OK. That makes sense. <br><br>I was looking at using gluster or GFS to reuse space on school hard drives as redundant storage for student work. That seemed feasible as long as they were running a Linux. <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 1:24 PM, John Heim <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:john@johnheim.net" target="_blank">john@johnheim.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
From: "Derek Atkins" <<a href="mailto:warlord@MIT.EDU">warlord@MIT.EDU</a>><br>
To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org">ale@ale.org</a>><br>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 8:04 AM<br>
Subject: Re: [ale] distributed network file system<br>
<div class="im"><br>
<br>
> Hi,<br>
><br>
> "John Heim" <<a href="mailto:john@johnheim.net">john@johnheim.net</a>> writes:<br>
><br>
>> I would like to set up a distributed network file system in my<br>
>> department.<br>
>> There is a dizzying array of possibilities, gfarmfs, ceph, glusterfs,<br>
>> just<br>
>> to name a few.<br>
>><br>
>> Needs:<br>
>> 1. Should work on a large number of small nodes, 100Gb each.<br>
>> 2. Parallelism & striping.<br>
>> 3. Prefer debian package, GPL.<br>
>> 4. Meta data in mysql would be nice.<br>
>><br>
>> Any experience and/or recommendations?<br>
><br>
> What are your requirements for usage of the space? Are you trying to<br>
> get a distributed SAN array? Or are you just trying to get a<br>
> distributed file space?<br>
><br>
> If the latter you might also want to look at OpenAFS. It is F/OSS,<br>
> although it's not GPL. Oh, and the metadata isn't stored in MySQL.<br>
<br>
</div>We have a 2Tb SAN for users to use for files space. But we have about 300<br>
users so each gets only 6Gb. That's just not enough for some users. Mostly,<br>
its enough on a long term basis but sometimes they need to generate 50Gb -<br>
100Gb of data. We have all kinds of disk space on each users workstation but<br>
they can't get to it. This is deliberate. We don't want them saving files<br>
where they won't be backed up. And we want to be able to re-image a machine<br>
at a moment's notice w/o having to have the user back up his stuff.<br>
<br>
I got the brilliant idea of using the 100Gb (or so) of free space on each<br>
workstation for a distributed network file system. So we'd need to be able<br>
to wipe out a node w/o losing anything. I could make sure we copy the data<br>
off before we re-image a workstation. But an end-user might simply turn<br>
their workstation off. Whatever we use would have to deal with that.<br>
<br>
The mysql thing was just a preference (over postgres). I have nothing<br>
against other DBMSes. Its just that we already have mysql.<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br><i><i><i><i><br></i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br><i><i><i><i><br><a href="http://electjimkinney.org" target="_blank">http://electjimkinney.org</a><br><a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br>
</i></i></i></i><br>