[ale] Multiple servers, 1 shared disk?

[Greg Freemyer]

On 8/14/07, Jeffery Tillotson <ale at jeffx.com> wrote:
> Robert L. Harris wrote:
>
> >  Has anyone set up a system where one shared disk such as an EMC CX3
> >is direct attached via FC and multiple machines access the same file
> >system?  Preferably without installing a NAS head on the EMC to share
> >out via NFS/CIFS?
> >
> >
> >
> We did it with a Pillar Data Systems SAN and RHEL 4 boxes.  We are
> running Oracle RACs so we used OCFS2.
>
> Jeff
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OCFS2 is in the vanilla linux kernel.  But, iirc it has some
limitations like no ACLs etc.  ie. It is a purpose built filesystem
just to run Oracle and if Oracle did not use a filesystem feature,
they left it out.

GFS from Redhat (http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/) is not in
the vanilla kernel, but it might be a better choice if you need full
filesystem semantics.  Especially if your servers are running RH (or
CentOS).

FYI: Due to locking issues GFS is supposidely very slow if multiple
nodes are accessing files in the same directory.  Obviously worse (or
impossible) if multiple nodes have the same file open read/write.

Greg
-- 
Greg Freemyer
Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist
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