as a service, you should look at IPFS Cluster (opens new window) as a way to scale your IPFS deployment beyond a single IPFS daemon. IPFS Cluster provides data orchestration across a swarm of IPFS daemons by allocating, replicating, and tracking a global pin-set distributed among multiple peers. This makes it significantly easier to manage multiple IPFS nodes and ensure that data is available across an internal network.

IPFS Cluster is a distributed application that works as a sidecar to IPFS peers, maintaining a global cluster pinset and intelligently allocating its items to the IPFS peers. This makes it significantly easier to manage multiple IPFS nodes and ensure that data is available across an internal network. IPFS Cluster powers large IPFS storage services like nft.storage (opens new window) and web3.storage (opens new window).

TIP

As a Kubernetes user, you can use a Kubernetes operator for IPFS called IPFS operator (opens new window) to easily create and manage clusters consisting of hundreds of peers. The IPFS operator is in active development and not yet recommended for production use cases. If the operator is something you would like to include in your infrastructure, check out the official documentation (opens new window) and operator source code (opens new window) for instructions and the latest progress.

# Features

IPFS Cluster has the following features:

Easy to run: Runs independently from IPFS and the IPFS daemon’s API.
Handles replication of millions of pins to hundreds of IPFS daemons: Tracks pin lifetime asynchronously, asks IPFS to pin things at a sustainable rate and retries pinning in case of failures.
Clever pinning prioritization: New pins are prioritized over pin requests that are old or have repeatedly failed to pin.
Ingest pins at scale: Pins can be added at a rate hundreds of pins per second into the cluster from that moment they are tracked and managed by the cluster peers.
Balanced allocation: Distributes pins evenly among peers in different groups and subgroups (i.e regions, availability zones), ultimately choosing those with most free storage space available.
API and CLI: Provides a command-line client and a fully featured Cluster HTTP REST API. No central server to manage: Cluster peers form a distributed network and maintain a global, replicated, conflict-free list of pins.
Baked-in permissions: The embedded permission model supports peers with permissions to change the cluster pinset and peers which store content as instructed but that cannot modify the pinset.
Name your pins: Supports custom replication factors, names and metadata for every pin.
Multi-peer add: Ingests IPFS content to multiple daemons directly.
CAR import support: Directly imports CAR-archived content using custom DAGs.
IPFS proxy API: Cluster peers provide an additional IPFS proxy API that behaves exactly like the IPFS daemon’s API does.
Integration-ready: Cluster peers can be programmatically launched and controlled using Go and Javascript clients for its API.
Powered by libp2p (opens new window): Built on libp2p, the battle-tested, next-generation p2p networking library used by IPFS, Filecoin and Ethereum V2.

# Create a local cluster

To see if IPFS Cluster is suitable for your project, follow this quick start guide and spin up a local IPFS Cluster instance. At the end of this guide, you will have a solid understanding of how IPFS Cluster is set up and how to interact with it. To create a local cluster, complete the prerequisites. Then, follow the procedure.

TIP

If you'd rather create a production-ready cluster, take a look at the official IPFS Cluster documentation → (opens new window)

# Prerequisites

You must have both Docker (opens new window) and Docker Compose (opens new window) installed. Check that they're both installed properly by checking the version:

docker version

> Client: Docker Engine - Community
> Version:           19.03.13
> API version:       1.40
> ...

docker-compose version

> docker-compose version 1.27.4, build 40524192
> docker-py version: 4.3.1
> ...

If you're having issues installing or using Docker or Docker-Compose, see the official documentation → (opens new window).

# Procedure

Download the latest ipfs-cluster-ctl package from dist.ipfs.tech (opens new window):

wget https://dist.ipfs.tech/ipfs-cluster-ctl/v1.0.6/ipfs-cluster-ctl_v1.0.6_linux-amd64.tar.gz

Unzip the package:

tar xvzf ipfs-cluster-ctl_v1.0.6_linux-amd64.tar.gz

> ipfs-cluster-ctl/ipfs-cluster-ctl
> ipfs-cluster-ctl/LICENSE
> ipfs-cluster-ctl/LICENSE-APACHE
> ipfs-cluster-ctl/LICENSE-MIT
> ipfs-cluster-ctl/README.md

Download the docker-compose.yml file (opens new window) and place it into the ipfs-cluster-ctl directory:
```
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ipfs/ipfs-cluster/v1.0.6/docker-compose.yml
```

Start the cluster using docker-compose:

Depending on your system permissions, you may have to run the command as a root user.

docker-compose up

> Recreating ipfs2 ... done
> Recreating ipfs1    ... done
> Recreating ipfs0    ... done
> Recreating cluster2 ... done
> ...

WARNING

Errors such as the following may display:

cluster2    | 2020-10-27T15:20:15.116Z  ERROR   ipfshttp    error posting to IPFS:Post "http://172.18.0.2:5001/api/v0/pin/ls?type=recursive": dial tcp 172.18.0.2:5001: connect: connection refused

You can safely ignore these errors for now. They're showing because some of the IPFS nodes within the cluster haven't finished spinning up yet. Everything should have loaded after a couple of minutes:

> ipfs1       | API server listening on /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/5001
> ipfs1       | WebUI: http://0.0.0.0:5001/webui
> ipfs1       | Gateway (readonly) server listening on /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/8080
> ipfs1       | Daemon is ready

Open a new terminal window.
You can now interact with your cluster. In a new terminal window, navigate to the ipfs-cluster-ctl directory.

List the peers within the cluster:

./ipfs-cluster-ctl peers ls

> 12D3KooWBaQ9SGtdnJmyS2fe7uq5gXQnejCf5ma2n9cUEbwVD5gf | cluster2 | Sees 2 other peers
> > Addresses:
> - /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWBaQ9SGtdnJmyS2fe7uq5gXQnejCf5ma2n9cUEbwVD5gf
> - /ip4/172.18.0.5/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWBaQ9SGtdnJmyS2fe7uq5gXQnejCf5ma2n9cUEbwVD5gf
> ...
> 12D3KooWDmjW55h3vSqLmSm1fBxPzs1dHkbtjWSHEj7RhzpcY9vE | cluster0 | Sees 2 other peers
> > Addresses:
> - /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWDmjW55h3vSqLmSm1fBxPzs1dHkbtjWSHEj7RhzpcY9vE
> - /ip4/172.18.0.7/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWDmjW55h3vSqLmSm1fBxPzs1dHkbtjWSHEj7RhzpcY9vE
> ...
> 12D3KooWLhGJaddVKj8gsYXfYpyMKL5NhcmtiakDCWhDGtZJSu2w | cluster1 | Sees 2 other peers
> > Addresses:
> - /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWLhGJaddVKj8gsYXfYpyMKL5NhcmtiakDCWhDGtZJSu2w
> - /ip4/172.18.0.6/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWLhGJaddVKj8gsYXfYpyMKL5NhcmtiakDCWhDGtZJSu2w
> ...

Add a file into the cluster:

wget https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Neptune_-_Voyager_2_%2829347980845%29_flatten_crop.jpg
./ipfs-cluster-ctl add Neptune_-_Voyager_2_\(29347980845\)_flatten_crop.jpg

> added QmdzvHZt6QRJzySuVzURUvKCUzrgGwksvrsnqTryqxD4yn Neptune_-_Voyager_2_(29347980845)_flatten_crop.jpg

See the status of that file across the cluster of IPFS nodes using the CID given above:

./ipfs-cluster-ctl status QmdzvHZt6QRJzySuVzURUvKCUzrgGwksvrsnqTryqxD4yn

> QmdzvHZt6QRJzySuVzURUvKCUzrgGwksvrsnqTryqxD4yn:
> > cluster2             : PINNED | 2020-10-27T15:42:39.984850961Z
> > cluster0             : PINNED | 2020-10-27T15:42:39.984556496Z
> > cluster1             : PINNED | 2020-10-27T15:42:39.984842325Z

The output shows that QmdzvHZ... is pinned across the three IPFS nodes within our cluster.

When you're finished playing around, kill the cluster:

Depending on your system permissions, you may have to run the command as a root user.

docker-compose kill

> Killing cluster0 ... done
> Killing cluster1 ... done
> Killing cluster2 ... done
> Killing ipfs1    ... done
> Killing ipfs0    ... done
> Killing ipfs2    ... done

The terminal running the ipfs-cluster-ctl daemon will close any open connections:

> ...
> ipfs0 exited with code 137
> ipfs1 exited with code 137
> cluster0 exited with code 137
> cluster2 exited with code 137
> cluster1 exited with code 137
> ipfs2 exited with code 137

# Next steps

If you want to delve deeper into IPFS Cluster, check out the project's documentation at cluster.ipfs.io → (opens new window)

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