I am considering building a pair of storage servers that will be using CentOS and GFS to share the storage from a Coraid (SATA+Raid) EtherDrive shelf. Has anyone else tried such a setup?
Is GFS stable enough to use in a production environment?
There is a build of GFS 6.1 at http://rpm.karan.org/el4/csgfs/. Has anyone used this? Is it stable?
Will I run into any problems if I use CentOS 3.5 with it's GFS package to access a shared 5TB filesystem?
I've been googling on this stuff off and on for a month now. I've found a bunch of conflicting and confusing information, but no clear answers. I've been kind of hoping that the new GFS 6.1 packages would be released while I was waiting... :)
I appreciate any suggestions or pointers.
Bowie
If you are using CentOS 3.5 then you want the el3 version of GFS from here: http://mirror.centos.org/centos-3/3/csgfs/
This is only GFS 6.0 but it works well. It looks like there are lots of differences in 6.1 so I don't think it will work out of the box on CentOS-3.
I use GFS with GNBD and it works OK. Some of the nodes are 2 hops away over the ethernet and they can sometimes be a bit slow. They also lock up if the network goes down (no hardware fencing).
The servers are in the same rack and work well together.
I don't know the maximum filesystem size, or if your hardware is supported but read the docs and it won't cost you anything to try it.
John.
Bowie Bailey wrote:
I am considering building a pair of storage servers that will be using CentOS and GFS to share the storage from a Coraid (SATA+Raid) EtherDrive shelf. Has anyone else tried such a setup?
Is GFS stable enough to use in a production environment?
There is a build of GFS 6.1 at http://rpm.karan.org/el4/csgfs/. Has anyone used this? Is it stable?
Will I run into any problems if I use CentOS 3.5 with it's GFS package to access a shared 5TB filesystem?
I've been googling on this stuff off and on for a month now. I've found a bunch of conflicting and confusing information, but no clear answers. I've been kind of hoping that the new GFS 6.1 packages would be released while I was waiting... :)
I appreciate any suggestions or pointers.
Bowie _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
If you are using CentOS 3.5 then you want the el3 version of GFS from here: http://mirror.centos.org/centos-3/3/csgfs/
This is only GFS 6.0 but it works well. It looks like there are lots of differences in 6.1 so I don't think it will work out of the box on CentOS- 3.
I use GFS with GNBD and it works OK. Some of the nodes are 2 hops away over the ethernet and they can sometimes be a bit slow. They also lock up if the network goes down (no hardware fencing).
The servers are in the same rack and work well together.
I don't know the maximum filesystem size, or if your hardware is supported but read the docs and it won't cost you anything to try it.
From another thread:
"From what I've been reading, there's an 8TB limit of all GFS file systems in a cluster.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/browse/rh-gfs-en/s1-sysreq-fibredev ice.html
Matt"
Bowie Bailey wrote:
I am considering building a pair of storage servers that will be using CentOS and GFS to share the storage from a Coraid (SATA+Raid) EtherDrive shelf. Has anyone else tried such a setup?
Is GFS stable enough to use in a production environment?
There is a build of GFS 6.1 at http://rpm.karan.org/el4/csgfs/. Has
anyone
used this? Is it stable?
Will I run into any problems if I use CentOS 3.5 with it's GFS package
to
access a shared 5TB filesystem?
I've been googling on this stuff off and on for a month now. I've found
a
bunch of conflicting and confusing information, but no clear answers.
I've
been kind of hoping that the new GFS 6.1 packages would be released
while I
was waiting... :)
I appreciate any suggestions or pointers.
Bowie _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-- John Newbigin Computer Systems Officer Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies Swinburne University of Technology Melbourne, Australia http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/staff/jnewbigin
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 10:04 +1000, Nick wrote:
"From what I've been reading, there's an 8TB limit of all GFS file systems in a cluster.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/browse/rh-gfs-en/s1-sysreq-fibredev ice.html
It (8TB) is also the max size of an ext3 file system supported for a CentOS installation.
Just wondering if anyone out there has any opinions or better still experience with Coraid's AoE products in a centos environment?
We're looking at developing a very basic active/standby 2 node cluster which will need a shared storage component. It would be a huge bonus if other servers could also use the storage device. Originally I was looking at the Dell/EMC iSCSI solution as it's a cheaper solution than fibre channel. However, the performance issues without using a TCP offload HBA are a bit of a concern.
Then I found the Coraid (www.coraid.com) products based on the open standard AoE protocol. It's got a number of benefits including: price, less protocol overhead for the server and the ability to use any disks where as "enterprise" approved products form the likes of Dell/Sun etc only support 250gb sata disks at the moment.
I guess my concern is that it's a new technology that's not been widely adopted so far and all the issues that go along with that.
Any options or feedback would be really helpful.
Cheers,
Nick
For 2 nodes only you could try a shared firewire disk. it is very cheap and can work with 2 hosts and is quite fast (50MB/s)... Nick Bryant wrote:
Just wondering if anyone out there has any opinions or better still experience with Coraid's AoE products in a centos environment?
We're looking at developing a very basic active/standby 2 node cluster which will need a shared storage component. It would be a huge bonus if other servers could also use the storage device. Originally I was looking at the Dell/EMC iSCSI solution as it's a cheaper solution than fibre channel. However, the performance issues without using a TCP offload HBA are a bit of a concern.
Then I found the Coraid (www.coraid.com) products based on the open standard AoE protocol. It's got a number of benefits including: price, less protocol overhead for the server and the ability to use any disks where as "enterprise" approved products form the likes of Dell/Sun etc only support 250gb sata disks at the moment.
I guess my concern is that it's a new technology that's not been widely adopted so far and all the issues that go along with that.
Any options or feedback would be really helpful.
Cheers,
Nick
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