[ale] Distributed File Systems

[Jeff Hubbs]

 NFS isn't what I mean by "distributed."  I'm talking about a virtual
filesystem that is in actuality spread across several real filesystems on
different networked computers.  Intermezzo was one thing I looked at some
time back, but it seems to have evaporated.  I need this for disaster
recoevery purposes for a filesystem that will grow so large that backup
tapes becopme impractical, so I want a DFS that can survice the loss of a
component real filesystem (i.e., server crashes or otherwise goes off the
network.

- Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob's ALE Mail
To: Jhubbs at niit.com; vernard at cc.gatech.edu
Cc: ale at ale.org
Sent: 04/06/2001 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ale] Distributed File Systems

> Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 16:29:49 -0400
> From: Vernard Martin <vernard at cc.gatech.edu>
> To: Jeff Hubbs <Jhubbs at niit.com>
> Cc: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] Distributed File Systems
> References: <688DB098779CD311A183009027DE5314014E894B at mail.niit.com>

> > What's the best current path forward w.r.t. distributed file systems
a la
> > Coda?  What are people successfully implementing?

> well, that all depends on what you mean by "trend". To my knowledge,
there
> are no really commercial distributed filesystems that are gaining much
fame.
> However, I do know that the folks that produce PVFS have been quite
> successful. I beliveve that they even had an article in one of the
Linux
> Journals that came out in the last few months. I've personally used it
before
> and it does perform quite well on legacy code. And the speedups are
quite
> substantial once you start developing for that platform its even best.


> You will also found that AFS and Coda are quite popular as well. But
at a
> fundamenal level, they are research projects that have had a lot of
money
> pumped into them but they are still not commercial products. 

> I do know that many of the really big clusters are just using NFS and
AFS
> over gigabyte links and not working about modifying the filesystems at
all.
> That's what is really getting used. It'll probably be another copule
of years
> before the filesystem technology catches up properly.

More advanced network/distributed file systems have been "right around
the
corner" almost since I joined the Unix game in 1974!  NFS has been used
for
some incredible stuff such as holding million dollar financial
transactions.

Don't hold your breath for the next generation!

> Vernard
> -- 
> Vernard Martin (vernard at cc.gatech.edu)
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~vernard/     
>         "Anything worth fighting over is worth fighting dirty over"

Bob Toxen
transam at cavu.com                       [Bob's ALE Bulk email]
bob at cavu.com
http://www.cavu.com
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com/ [My new book: Real World Linux
Security]
http://www.cavu.com/sunset.html        [Sunset Computer]
Fly-By-Day Consulting, Inc.      "Don't go with a fly-by-night outfit!"
Quality Linux & UNIX security and software consulting since 1990.
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.