[Linux-cluster] RFI quick HOWTO

[John Hearns]

On Sun, 2004-06-27 at 18:42, Christopher McCrory wrote:
> Hello...
> 
> 	Last year I looked at several distributed filesystems; OpenAFS, GFS,
> and NFS.  This was for a specific project.  I settled on NFS over LVM
> over software raid5.  It works well except for a few NFS issues here
> and there.  I really wanted to go with GFS but the lack of good
> documentation held me back.  What would be ideal is a specific simple
> HOWTO on setting up a simple lab test setup.
> 
> something like:
> 
> replicated with failover
> server1 fs /important_data on /dev/sdb1
> server2 fs /important_data on /dev/sdb1
> 
> client1 mount /important_data
> client2 mount /important_data
> 
> with no FC, no shared scsi, no dual ethernet networks.  Just the
> minimum hardware possible. Most labs already have this stuff laying
> around.

For that sort of thing, IMHO you should be looking at Linux-HA
http://www.linux-ha.org and using DRBD as the shared storage.

I've used Linux-HA for a failover cluster, using shared SCSI and
in another case using DRBD.

If it really is failover you are after, look at the HOWTOs and the 
journal articles referenced on the Linux-HA pages.
The minimal setup you will need is two servers, linked  by a single
Ethernet and a serial cable. The heartbeat can run over both the
Ethernet and the serial link, giving you redundancy.