[Linux-cluster] GFS2 vs EXT3+HA-LVM

[Corey Kovacs]

I have been trying for a very long time now to put together a cluster
(RHEL5.2/3/4 + GFS/GFS2) that would match the performance of our current
Tru64 cluster using advfs with limited success. I've tried every tuning
technique I can think of and received help from numerous people as well as
this list. For all that I am thankful.

However, I've come to the realization that at this time it's simply not
reasonable to expect the same performance from GFS2 as my current setup. I
have even been told from RedHat support that our use case (general purpose
file server with applications and home dirs along with some data thrown in
isn't really a good fit for using GFS2. Not sure I agree with that or even
understand the motivation behind the comment but I am passed that now. The
simple truth is for our purposes, I think he may be right and I am now
exploring the idea of using ha-lvm with ext3. I'd not set ip up before this
past week and I have to say it looks promising. Rsyncs, directories with
lots of files etc. all behave as I expect them to, fast.

That said, how many people are actually using the ha-lvm stuff in
production? I don't know anyone using it and have heard little if anything
on this list about it. I am hoping that's because it 'just works' and people
leave it at that.

Has anyone got any practical experience using this method?  I went together
fairly straightforward once I got past the lvm tagging, but I'd thought I'd
ask folks what pitfalls there are if any. Only one I can think of is someone
not in the know forgetting about the tagging involved and having a tough
time managing lvm etc.


Any thoughts are appreciated


Regards


Corey
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