[Linux-cluster] GFS without creating a cluster

[Zama Ques]

----- Original Message -----
From: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho at redhat.com>
To: Zama Ques <queszama at yahoo.in>; linux clustering <linux-cluster at redhat.com>
Cc: 
Sent: Thursday, 3 January 2013 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Linux-cluster] GFS without creating a cluster

Hi,

On Thu, 2013-01-03 at 18:00 +0800, Zama Ques wrote:
> Hi All ,
> 
> 
> Need few clarification regarding GFS. 
> 
> 
> I need to create a shared file system for our servers . The servers will write to the shared file system at the same time and there is no requirement for a cluster . 
> 
> Planning to use GFS but GFS requires cluster software to be running . My confusion here is If I just run the cluster software ( cman etc ) without creating a cluster , will I be able to configure and run GFS2. Also , is it possible to write to a GFS file system from many servers at the same time ? 
> 
> Will be great if somebody can clarify by doubts. 
> 
> 
> Thanks in Advance
> Zaman
> 
> 

> If you want to use GFS2 without a cluster, then you'll only be able to
> use it from a single node (just like if you were using ext3 for
> example). If you want to use GFS2 as intended, with multiple nodes
> accessing the same filesystem, then you'll need to set up a cluster in
> order to do so,

Thanks Steve for the reply . As you said setting up a cluster is needed to use GFS2 with multiple nodes, does that mean that I need to create cluster.conf or running cluster services (cman etc) should be fine for setting up GFS2. Not sure whether cman will run without creating cluster.conf

Assuming that I need to setup cluster.conf in order to use GFS2 , that means if there are two nodes in the cluster with GFS2 as file system resource , GFS2 will be mounted on only one host based on failover domain policy . But our requirement is like that GFS2 should be mounted on both servers at the same time  . Based on my little understanding of GFS , looks to me that I will not be able to achieve this using GFS2 or there are some way to achieve this ? 

Please clarify on this.


Thanks in Advance
Zaman