Storing and displaying image files in grails application in cloud foundry

Question

I have an grails application, which allows users to upload image files and these images can be displayed. The application actually only stores file path in database and saves the image files in file system.

I've read some posts which says Cloud Foundry doesn't support local file system access. So my question is what modification should I do if I want to deploy my application to Cloud Foudry? I hope images still can be displayed directly on the webpage and users don't have to download them to their own computer only for viewing them.

Answer 1

The images stored on file system can disappear when your application stops, crashes, or moves. It should not be used for content that you want to persist. Further, the file system storage is not scalable. That is to say if more than one instance of your app is running the local storage is only visible to a specific instance of the app, and is not visible or shared across all instances.

To meet your requirements, a local service such as MongoDB GridFS, MySQL with blob data type or external blob stores such as Box.net or Amazon S3 can be used.