[Linux-cluster] Fwd: High Available Transparent File System

[Meisam Mohammadkhani]

I'm familiar with Linux and clusters, but actually my knowledge is around
HPC clusters, not HA clusters. So you are right about the "training time",
but I will try to handle it ;) According to that Linux world has a great
open source projects around high availability, file systems and so on, that
was my suggest to our corporation head masters to use these solutions
"transparently" for application, may handle some parts of application
responsibility. I still thinks that using Linux solutions can help us
transparently and we can handle it with virtual machines advantages. So I
will appreciate your solutions in Linux world. ;)

Regards

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 12:42 AM, Digimer <linux at alteeve.com> wrote:

> On 04/10/2011 03:06 PM, Meisam Mohammadkhani wrote:
> > Dear Digimer,
> >
> > First of all, thanks for your reply.
> > I'm not familiar with DRBD, but according to my little searches it's a
> > solution for high availability in Linux operating system. But, actually
> > our application uses .net as its framework, so it is dependent to
> > Windows-based operating systems and using the DRBD may facing us with
> > some new challenges. Also because of commodity nature of our machines,
> > using the windows solutions needs a windows server on machines that is
> > heavy for them. Using DRBD, force us to run our application in virtual
> > machines that decrease the performance according to hardware spec. So we
> > thought that maybe a "high available transparent file system" can be a
> > good solution for this case. Even if the file system was not so
> > cross-platform, we maybe be able to handle it with virtual machines
> > which use the physical disks as their storage.
> > I will appreciate your opinion.
> >
> > Regards
>
> Hi,
>
>  Well, I must say, I am a bit confused as this is the Linux cluster
> mail list. I assumed you were using Linux. :P
>
>  If you are running a relatively modern version of windows (ie: 2008
> R2, iirc), then you can run the Windows as a paravirtualized guest on a
> server with hardware virtualization support, which most modern machines
> have. Particularly higher-end equipment. You would need to run Linux on
> the hosts, but you could minimize the resources used by that host and
> dedicate most of the resources to the VM with relatively minor
> performance hit.
>
>  Now, to back up, I can't say I can advice the use of a cluster without
> you being able or willing to go through the fairly steep learning curve.
> It's not *hard*, per-se, but there are many bits that have to work
> together for a cluster to be stable. This inter-dependence also means
> that there are many creative ways that things could go wrong. Without
> sufficient time to learn and experience with Linux, those problems could
> be too much to justify this solution.
>
>  I'm afraid I know nothing about clustering or shared file systems in
> the Windows world. Perhaps your vendor could provide you with some
> insight into pure-windows solutions? If you're a windows shop, that
> might make the most sense as it's a platform you are already familiar with.
>
> --
> Digimer
> E-Mail: digimer at alteeve.com
> AN!Whitepapers: http://alteeve.com
> Node Assassin:  http://nodeassassin.org
>
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