From owner-freebsd-cluster@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 17 11:49:40 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C564F37B401 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 11:49:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from grant.org (grant.org [64.56.118.18]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 183B943FAF for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 11:49:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mgrant@grant.org) Received: from grant.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by grant.org (8.12.8p1/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5HIncNm001990 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 14:49:39 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from mgrant@grant.org) Received: (from root@localhost) by grant.org (8.12.8p1/8.12.8/Submit) id h5HIncAs001989 for freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 14:49:38 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 14:49:38 -0400 From: Michael Grant To: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20030617184938.GA1078@grant.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i Subject: Re: iSCSI and clustering with FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Clustering FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 18:49:41 -0000 Every time I look into clustering my box, I run into the same thing that Linux is apparently much father ahead in this respect. It sends shudders through me to think that I might have to migrate to Linux. I could do it but it would take a lot of time. It would be great if some better clustering tools appeared for Freebsd. The main thing that is blocking me from building something is a file system that replicates across multiple boxes. Is there still nothing today that I could use on freebsd? I looked into coda and intermezzo but they're not really the right thing. I need something much more transparent. OpenGFS and Lustre were mentioned. Has anyone actually tried to simply compile OpenGFS for freebsd just fixing the compilation problems, or is it really a porting job with lots of rewrite? Would it solve my problems? (see below) One thing that seems like it would help me a lot would be a way to know when a file was modified. Anyone know how to do this? Again, this is possible in Linux. Maybe a simple file replication daemon could be written on top of this. Furthermore, I'm looking at clustering where the other boxes in the cluster are not at the same ISP. This adds additional headache for sure. If anyone has any ideas along these lines, let me know. I want to do this for reliability and load sharing, not for supercomputing. However, it sure would be cool to be able to migrate a process to a different box at a different location... It looks like no matter what I do, I need a second box next to the first one to redirect packets to the other box if one of the boxes goes down. I'd probably do this with NAT or an ip tunnel. This second box almost makes it seem not worthwhile to put the other boxes in different ISPs. Anyone have better ideas? I'd be interested in people's experience who have clustered boxes in this way. I use the term cluster somewhat loosely. More like making a set of boxes which back each other up and share the load. Michael Grant