[linux-lvm] HA Fileserver configuration recommendation sought.

[David S.]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 04:13:45PM -0800, Dan Stromberg wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 11:24 -0800, David S. wrote:
> > You can use PVFS2 (http://www.pvfs.org/pvfs2/) to aggregate disks from
> > multiple servers into on big file system.  Though PVFS2 is specifically
> > designed for parallel applications, and may not be suited for your
> > purposes.  You can sort-of do it with AFS (http://www.openafs.org),
> > with mutiple file servers servicing the same name space.  AFS is again
> > rather different from an "ordinary" file system, however.  I know you
> > can do it with IBM's GPFS (http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/clusters/software/gpfs.html);
> > we use GPFS here on two servers attached to an IBM SAN to create a
> > 6.5T file system.  But if you decide to take a run at GPFS, don't
> > blame me.
> 
> Does PVFS2 have posix semantics these days?

It has a kernel interface, so it supports the familiar open(2), lseek(2),
read(2), write(2), ... calls.  It doesn't provide POSIX semantics.

> 
> My understanding is that IBM will only support GPFS on IBM hardware...
> 

Our SAN is from IBM, and our servers and most of our clients are 
IBM-branded commodity x86 hardware.  IBM will support GPFS on non-IBM 
commodity hardware if you pay it enough.  But you'd have to really
enjoy pain to pay for GPFS.

David S.

>