GFS2 hardware requirements

[Digimer]

On 12/05/2012 08:09 PM, Digimer wrote:
> On 12/05/2012 07:27 PM, William Muriithi wrote:
>> Hello
>>
>> I am planning to teach myself the in and out of GFS2. Now, problem is, I
>> don't have a server class hardware and plan to use a couple of Dell
>> Optiplex 745.
>>
>> So I went looking for requirements and don't seem to find anything
>> definitative. Do anyone know whether I need IPMI capable hardware or
>> anything would work fine?
>>
>> Would appreciate any pointer here.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> William
> 
> GFS2, itself, only requires shared storage of some type. However, the
> distributed lock manager (DLM) requires fencing in order to put a
> lost/failed node into a known state. That requires an external method of
> forcing off the node, which IPMI can do. So if you have IPMI then you
> are most of the way there.
> 
> As for shared storage, I use DRBD. GFS2 is only supported on clustered
> LVM (which is normal LVM with it's locking swapped out for DLM). I've
> run it without clvmd out of curiosity, and it works, but if you already
> have DLM then it's trivial to use clvmd.
> 
> If you want to play with SAN-backed GFS2, you can easily use a 3rd
> system and export storage from it using tgtd and mount it on the two
> cluster nodes via iscsid. I'd do this after DRBD though, as DRBD is, in
> my opinion, preferable over SANs in production.
> 
> I should how to create GFS2 as part of a larger tutorial on KVM clusters
> that might help;
> 
> https://alteeve.ca/w/2-Node_Red_Hat_KVM_Cluster_Tutorial

I should mention; There is an active #linux-cluster channel on
freenode.net. The /topic says "no gfs2 support", but that is directed at
folks with paid Red Hat support contracts. They had trouble with
customers making changes outside of the RH ticketing system without
updating the tickets themselves. I'm guessing you haven't bought Red
Hat's Resilient Storage Add-on, so no worries there.

-- 
Digimer
Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/
What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without
access to education?
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists