Data sharing is a must in today's modern computing world. When the data requirements include allowing a cluster of servers to access a common storage pool, Red Hat GFS is the answer for simplifying your data infrastructure, minimizing storage costs, adding storage on the fly, and achieving maximum uptime. A cluster file system like Red Hat GFS can be used with an IP network block-sharing protocol like iSCSI to provide scalable file serving at low cost. Network File System (NFS) is a common shared storage solution utilized by many infrastructures. However, in some instances, this solution does not scale. How do GFS and NFS compare? This article explains.
The developers have released version 1.0 of the XtreemFS distributed file system. The result of a research project funded by the EU, XtreemFS is designed for distributed data management in grids, but is also meant to simplify accessing local files over the internet. It's easy to set up, supports RAID-0 (striping) over different machines and file replication over the network, encrypts data, and provides security mechanisms to ensure only authorised users can access shared files. Unlike sharing via NFS or SMB/CIFS, the file system can extend over several servers, provides security mechanisms, and is optimised for use over slow and not totally reliable internet connections. The file system runs in user space (via FUSE under Linux, via Dokan under Windows), so it can do without drivers or a kernel module. Linux and Windows are supported on the client side, and a Mac OS X client is under construction. The server runs under Linux and Solaris, and the software is licensed under the GPLv2.
Evolution of Google File System August 08, 2009 07:26:40 EDT There is an interesting interview about the evolution of the Google File System in ACM Queue. I think it is readable by anybody, not just ACM members. One of the morals of this story is that, even if you are building what you think will be the world's biggest, you still will make design decisions that you know are not scalable because you know how to implement them. It is better to get something running right away and start using it. Of course, they also ran into scalability problems that they did not expect. So, some of the evolution of GFS was planned, and some was unplanned.
Red Hat Cluster Suite is a collection of technologies working together to provide data integrity and the ability to maintain application availability in the event of a failure. Administrators can deploy enterprise cluster solutions using a combination of hardware redundancy along with the failover and load-balancing technologies in Red Hat Cluster Suite.
GNBD (Global Network Block Device) provides block-level storage access over an Ethernet LAN. GNBD components run as a client in a GFS node and as a server in a GNBD server node. A GNBD server node exports block-level storage from its local storage (either
Google File System, a scalable distributed file system for large distributed data-intensive applications. It provides fault tolerance while running on inexpensive commodity hardware, and it delivers high aggregate performance to a large number of clients.