[Linux-cluster] simplest usage case for shared storage pool

[William Yardley]

I have a Dell MD-3000 hooked up (via SAS) to 2 (will be 4 in actual
usage) Dell 2900 series servers. I would like to know the _bare_minimum_
set of stuff I need to configure to share a filesystem between the two
devices, keeping in mind the following criteria:

 * The devices will mount the filesystem ro - there will be only a
   single node mounting the filesystesm rw
 * The root filesystem or other system files will not be mounting the
   array - just a filesystem with shared data.
 * The applications that will be accessing the data will be Apache
   (read-only), as well as (on the rw host) rsync or some other standard
   utility to keep things up to date.

So given that, is fencing each host and having a full cluster setup
really necessary? Given that gfs (and the application(s) accessing the
image do POSIX compliant file locking, isn't there some simpler way to
accomplish this?

Assuming it is necessary, I should be able to use IPMI on the individual
hosts to fence the devices, correct?

Obviously NFS would be a bit simpler, but even with a NetApp or other
filer appliance, and the latest versions of NFS, I'm a bit concerned
that the performance wouldn't be as good.

w