Resilient Storage Add-On

Red Hat^® Enterprise Linux^® Resilient Storage Add-On provides concurrent shared storage access to the members of a highly available cluster. Each server in the cluster requires direct access to a shared block device, either over a local storage area network (SAN) or as provided by many public cloud providers, of up to 100 terabytes. This Add-On includes:

• The Global File System 2 (GFS2) 64-bit filesystem supports concurrent access from up to 16 nodes.
• Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® High Availability Add-On
• Clustered volume manager. RHEL 8.4 and above additionally support encrypted volumes.
• Active/active clustered Samba (SMB/CIFS) server for Linux or Windows environments.
• Performance monitoring with Performance Co-Pilot (PCP).
• For IBM POWER and/or Z, please contact your sales representative.

GFS2 is aimed at high-availability (HA) workloads, and it runs some of the most critical applications at many well-known companies. The emphasis is on stability and reliability—and on providing a functional experience that is as close to that of a POSIX-compliant local filesystem as possible. It is important to assess the suitability of an application to run in a clustered environment before deployment, and Red Hat support teams are available to advise in any specific case.

Some applications that run well on GFS2 are SAS, Tibco MQ, IBM Websphere MQ, and Red Hat AMQ. In addition, web (http/https), file transfer protocol (FTP), and active/passive NFS servers have been successfully deployed on GFS2 and many custom applications.

See also: Datasheet, Deployment Guides: RHEL8, RHEL9