Re: Using (was: Announcing) Gluster Storage Platform

[Chan Chung Hang Christopher <christopher.chan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan McKay wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 7:48 PM, Christopher Chan
> <christopher.chan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> A cluster filesystem
> 
> OK, but you've just given me a circular definition.
> 
>> When you do not need/want a cluster file system
> 
> and again ...
> 

Okay, a cluster/distributed file system that does not have its own on 
disk format. It makes use of whatever existing filesystem there is for 
actual storage and allows you to replicate files/load balance requests 
to files to 'storage servers' of any supported platform.

At the same time, user level processes on 'clients' access the system as 
if it was an actual file system.

This enables one to have Linux clients that run say samba to export the 
files to Windows clients but the actual files are kept on OpenSolaris 
servers on zfs. Should the Linux clients all go down, the Windows 
clients could still access the files on the OpenSolaris servers via samba.
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