[ale] Filesystems for databases and HA systems

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Keith,

	Both XFS and Reiserfs should do fine for a database partition from an architectural 
standpoint. I'm quite impressed with XFS, especially in regards to its capacity for large file systems. I 
doubt it's an option from your message, but I'd also prefer to see Postgres rather than Innodb's stuff 
as a system that I was relying on for a large system.

	Regarding HA shared systems - you can count NFS out (I'm presuming you are mounting 
the above partitions through this mechanism?) unless things have significantly changed in the last 
couple of years. I don't have experience with most of the systems you mentioned except for AFS, 
which I find to be quite strong but also apparently has wide implementation variances. This was in 
2000/2001 that I last used it and it wasn't under Linux. Most implementations at the time were not 
full implementations of the system but I do like the concept of AFS in general. CODA looked very 
promising (it's based on AFS) and, if I had the opportunity to build a cluster like this today, I'd 
probably try real hard to give it a shot. The folks at CMU are really smart! Note that none of the 
systems you mention are going to be any silver bullets for simultaneous file sharing so be real careful 
of your expectations in this regards.

	I have not used mosix (I prefer the heterogenous architecture of PVM) but I understand 
that it's picky about what file systems it works with so you might have a difficult time getting AFS or 
some of those other file systems working with it. Definitely need to check with the mosix people for 
input on that issue.

	Good luck & best regards,

		Ben Scherrey


3/9/2003 9:33:08 AM, Keith Hopkins <hne at hopnet.net> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>  Two questions about file systems.
>
>1) I'm looking for the lesser of two evils to put a MySQL-Max(Innodb) database on for dbmail.  I'm 
thinking either XFS or Reiserfs, but I don't know how either will perform with a database on top.  
Can anyone enlighten me?
>
>2) I'm looking for a HA style shared file system (ideally, two hosts mounting the same fs at the same 
time).  I've come across GFS (non-free), Lustre-lite, Intermezzo, coda and AFS as the most likely 
candidates.  Can anyone share their experiences with these?  How do you folks running (open)
mosix share your file systems?
>
>-- 
>Lost in Tokyo,
>  Keith



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