[clug] Clustering file systems, without excluding windows

[Robert Edwards]

Paul TBBle Hampson wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 16, 2007 at 02:54:05PM +1000, Robert Edwards wrote:
>> Speaking of ATA over Ethernet (AoE), we are just in the process of
>> commissioning a Coraid SR1521 15-disk AoE rack (with 8 x 750GB drives).
> 
>> I might be at a stage to lug it downstairs at next weeks CLUG meeting
>> if anyone wants an up-close squiz at the innards and a short talk about
>> how it all fits together.
> 
>> At this stage, I am looking at Lustre and GFS as two candidates for
>> the clustered F/S. Andrew Tridgell spoke about IBMs proprietry GPFS
>> during his recent CLUG talk on Samba Clustering - we aren't interested
>> in going there at this stage. I have no interest in trying to make
>> mine "work with Windoze", so can't help on that at all.
> 
> Heh. Went to reread up on Lustre, to work out why I took it off my list
> the first time, and was reminded that clustered file systems need common
> UID/GIDs between the servers. I've not set that up yet, so I guess
> clustering's off my chart in the end, since I really don't want to put
> that much time into LDAP.
> 

"common" (or consistent) UID/GIDs are a fact of life for any distributed
filesystem whether it is clustered or more traditionally shared
(NFS/Samba etc.). That is why Windoze has Domains and Domain Controllers
and why NFS usually sits with NIS or LDAP etc.

Can't really see how you can build a multiple-server HA system if the
servers don't have access to a common UIG/GID namespace. Or am I missing
something here?

Cheers,

Bob Edwards.