[Linux-cluster] a basic question

[Mustafa A. Hashmi]

On 7/4/06, Patrick Caulfield <pcaulfie at redhat.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Is GFS suitable?
> >> >
> >> > In other words, a host can be a server and a client to gfs at the
> >> same time?

> >> No. you need shared storage for GFS.
> >
> > Won't gnbd exports work here?
> >
>
> They could do. but if you have 20 nodes each with their own storage you'd need
> to export every disk to every other server.
>
> Then what do you do? If you aggregate them using LVM you end up with 20 points
> of failure for your filesystem !

Very true. Till we have cluster mirroring this is obviously the worst
idea. I was however under the impression that mirroring support was
now available (maybe not for production?).

> When cluster mirroring is ready this will help somewhat, but it's nowhere near
> the same thing as distributing the load over 20 machines and keeping it reliable.

Absolutely. Maybe Lustre (lustre.org) makes sense here for Giovanni?
-- 
Mustafa A. Hashmi
mahashmi at gmail.com
mh at stderr.net