Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 5 Oct 2001 20:24:23 +0100 (BST)
From:      Joshua Goodall <joshua@roughtrade.net>
To:        =?iso-8859-1?q?Fabrizio=20Ravazzini?= <freefabri@yahoo.it>
Cc:        <freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: NFS Alternatives?
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.4.33.0110052002090.31480-100000@elm.phenome.org>
In-Reply-To: <20011005184111.93369.qmail@web20105.mail.yahoo.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, [iso-8859-1] Fabrizio Ravazzini wrote:

> Hello all I would like to build a mail/web cluster
> server like this:
>
> Machine---+
>   A       | +-----+
>           +-|Disks|
> Machine-----|     |
>   B         +-----+
>
> I want the two machines accessing the disk array
> (for example the Compaq smart array disk set) at the
> same time and load balanced.
> I'd like the disks attached at the two machines via
> scsi or Ethernet.

Parallel writeable mounts are not in any release version of FreeBSD.

> To manage the Load Balancing I think to use
> Balance.sourceforge.net or Dns RoundRobin.

You need something slightly more intelligent than roundrobin DNS, unless
you want half your users to lose access if a machine goes down. IIRC,
Balance requires another machine in front of A & B.

> But to share the disks...
> ...I've thinked about NFS but we need a third machine
> to manage the NFS server for the array.
> Then I've found Gfs (Global File System) but seems
> only for LinuX.

I recently rejected GFS for a production recommendation on the grounds of
a) lack of production maturity b) STOMITH c) DMEP d) Linux-only. Your
criteria may vary.

Other parallel filesystems exist (e.g. CXFS, AdvFS) but not in FreeBSD and
only at the research/experimental level for Linux, AFAIK (e.g. PVFS,
which isn't a high-availability architecture anyway).

> The problem is that I don't want the single point of
> failure which is the NFS server.

You'll need to look at commercial products (HA-NFS implementations,
Netapps etc), not OSS, for this, unless you can get away with
application-level replication.

I'd love to be told I'm wrong on the above. Anyone know of a OSS (BSD or
GPL) *production-grade* HA-NFS or parallel-mount fs (other than GFS)?

Joshua



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-cluster" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.LNX.4.33.0110052002090.31480-100000>