[clug] aggregating disks across multiple machines

[Paul Wayper]

On 26/10/09 17:49, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Michael James<michael at james.st>  writes:
>
>> I've been asked to recommend a setup for a group of high end workstations.
>> They each have dual 4 core processors, 32 Gig of ram and 2 x 1.5 TB disks.
>> Nice.
>>
>> At present each machine has a separate 1.5TB /home and /data partition.
>> Bad:
>> 	no redundancy, data will be lost from a single disk failure.
>> 	files will be copied around as jobs dictate =>  confusion and waste.
>> 	when partitions start to fill up, files will get put where they fit
>> 		not where they should go =>  even greater confusion.
>
> Mmmm.  Some of that sounds like a user training and control issue, not a disk
> layout issue, to me.  Assuming y'all do provide a central server:

I think Michael was talking about using both machines as some kind of 
distributed storage, rather than a 'central server'.  I want to find out about 
this too.  The key problem is that a lot of the cluster storage that works 
like this assumes that each machine is accessing the same backend store.  This 
is convenient for those that have infiniband or fiberchannel cards lying 
around and SAN units sitting in their cupboards, but for those of us with just 
standard machines I haven't found any obvious candidates.

Anyone seen something that makes a bunch of disks spread across multiple 
machines act like a big communal block device?

Have fun,

Paul