[Gluster-users] Need help making a decision choosing MS DFS or Gluster+SAMBA+CTDB

Sun Aug 9 20:24:49 UTC 2015

I do have DFS-R in production, that replaced sometimes netapp ones.
But no similar workload as my current GFS.

In active/active, the most common issue is file changed on both side (no
global lock)
Will users access same content from linux & windows ?

Cordialement,
Mathieu CHATEAU
http://www.lotp.fr

2015-08-09 21:18 GMT+02:00 David <david.peer at gmail.com>:

> Hi,
>
> Thank you very much for detailed answer.
>
> Most of the clients are Windows based OS's, but Linux will come in the
> future.
> Now I know that Windows does a bad job with NFS, so this is one concern
> that I have, but I also worried about performance and stability.
> I used to work with NFS clustered environments, also with GPFS and CTDB
> exporting both NFS and CIFS servicing 100s of users and render farms with
> no issues.
>
> Are you aware of any performance challenges/limitations of DFS-R, I mean
> real world ones compared to Linux? I aware of MS official DFS docs.
> Wonder if there is a comparison of same HW, one runs Gluster replica
> (ontop of XFS/Ext4) compared to two nodes DFS-R. (checking concurrent CIFS
> session, IOps, network utilization while sync etc..)
>
> Thanks again,
> David
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 9:05 PM, Mathieu Chateau <mathieu.chateau at lotp.fr>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> By DFS, you mean DFS-R.
>> Because DFS can also be used only as domain space (DFS-N). This allow to
>> publish share that hide real server name and so allow to move target
>> somewhere else as needed.
>>
>> As I do quite a lot of DFS-R, here are the differences using DFS-R
>> instead of Gluster:
>>
>>    - Replication occurs between servers. Client only connect to one of
>>    ther server (can be based on AD topology), and is not aware that it's DFS-R.
>>    - Replication only transmit block changed in files, not the whole file
>>    - Replication is tracked using an internal Jet database
>>    - You have reporting tool to see differences & co between servers
>>    - This is active/active. If a client can/connect to a server, it will
>>    work there.
>>    - Lock on files are not replicated. If same file is changed on 2
>>    servers at same time, replication will log that in event log and put file
>>    that lost in lost&found folder (the more recent win)
>>    - Not any issue browsing files/folder tree. Everything act like if it
>>    was just a file server.
>>    - You can use NTFS permission to fine grain access (Go further than
>>    unix style from my point of view)
>>    - Quota are working
>>    - You can prevent file based on extension
>>    - New version can deduplicate content (file server standard)
>>    - Writes are not synchronous. Once file is written, it's replicated
>>    in the background.
>>
>>
>> Main difference is that you can't strip inside share content over
>> multiple servers like if they were just one (the distributed feature of
>> Gluster). Things are evolving with Windows Server 2016, but not yet RTM.
>> You can also use shared storage in a more cluster way, with or without
>> DFS replication (to survive a server down).
>>
>> We nearly always use both DFS-R and DFS-N, so we can migrate share to a
>> different server without changes on client side.
>>
>> NAS & SAN vendors don't have choice. NetApp can't use Windows, else they
>> can't customize it deeper enough, and they would have to pay license to MS.
>> I always found that using a linux for CIFS is far away from feature you
>> have on Windows side, and issue it generate (like robocopy diff. not
>> working without /FFT flag).
>>
>> Backup of NetApp or EMC CIFS is just not working if doing that through
>> share, you have to use NDMP, which is proprietary and generate others issue
>> to backup (NDMP license, need to write directly itself on tape...).
>>
>> What will be your clients ? Windows box ? Linux ? Both ? If both, going
>> to same shares?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Cordialement,
>> Mathieu CHATEAU
>> http://www.lotp.fr
>>
>> 2015-08-09 17:56 GMT+02:00 David <david.peer at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I need some help in making this call choosing between the two.
>>> I have no experience with MS DFS or with Windows server OS as a file
>>> server.
>>>
>>> There are some developers that pushing the DFS direction, mostly because
>>> the applications that will use it and access will be from Microsoft using
>>> CIFS.
>>>
>>> Now I know that most serious storage, NAS and SAN vendors work with
>>> Linux or Unix based because of performance and flexibility, and I'm afraid
>>> that DFS will just won't carry the expected load.
>>>
>>> Does anyone has experience with it?
>>> Can some tell what are the PROS and CONS of each that can help us to
>>> make a call?
>>>
>>> Many thanks,
>>> David
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Gluster-users mailing list
>>> Gluster-users at gluster.org
>>> http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-users
>>>
>>
>>
>
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