[Gluster-devel] gluster, gfs, ocfs2, and lustre (lustre.org)

[gordan at bobich.net]

On Fri, 2 May 2008, Shaofeng Yang wrote:

> Can anybody share some thoughts about those cluster file systems? We are
> trying to compare the pros and cons for each solution.

GFS: Shared storage FS. Integrated with RHCS.

OCFS2: Shared storage FS, very similar to GFS. Standalone. 
Fencing/failover has to be provided by something like RHCS or Heartbeat.

Lustre: Advanced network file system. Despite claims of great scalability, 
metadata storage failover/redundant, but not load-shared.

GlusterFS: Replicated network FS with POSIX locking and support for file 
based striping and mirroring. Required xattr support on the backing file 
system, but files are the same on the exported and underlying file 
systems, which makes data recovery very straightforward and sensible if 
anything goes wrong.

Depending on what you plan to use it for, you may also want to look into 
Coda: replicated FS, supports disconnected operation through caching. 
Permission system can take some getting used to because they are based on 
external ACLs rather than owner/group/other permissions as per standard 
UNIX paradigm. Limited to 1000-4000 files per directory.

Gordan