Table of Contents
Advertisement
Chapter 1.
GFS Overview
Red Hat GFS is a cluster file system that is available with Red Hat Cluster Suite. Red Hat GFS
nodes are configured and managed with Red Hat Cluster Suite configuration and management
tools. Red Hat GFS provides data sharing among GFS nodes in a Red Hat cluster. GFS
provides a single, consistent view of the file-system name space across the GFS nodes in a
Red Hat cluster. GFS allows applications to install and run without much knowledge of the
underlying storage infrastructure. GFS is fully compliant with the IEEE POSIX interface, allowing
applications to perform file operations as if they were running on a local file system. Also, GFS
provides features that are typically required in enterprise environments, such as quotas, multiple
journals, and multipath support.
GFS provides a versatile method of networking your storage according to the performance,
scalability, and economic needs of your storage environment. This chapter provides some very
basic, abbreviated information as background to help you understand GFS. It contains the
following sections:
•
Section 1, "New and Changed Features"
•
Section 2, "Performance, Scalability, and Economy"
•
Section 3, "GFS Functions"
•
Section 4, "GFS Software Subsystems"
•
Section 5, "Before Setting Up GFS"
1. New and Changed Features
This section lists new and changed features included with the initial release of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 4.5.
• Multipath GNBD is available with GFS in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5. GNBD with
device-mapper multipath allows you to configure multiple GNBD server nodes (nodes that
export GNBDs to GFS nodes) to provide redundant paths to the storage devices. The GNBD
server nodes, in turn, present multiple storage paths to GFS nodes via redundant GNBDs.
When using GNBD with device-mapper multipath, if a GNBD server node becomes
unavailable, another GNBD server node can provide GFS nodes with access to storage
devices.
For information on GNBD with device-mapper multipath, see Using GNBD with Global File
System.
• Documentation for Red Hat Cluster Suite for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 has been
expanded and reorganized. For information on the available documents, see
Section 2,
1
Advertisement
Table of Contents
