[JNK] Re: [Linux-cluster] GFS with ATA/IDE drives

[Ken Preslan]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 05:05:58PM -0400, CC wrote:
> I'm also considering getting coraid EtherDrive -- www.coraid.com. The use
> ATA over Ethernet (AoE), and have drivers for Linux 2.4/2.6 that will make
> each drive appear a local drive. Basically you attach the Coraid server to a
> GigE switch and all the computers attached are able to see the drives as
> local drives.
> 
> How would GFS work under such an implementation (it's close to something
> like the one GFS server you suggested). Will one still need to use iSCSI or
> GNDB? 

I haven't played with an EtherDrive (or know anyone who has), but in
theory it should work fine.  I assume that the disks exported by the
EtherDrive box will show up as a block device in the /dev directory
somewhere.  You can just gfs_mkfs on the device and mount.  (Maybe you
want CLVM in there somewhere, too.)  You shouldn't need iSCSI or GNBD as
the EtherDrive should take care of all the block transport for you.

As with any shared block device, it's probably worth testing the EtherDrive
before you buy it.  Storage vendors don't always get truely shared block
devices right because there isn't a whole lot of software (like GFS) out
there to test against.

-- 
Ken Preslan <kpreslan at redhat.com>