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Date:      Tue, 29 Apr 2003 00:31:28 +0200 (CEST)
From:      Oliver Fromme <olli@secnetix.de>
To:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: sharing scsi disk beetween two freesbd's ...
Message-ID:  <200304282231.h3SMVSX9045949@lurza.secnetix.de>
In-Reply-To: <3EADA59D.6050201@esm2.imt-mrs.fr>

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Geoffroy DESVERNAY <dgeo@esm2.imt-mrs.fr> wrote:
 > Of course, but the two machines are going to be redundant servers, ant 
 > the disc
 > (an IDE raid array presented as scsi disk) will have to be accessible by 
 > the second server,
 > in case of failure of the first one...

For that kind of setup, I would recommend to use something
like a NetApp Filer.  It appears as an NFS server by itself,
so you can mount it on both of your redundant machines.
Even both read+write, if you want.

You can even cluster two Filers that mirror each other, so
you get an additional level of redundancy.

 > Isn't there any mechanism that could force the system to flush read 
 > cache on each operation ?

No.  You could of course build your own fail-over mechanism:
During normal operation, host1 mounts the SCSI disk and
host2 mounts it via NFS from host1.  If host2 detects a
failure of host1, it forcibly removes the NFS mount and then
mounts the SCSI disk itself.  You have to be very careful,
though, since there are a few possible pitfalls.

 > I think the design of scsi bus, which allow 2 'SCSI adapters' (=> 2 
 > computers) should imply that one disc (or device) can be accessed by two 
 > hosts at the same time... for reading of course :)

It might imply that in the _hardware_ level.  But you still
need support at the OS level (e.g. VM cache subsystem),
which FreeBSD does not provide for its UFS/FFS.

Regards
   Oliver

PS:  I'm not afiliated with NetApp, but I've been using
their products and I'm very satisfied with them.

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

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