[Linux-cluster] Distributed Storage in Cluster Suite

yvette hirth yvette at dbtgroup.com
Tue Feb 23 23:19:27 UTC 2010


Gordan Bobic wrote:

> yvette hirth wrote:
>> can you use FCP with active-active?  we bought a bunch of FCP stuff 
>> (4gbps and 8gbps HBA's and an 8gbps switch) but not the CNA's needed 
>> for iSCSI.  and active-active sounds like "the ticket".  while we do 
>> have a few 10GBe's and are awaiting a switch, i hate to waste all that 
>> FCP stuff.
> 
>> Gordan Bobic wrote:
> You need something that will run TCP/IP. There is some support for 
> IP-over-FC in Linux, though. You should be able to get iSCSI and DRBD 
> running over that. Not tried it myself, though, so I cannot offer any 
> guidance over and above what you can google.

thanks, Gordan, but perhaps i should explain a bit more.

our main server has four ip gigE ports bonded for TCP/IP;
we're using FCP for server:drive-array access; and
we use NFS for server:workstation disk data movement.

we are trying to do an HA config for now, because our workstations do 
not have any fencing gear, and while i'm sold on HP's ILO(2), more boxes 
are out-of-budget at this time.  so, at this time we would like to 
"cluster" the servers only, into an HA "active-something" config.

so the FCP will be used for server:drive-array access; and
the 10GBe adapters are for server:workstation NFS disk access.  as the 
drive arrays are 4gbps FCP, we'd like to make them more efficient, as 
the 10GBe network adapters are underutilized.

what i'm asking is:  does active-active support FCP for disk access 
(between the clustered servers) and will such an active-active HA server 
config provide higher bandwidth via FCP for block-disk access between 
the servers and the drive arrays?

thanks again to all
yvette




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