[Linux-cluster] Doing without GFS mounting several clients read-only

[Mike Papper]

Hi, I am considering using GFS + Linux Cluster so that multiple clients
can "share" the same filesystem. An alternative I am considering would
enable me to not have to use GFS - which I believe will reduce the
complexity of our system greatly.

I am hoping some users of GFS have encountered these issues before and
was hoping to get feedback - any is appreciated.

The alternative I am considering is to have a single filesystem
available to many clients using a SAN (iSCSI in this case). However only
one client would mount the filesystem (Reiser, XFS etc.) as read/write
while the others would mount it read-only. For my application, all files
are written once then only ever read or deleted.

Is it the case that when a new file is added (by the writer machine)
that the clients that are mounted read only would see and be able to
read this new file?

Does this apply to symbolic-link files as well?

Does anyone have experience with such a configuration?

Mike