[Linux-cluster] Building SAN with Red Hat Cluster. Is it possible?

[Igor Zhbanov]

Hello!

I want to build system consisting of several frontend-nodes and two-four
backend (storage) nodes. I don't want to use hardware shared storage for
some reasons. So, we can use some networking block device to connect two
nodes (e.g. DRBD v0.8 in primary/primary mode, or GNBD?) if needed.
The question, is it possible to setup Red Hat Cluster in such configuration:
1) over DRBD or local hard drives if possible on two or four storage nodes;
2) to be able mount file system at frontend nodes which have no direct access
   to shared storage device, i.g. is it possible to mount file system over
   network?;
3) to have failover and load-balancing storage nodes, so each node will hold
   entire copy of stored data, so storage nodes can be accessed in parallel
   and if one node goes down, system will function correctly.
4) If it is possible to mount file system on some other node, will it be
   mounted as file system or firstly some block device will be exported
   to that node and file system will be mounted over it?

Thank you.