[CentOS] clustered file system of choice

Ross Walker rswwalker at gmail.com
Thu Jun 17 13:51:11 UTC 2010


On Jun 16, 2010, at 4:17 PM, "Joseph L. Casale" <jcasale at activenetwerx.com 
 > wrote:

>> I am just trying to consider my options for storing a large mass of
>> data (tens of terrabytes of files) and one idea is to build a
>> clustered FS of some kind. Has anybody had any experience with that?
>> Any recommendations?
>
> You haven't actually stated whether you want the backing devices  
> distributed
> or have the file system support more than one mount?
>
> You likely don't need a cluster aware fs, if you need to access the  
> data
> in more than one place any of several file sharing methodologies will
> work.
>
> I suspect as your storage need is large, you need to distribute it  
> across
> more than one block device probably on several servers? DRBD is of  
> no use
> here.

You are probably looking to have multiple iSCSI/FC storage servers/ 
appliances in the backend with one or more NAS head servers serving it  
up via NFS/CIFS.

If the head servers will be serving the same file systems  
simultaneously then you need a cluster file system and clustering  
software. If each head server will be serving a distinct file system  
then you probably just need some HA software like heartbeat or  
pacemaker to have those exports fail-over to the other head server(s)  
in the event of a head server failure.

-Ross




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