Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:02:07 -0600 From: Mike Declerck <declerck@sistina.com> To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Porting GFS to FreeBSD Message-ID: <20010221180210.0E90037B401@hub.freebsd.org>
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All, Sistina Software Inc is in the process of evaluating the effort to port the Global File System from Linux to FreeBSD. Before someone starts harping on the GPL let me state that Sistina is willing to have a separate license for the *BSD community so if we could put that discussion off to a later time I would appreciate it. For people who don't know about GFS you can find technical information concerning it at -> http://www.sistina.com Here is a quick description: The Global File System (GFS) is a shared disk cluster file system for Linux. GFS supports journaling and recovery from client failures. GFS cluster nodes physically share the same storage by means of Fibre Channel, shared SCSI devices or network block devices. The file system appears to be local on each node and GFS synchronizes file access across the cluster. GFS is fully symmetric, that is, all nodes are equal and there is no server which may be a bottleneck or single point of failure. GFS uses read and write caching while maintaining full UNIX file system semantics. Sistina is looking at porting to FreeBSD for a number of reasons: o Despite the fact that Linux gets most of the press concerning Open Source OS penetration into the enterprise Sistina is aware of *BSD penetration as well. In fact, at Linux World Expo we had a number of large enterprise companies approach us about GFS running on FreeBSD. Hence we would like to have a presence in FreeBSD o GFS has two main goals. Obviously we have other goals but these are from the 10,000 ft view. 1) To be a high performance cluster file system 2) To be a cluster file system that runs in heterogenous environments (hence why we want to port to FreeBSD). o FreeBSD is closer to the mainstream Unices so a port to FreeBSD will help us abstract our code base and make it easier to port to other OSs. What I would like to find out from the list is: o Is there any interest in having GFS ported to FreeBSD (I believe there is)? o Is there a particular FreeBSD market segment that would be more open than others in looking at a cluster/cluster FS environent (http, smtp, imap clusters) o Is there anyone in the FreeBSD community willing to work with us (either for pay or as an open source participant) on the port? o Are there any FreeBSD enterprise entities who might be willing to fund the port? Sorry if this sounds like a troll or advertisement but I need this information to justify to my management and Board of Directors assigning resources to the port. --- Michael Declerck, declerck@sistina.com +1.510.823.7991 Director of Open Source Development To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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