Clustering SAMBA

[Christopher R. Hertel]

> On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Isamar Maia wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Hi folks!
> > 
> > I was wondering if the following crazy thing would be possible:
> > 
> > A server's farm with their harddrives being viewed as unique driver by the
> > samba system
> > So, when I need more drive space, I would need add only one more server and
> > so on.
> 
> This sort of clustering is available on a number of different operating
> systems. If it is to be viewed as one filesystem by Samba, this is
> obviously the wrong mailing list for this question, as the magic will be
> done by the operating system. I recommend reading any documentation for
> your operating system that might cover clustering and perhaps mail a
> mailing list that covers your operating system.

There are commercial examples.  Here in Minnesota we have Veritas,
Tricord, and Sistina.  Tricord does network-level RAID.  Rather
interesting.  If you want more storage you just slap in more servers and
they sync up automagically.

The problem you run into--and this is a Samba-related problem--is that you
either have one Samba instance accessing all of that storage (a single
point of failure which must handle the entire load) or you have multiple
Samba servers and now have to coordinate them, handle fail-over, etc.  
DFS can help, but it isn't a complete solution.

Chris -)-----

-- 
Christopher R. Hertel -)-----                   University of Minnesota
crh at nts.umn.edu              Networking and Telecommunications Services

    Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them
    with your hands...you choose them as your guides, and following
    them you will reach your destiny.  --Carl Schultz