Multiple devices - presented as 1 path (distributed file system)?

[sbrews]

I have been asked to find a product for linux that will allow multiple disks to be presented as 1 path (or distributed FS)

Server A with disk X
Server B with disk Y

Both servers see disk Z - which is really disk X from server A, and Y from server B.

I think windows DFS works in this fashion (but I am not really familiar with it, so maybe it doesnt). A quick search on google shows that there are some products that appear to work in the way requested - but I was hoping someone with some experience with them can offer any insight/advice/direction.

The requirements I have to meet (so far) are:
- must be something that is supported - IE if it breaks, we have to be able to get support.
- needs to run on linux preferably RHEL.



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[Annihilannic]

The only one I've tried so far is glusterfs which was very easy to set up and worked immediately.

I haven't done extensive testing but intend to in the near future.

Annihilannic
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[Noway2]

Linux already has this feature built in:

http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/ar01s02.html#whatis_nfs

However, as with most things Linux, there are multiple ways to approach the problem. Other options include SAMBA, which would give you cross compatibility with Windows file systems and even the simple approach of simply mounting a remote volume and then adding an entry to your /etc/fstab table to automatically mount the volume on start up. Another function that may be relevant to your desires is what is called LVM, logical volume manager, which allows you to mount multiple disks into one continuous file system. By default, Linux uses a flat file system, all based off of root (/) and you can mount partitions or whole drives into subsections of it. For example, /home and /var could be physically separate drives but are both logically part of the file system tree (btw, there are no drive letters). LVM allows you to have multiple volumes span one section, such as /home.

 

[sbrews]

NFS and Samba are not quite the right things. They allow taking a mount point and sharing it with another system. I have been tasked with finding a way to mount point A and system A, mount B on system B and have that mounted as mount point C and system A and B. Each system has its own storage but it is otherwise seen as a common mount point.

For glusterfs - I will have to read up on it, but the first thing that stands out is that it's not a supported product - IE there is no support contract, I cant call someone for help if/when it stops working or problems are encountered.

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[SamBones]

Hadoop's HDFS is a distributed file system. I believe it can span multiple hosts. I think ZFS might be the same in that regard.

 

[Annihilannic]

There is an excellent list of distributed file systems in wikipedia with a brief description of each:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems#Distributed_file_systems

I don't think ZFS works as a distributed FS.

Annihilannic
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