[Linux-cluster] using lacie ethernet disk raid as shared storage

[Gordan Bobic]

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:38:04 +0200, ESGLinux <esggrupos at gmail.com> wrote:

> I can mount this disk with NFS (also with CIFS but I´m not using this
> protocol)
> 
> My idea was to mount the disk with NFS on the 2 nodes of a red hat
cluster,
> but I don´t know if it is a good idea. (perhaps no :-( )

There's no reason why you couldn't or shouldn't do this. If all you want is
some shared storage and don't care about the single point of failure, then
this is exactly what the device was intended for. :)

> The cluster are going to serve a HA httpd service (I know, with this disk
I
> have a SPOF, but that is all I have, no money for more .-(( )
> 
> any suggestion with this scenario?

It should "just work" as you described. NFS mount it on both nodes and
point Apache at it as per usual. It'll probably work faster than a
clustered file system solution. For redundancy, however, if you have enough
disk space on the web nodes, you could set up mirrored storage using DRBD
and run GFS on top of that. You'd end up with full redundancy and no need
for the NAS (assuming, as I said, that nodes have enough space). Note that
fencing would be absolutely mandatory if you use GFS or else either node
failing would halt the cluster to prevent data corruption.

Gordan