better network filesystems

[Christopher R. Hertel]

I'm on the GFS mailing list, so I asked about the distinction between a 
cluster filesystem and a network filesystem.  Here's one response:

On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 03:29:32PM +0800, David Teigland wrote:
>
> There seem to be at least three different things there that can be
> considered separately:
>
> 1. SAN usage
>    CIFS/NFS aren't interested in exploiting SAN access from clients
>    while others like GFS are.
>
> 2. server role (symmetric vs asymmetric)
>    GFS aims to be server-less, NFS/CIFS are very server-based, and
>    others can fall somewhere in between.  (If you consider using GFS
>    above iscsi or nbd then the differences become even more subtle.)
>
> 3. POSIX semantics
>    GFS semantics aim to copy those of a local fs exactly, while others
>    like NFS don't, although there's nothing precluding that (NFS4 can
>    be close if not exact).

I think it's the second point that's key.  Each node in the GFS cluster is 
it's own client and server, interacting with the other nodes that also 
have the device mounted.

That third point echos something Steve said...

Chris -)-----

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh at ubiqx.org