Tools/GFS

Red Hat GFS cluster filesystem

Red Hat Global File System is available as part of Fedora Core from version 4 onwards.

The open source cluster file system for enterprise deployments

What if you could manage a cluster of servers, as if it were one server? Red Hat Global File System (GFS) helps you get there today, so that you can maximize the benefits of clustering and minimize the costs.

Red Hat GFS allows a cluster of Linux servers to share data in a common pool of storage, allowing you to:

• Greatly simplify your data infrastructure:
• Install and patch applications once, for the entire cluster
• Reduce the need for redundant copies of data
• Simplify back-up and disaster recovery tasks
• Maximize use of storage resources and minimize your storage costs:
• Manage your storage capacity as a whole vs. by partition
• Decrease your overall storage needs by reducing data duplication
• Scale clusters seamlessly, adding storage or servers on the fly:
• No more partitioning storage with complicated techniques
• Add servers simply by mounting them to the common file system
• Achieve maximum application uptime:
• Red Hat Cluster Suite is included with Red Hat GFS

Red Hat GFS is...

• The only native 64-bit cluster file system on Linux for enterprise workloads - support for x86, AMD64/EM64T, and Itanium
• The most scalable enterprise cluster file system on Linux - supported up to 256 nodes
• Tightly integrated with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (no patching needed)
• The only open source (GPL) cluster file system for enterprise workloads
• POSIX-compliant, meaning applications don't have to be rewritten to use GFS

Red Hat GFS is commonly used in clusters of enterprise applications to provide a consistent file system image across the server nodes. This allows the cluster nodes to simultaneously read and write to a single shared filesystem. Typical application clusters where Red Hat GFS is deployed today include:

• Databases (including Oracle RAC - see this whitepaper on the benefits of using GFS with Oracle RAC)
• Application and web servers
• In-house custom applications
• High-performance compute clusters where NFS scalability and performance are key

Whitepapers

• http://www.redhat.com/whitepapers/rha/gfs/GFS_INS0032US.pdf
• http://www.redhat.com/whitepapers/rha/gfs/DataSharingClusters.pdf
• https://www.redhat.com/apps/webform.html?event_type=whitepaper&eid=313

Red Hat Magazine Articles

• Enterprise data sharing with Red Hat Global File System
• Red Hat GFS vs. NFS: Improving performance and scalability
• Best practices with the Red Hat GFS
• The Linux Logical Volume Manager
• Open source high-availability clustering

References

• http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/