Alan McKay wrote:
OK, you have my attention. But reading around on the website for 5 or 10 minutes and I'm still not sure what this is.
What is it?
A cluster filesystem
Why would I use it?
Because the alternatives are either not up to it or fraught with problems.
What would I use instead of it? (Who are its competitors)
Maybe Lustre or GFS if you have a small (note: SMALL) deployment.
When would I not use it?
When you do not need/want a cluster file system that still gives you an alternative access mechanism (cifs, nfs, whatever) to your data if certain crucial bits go down.
I see this "The software is a powerful and flexible solution that simplifies the task of managing unstructured file data", but I have no idea what "unstructured file data" means.
Me neither but I have me eyes on GlusterFS and I have been waiting for OpenSolaris support as a client or I will be using Centos 5 as a client.