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Date:      Tue, 17 Jun 2003 14:49:38 -0400
From:      Michael Grant <mg-fbsd3@grant.org>
To:        freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: iSCSI and clustering with FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <20030617184938.GA1078@grant.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0304201700310.30275-100000@walnut.he.net>
References:  <Pine.LNX.4.21.0304201700310.30275-100000@walnut.he.net>

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Every time I look into clustering my box, I run into the same thing
that Linux is apparently much father ahead in this respect.  It sends
shudders through me to think that I might have to migrate to Linux.  I
could do it but it would take a lot of time.  It would be great if
some better clustering tools appeared for Freebsd.

The main thing that is blocking me from building something is a file
system that replicates across multiple boxes.  Is there still nothing
today that I could use on freebsd?  I looked into coda and intermezzo
but they're not really the right thing.  I need something much more
transparent.

OpenGFS and Lustre were mentioned.  Has anyone actually tried to
simply compile OpenGFS for freebsd just fixing the compilation
problems, or is it really a porting job with lots of rewrite?  Would
it solve my problems? (see below)

One thing that seems like it would help me a lot would be a way to
know when a file was modified.  Anyone know how to do this?  Again,
this is possible in Linux.  Maybe a simple file replication daemon
could be written on top of this.

Furthermore, I'm looking at clustering where the other boxes in the
cluster are not at the same ISP.  This adds additional headache for
sure.  If anyone has any ideas along these lines, let me know.  I want
to do this for reliability and load sharing, not for supercomputing.
However, it sure would be cool to be able to migrate a process to a
different box at a different location...

It looks like no matter what I do, I need a second box next to the
first one to redirect packets to the other box if one of the boxes
goes down.  I'd probably do this with NAT or an ip tunnel.  This
second box almost makes it seem not worthwhile to put the other boxes
in different ISPs.  Anyone have better ideas?

I'd be interested in people's experience who have clustered boxes in
this way.  I use the term cluster somewhat loosely.  More like making a
set of boxes which back each other up and share the load.

Michael Grant



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