Re: [Linux-cluster] GFS

"Dascalu Dragos" <dascalu_dragos@xxxxxxx> · Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:41:29 -0400

We are working on a similar scenario but adding mailman into the mix. 
The ideal outcome would be for multiple mailman/postfix servers to 
write archives, etc to the same centralized location on a SAN. After 
doing some tests this setup does not appear to be trivial. We ran into 
a similar problem when using NFS; if multiple machines write to the 
same file at the same time the file gets mangled as the machines cut 
each other off. With GFS we noticed that each machine has a 4k buffer 
window in which it writes its data. If a second process decides to 
start writing to the same file we noticed alternating writes to the 
file after 4k of data.

We would like multiple mailman machines to write their archives to a 
centralized space on a SAN. If a mail list message gets sent 
concurrently from both machines to the same list, the archives may get 
mangled. I would also like to know of any alternatives to make this 
work.

Dede.
On Oct 26, 2004, at 4:14 PM, Patrick wrote:

Hi,

If i was going to use GFS on a mail system for a LOT of users, and i
was going to have multiple machines writing to the mailstore. I was
thinking to decrease the ammount of possible problems by splitting the
device up into multiple smaller fs's to lower the chance of the same
directory being hit / drive / lun etc.

Anyone else have any ideas on what would be good things to take into
account ? It would be on FC - > SAN ( fast T600 ) and maildir with
postfix 2.x

Comments anyone ?

P
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