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Home > Archive > Data Storage > May 2005 > Distributed filesystem idea/information.
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Distributed filesystem idea/information.
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| schuelaw@gmail.com 2005-05-06, 5:46 pm |
| I maintain a small cluster of 16 x86 linux workstations in our dept's
mathlab. For years I've had a central fileserver serving up users'
home directories via nfs and a kerberos authentication server. This
allows students to sit at any one of the workstations and get to their
home directories.
The home directories sit on a 100Gb drive in the file server.
This summer the machines are being replaced with machines that each
have 80Gb drives in them. Of course, the OS on each machine will only
consume about 10Gb leaving about 70Gb of space wasted.
Is there a utility out there that will let me combine the 70Gb of
storage on each of the 16 machines into a seemless single networked
file system? Unlike CODA or AFS, I'm thinking that potentially pieces
of a single file might be spread over any number of the 16 physical
drives (or less if they were RAID'ified, which would probably be a good
idea in case one or more of the drives failed).
Has anyone heard of such a project, or is it lunacy?
Would it be better to just manually distribute the home directories
across some number of drives?
Thanks for any input
Albert
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| Joshua Baker-LePain 2005-05-06, 8:45 pm |
| In article <1115416122.542118.168270@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, schuelaw@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Is there a utility out there that will let me combine the 70Gb of
> storage on each of the 16 machines into a seemless single networked
> file system? Unlike CODA or AFS, I'm thinking that potentially pieces
> of a single file might be spread over any number of the 16 physical
> drives (or less if they were RAID'ified, which would probably be a good
> idea in case one or more of the drives failed).
>
> Has anyone heard of such a project, or is it lunacy?
Look at PVFS.
--
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University
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| Faeandar 2005-05-09, 5:46 pm |
| On 6 May 2005 14:48:42 -0700, schuelaw@gmail.com wrote:
>I maintain a small cluster of 16 x86 linux workstations in our dept's
>mathlab. For years I've had a central fileserver serving up users'
>home directories via nfs and a kerberos authentication server. This
>allows students to sit at any one of the workstations and get to their
>home directories.
>
>The home directories sit on a 100Gb drive in the file server.
>
>This summer the machines are being replaced with machines that each
>have 80Gb drives in them. Of course, the OS on each machine will only
>consume about 10Gb leaving about 70Gb of space wasted.
>
>Is there a utility out there that will let me combine the 70Gb of
>storage on each of the 16 machines into a seemless single networked
>file system? Unlike CODA or AFS, I'm thinking that potentially pieces
>of a single file might be spread over any number of the 16 physical
>drives (or less if they were RAID'ified, which would probably be a good
>idea in case one or more of the drives failed).
>
>Has anyone heard of such a project, or is it lunacy?
>
>Would it be better to just manually distribute the home directories
>across some number of drives?
>
>Thanks for any input
>
>Albert
Ibrix does exactly what you want and, as far as I know, is not very
expensive.
I've tested it already and am looking at other players for a storage
grid model, not necessarily aggregating islands of DAS as you mention.
But Ibrix will do exactly that and I was pleased with everything I
saw.
~F
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| I'm looking for the same solution but with Windows workstations.
Any ideas.
Thanks
Hervé
schuelaw@gmail.com a écrit :
> I maintain a small cluster of 16 x86 linux workstations in our dept's
> mathlab. For years I've had a central fileserver serving up users'
> home directories via nfs and a kerberos authentication server. This
> allows students to sit at any one of the workstations and get to their
> home directories.
>
> The home directories sit on a 100Gb drive in the file server.
>
> This summer the machines are being replaced with machines that each
> have 80Gb drives in them. Of course, the OS on each machine will only
> consume about 10Gb leaving about 70Gb of space wasted.
>
> Is there a utility out there that will let me combine the 70Gb of
> storage on each of the 16 machines into a seemless single networked
> file system? Unlike CODA or AFS, I'm thinking that potentially pieces
> of a single file might be spread over any number of the 16 physical
> drives (or less if they were RAID'ified, which would probably be a good
> idea in case one or more of the drives failed).
>
> Has anyone heard of such a project, or is it lunacy?
>
> Would it be better to just manually distribute the home directories
> across some number of drives?
>
> Thanks for any input
>
> Albert
>
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| kirmse@netaxs.com 2005-05-12, 5:46 pm |
| In general this is probably not a very good idea. For the amount of
storage you are dealing with it is much less of a management nightmare
to just put some larger drives in the main server.
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