[Linux-cluster] RFI quick HOWTO

[Christopher McCrory]

On Sun, 2004-06-27 at 11:31, John Hearns wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-06-27 at 18:42, Christopher McCrory wrote:
> > Hello...
> > 
> > 	Last year I looked at several distributed filesystems; OpenAFS, GFS,
> > and NFS.  This was for a specific project.  I settled on NFS over LVM
> > over software raid5.  It works well except for a few NFS issues here
> > and there.  I really wanted to go with GFS but the lack of good
> > documentation held me back.  What would be ideal is a specific simple
> > HOWTO on setting up a simple lab test setup.
> > 
> > something like:
> > 
> > replicated with failover
> > server1 fs /important_data on /dev/sdb1
> > server2 fs /important_data on /dev/sdb1
> > 
> > client1 mount /important_data
> > client2 mount /important_data
> > 
> > with no FC, no shared scsi, no dual ethernet networks.  Just the
> > minimum hardware possible. Most labs already have this stuff laying
> > around.
> 
> For that sort of thing, IMHO you should be looking at Linux-HA
> http://www.linux-ha.org and using DRBD as the shared storage.
> 
> I've used Linux-HA for a failover cluster, using shared SCSI and
> in another case using DRBD.
> 
> If it really is failover you are after, look at the HOWTOs and the 
> journal articles referenced on the Linux-HA pages.
> The minimal setup you will need is two servers, linked  by a single
> Ethernet and a serial cable. The heartbeat can run over both the
> Ethernet and the serial link, giving you redundancy. 
> 

 Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of testing GFS?

 With a lab setup you could test: 
  does my app work well with this FS?
  Is it faster? slower?
  does my backup software work?  can I restore!?  ( I ran into this
with amanda, XFS (sgi) and differing RH versions. )  nice to know
_before_ you need it :)
 any other gotchas?

then you have some answers before shelling out for more hardware ($$$)


-- 
Christopher McCrory
 "The guy that keeps the servers running"