I've a samba file server cluster (Active\Passive) with 2 cluster nodes on Cent OS 4.3 both nodes are connected to a shared storage through Fiber switch+HBA the shared storage holds the file system that samba shares to the windows machines. only one cluster node mounts the file system (the active one) currently I'm using ext3 as the file system on the shared storage because I've experienced slow response time and locking problems from the samba service. I've tried formatting the shared file system with GFS disabling locks (lock_nolock), tried mounting the file system with lockproto=lock_nolock,localchaching,localflocks with no success, samba still complains about oplocks breakes and the windows system connecting to the shares experience slow performance from samba. the samba file system exports the file system to 3 IIS servers through unc path's it's dealing with lots (1,000,000) of small (under 250KB) files. when using ext3 as the file system for the samba shares i have no problem. 1. should i use GFS for the file system?, to avoid file system corruption in case one cluster node crash or is ext3 is a good enough solution? 2. why when using GFS with lockproto=lock_nolock,localchaching,localflocks i still see "glock nq calls" and "lm_lock calls" in gfs_tool counters my main goal is to achieve maximum samba performance with the lowest chance for file system corruption in case of a failover or crashed cluster node. thanks Tom Ok.