Re: File System for attached storage?

Atom Powers wrote:
All the modern storage cabinets have two data ports (mine has two
SCSI320 ports) so they can be attached to two servers. But what kind
of file system can you use that would make that data available to both
servers?

Splitting the storage in half isn't an option, as that doesn't give
added redundancy.

I've head of GFS and Coda, but I can't find any information about how
stable these file systems are on FreeBSD 6.x.

What do/would you use to share a storage device between two servers?

There's something in the SCSI and Firewire worlds called "target initiator mode" or "target mode", which lets you have multiple controllers on the same bus without direct conflict.

This can be used to treat your laptop as if it were an external hard drive and work on it from another system. Or it can be used to share a tape drive between two machines, at least so long as only one computer is doing stuff at any particular time.

Less commonly, it can be used for fault-tolerant hot-standby servers operating from a shared central storage. If you want that kind of thing, or if you want several computers to modify the same disks in parallel, you should look into fibre-channel or maybe iSCSI-based SAN solutions.

These usually involve a bespoke filesystem and metadata controller mechanism to keep the filesystem sane-- something like a Qlogic FC-switch, an Apple Xsan, + ADIC StorEdge software, for example.

--
-Chuck
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