How do you create a sharesystem between two nodes in a cluster for a Rails app?

Question

I deployed to a cluster, and realized that each node holds its own independant database.

I am currently using Engine Yard as my host.

How can I create a sharesystem so that all my nodes/instances share the same file system?

Some people recommend S3, but this may not be the best choice because my users need to be able to edit their files they upload.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Add a utility instance to your cluster, and use that. /data on EY cloud instances is an EBS volume that you can snapshot for backup/whatever purposes. You can use rsync or whatever for the actual file transfer from app instance to the utility instance.