[lug] Clustering and GFS

[D. Stimits]

Jeff Schroeder wrote:
> D. wrote:
> 
> 
>>But what is GFS? Is it the base filesystem, or is it a layer over the
>>real filesystem? For example, NFS is called a filesystem, but it
>>always has something else *under* it, e.g., an exported ext2
>>partition. Or is GFS natively a base filesystem that also does
>>something more?
> 
> 
> GFS is a layer over, say, ext3.  When installed on each client machine, 
> it provides a "seamless" filesystem interface so all clients can access 
> the same global disk (which may, in fact, be a single ext3 partition, a 
> RAID device, or even something like a solid-state storage device).

In this case, you might consider XFS as the underlying filesystem. It's 
unlikely you'll find anything that behaves so well under huge files. 
Check out:
  http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/index.html
  http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html

(though admittedly you may not need the perfect performance...time might 
require you to use built-in filesystem support of a standard linux distro)

> 
> Unfortunately, the hardware storage for this system is beyond my 
> control, and I'm at the mercy of the Powers That Be, who have decided 
> to use GFS... while I could propose alternative technologies (and even 
> a test period, as you suggested) it would probably appear that I was 
> only trying to endanger a solution they've already accepted.  I've been 
> asked to "integrate", not "redesign". ;)

Yeah, I know how that goes. You might want to go to the oss.sgi.com 
email list for XFS and ask about experiences with GFS, and any 
information they might provide, both with and without XFS underneath it. 
The people that hang out on the XFS devel list tend to do some fairly 
non-trivial filesystem support on large systems, they are always happy 
to provide data even if it isn't directly about XFS.

> 
> My original post on this topic was simply to find someone with 
> clustering (and GFS) experience... although we've reached quite a 
> tangent at this point.  Nonetheless, this is good information and very 
> useful.  Many thanks.

I'd be interested in helping just to relieve boredom, but I can't claim 
I know anything about clustering or GFS. I know Linux and I know 
programming. And I am unemployed :(

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi.com