Fibre Channel Storage Devices; Network Power Switches; Console Access; Fibre Channel Storage Device Requirements - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - GLOBAL FILE SYTEM Manual

Chapter 2. System Requirements
Requirement
HBA (Host Bus Adapter)
Connection method
Table 2.2. Fibre Channel Network Requirements

2.5. Fibre Channel Storage Devices

Table 2.3, "Fibre Channel Storage Device Requirements"
devices that are to be connected to a GFS cluster.
Requirement
Device Type
Size
Table 2.3. Fibre Channel Storage Device Requirements

2.6. Network Power Switches

You can fence GFS nodes with power switches and fencing agents available with Red Hat Cluster
Suite. For more information about fencing with network power switches, refer to Configuring and
Managing a Red Hat Cluster.

2.7. Console Access

Make sure that you have console access to each GFS node. Console access to each node ensures
that you can monitor nodes and troubleshoot problems.
8
Description
One HBA minimum per GFS node
Fibre Channel switch
Note: If an FC switch is used for fencing, you may want to
consider using Brocade, McData, or Vixel FC switches, for
which Red Hat Cluster Suite fencing agents exist. Refer
to Configuring and Managing a Red Hat Cluster for more
information about supported fencing agents.
Note: When a small number of nodes is used, it may be
possible to connect the nodes directly to ports on the storage
device.
Note: FC drivers may not work reliably with FC hubs.
shows requirements for Fibre Channel
Description
FC RAID array or JBOD
Note: Make sure that the devices can operate reliably when
heavily accessed simultaneously from multiple initiators.
Note: Make sure that your GFS configuration does not exceed
the number of nodes an array or JBOD supports.
GFS is based on a 64-bit architecture, which can theoretically
accommodate an 8 EB file system. However, the current
supported maximum size of a GFS file system is 25 TB. If your
system requires GFS file systems larger than 25 TB, contact
your Red Hat service representative.
When determining the size of your file system, you should
consider your recovery needs. Running the fsck command
on the file system can take a long time and consume a large
amount of memory. Additionally, in the event of a disk or disk-
subsytem failure, recovery time is limited by the speed of your
backup media.