Talk about talks

[Digimer]

On 07/13/2011 01:20 PM, Christopher Browne wrote:
> A couple of ideas for talks came up last night...
> 
> There was quite a bit of interest in distributed filesystems.
> 
> There seem to be two directions this could go, both legitimate:
> 
> i) Clustered filesystems, like GFS / OCFS2
> 
> Much as with clustering as a general topic, questions that emerge include:
> - So what?
> - Why would I want this in the first place?  Isn't NFS fine?

NFS does not offer real-time replication of the data across systems.
Lose the NFS host, lose the data.

> - What would cause me to prefer GFS over OCFS2 or vice-versa?

GFS2 and OCFS2 are, generally speaking, relatively equal. Personally, I
don't trust Oracle with a salt shaker, never mind my files, so I used GFS2.

> - What other options are there?

In the realm of clustered filesystems, that's about it in the open
source world (at least in so far as anything production-ready).

Remember to keep replicated/distributed/clustered block devices separate
from clustered filesystems!

> - What would cause me to head back to local filesystems or NFS?

NFS doesn't require a cluster, thus, is a simpler (and more limited)
solution.

> ii) Distributed filesystems
> - Why would I want this in the first place?  Isn't NFS fine?

See above; NFS is not inherently real-time replicated. You can put it on
DRBD or a SAN, but if you've gone that far, you're just a step or two
away from a clustered filesystem anyway.

> - Why would I prefer 9p?  Or AFS?  Or InterMezzo?
> - What aspects of these will make me prefer to poke burning needles in
> my eyes, and run back, crying, to NFS?

Trying to build a cluster without a working, tested fence device.

> - What about NFSv4?

Cheers

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Digimer
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