[Gluster-users] SAN vs. NAS Conundrum

[Jeff Darcy]

On 11/11/2013 10:49 AM, Ellison, Bob wrote:
> - Can GlusterFS even work with GFS2 partitions or must it be XFS /
> EXT4 / (et al)?

GlusterFS can work with any filesystem that supports extended
attributes.  As far as I know this would include GFS2, though I don't
know of anybody doing that and I suspect it might be a bad idea (because
having two levels of heartbeats and HA is always a a bad idea).

> - Can GlusterFS be configured in to accommodate the existing SAN?

We - upstream/community, not Red Hat Storage - neither support nor
preclude it.  In other words, we don't have any code to set it up for
you, but if you want to set up heartbeat and failover between paired
servers instead of using our replication then you can.  You'll probably
even get better performance, at the cost of greater administrative and
operational complexity.  On the other hand, if you only have two servers
then the other stuff is sufficient and you don't need us.  ;)  Such a
configuration would only make sense if you're using it instead of that
one specific replication component, but also need distribution/striping
or other GlusterFS features in addition to that.  For example, if you
had ten servers and you used GlusterFS to create a "union" across five
pairs, that's not a bad way to do things.