Does it support merging multiple small files into one when storing in the background (to reduce the number of inodes used)?

[Dong-GuoSheng]

我们有这样一个业务场景：每天数千万个（小）文件，存储1年以上，最终系统中的文件数会达到数十亿；
现在的rustfs，后台支持将多个小文件后台按一个文件存储（以大幅减少使用的inode总数）吗？

We have a business scenario where tens of millions of (small) files are stored daily for over a year, eventually reaching billions of files in the system. Does the current RustFS backend support storing multiple small files as a single file (to significantly reduce the total number of inodes used)?

[For8stt]

Afaik RustFS does not currently expose a small-object packing / coalescing feature like that.

So if you upload billions of small objects, I would assume they are still handled as separate objects internally, not automatically merged in the background into larger container files to save inodes.

For this kind of workload, I’d probably handle packing at the application layer, e.g.:

• batch many small files into larger objects
• use tar/zip/parquet/sequence-file style containers
• keep an external index: object key -> offset/length inside the packed object

Would be nice to have this as a RustFS feature though, because billions of tiny objects can become painful very quickly in terms of metadata/inode pressure.

lmk if there is already a roadmap item for small-object packing 🙂