My definition of a "unified namespace" is to provide the end user with 1 logical mount point which would be comprised of an aggregate of all the thumpers. A very simple example, 6 thumpers (17TB each). I want the end user to see one mount point that is 102TB large.
I agree with you that there is some ugliness here. Thats why I'm hoping to get some better suggestions on how to accomplish this. I looked at Lustre but it seems to be linux only. Thanks for your input. Richard Elling wrote: > Larry Lui wrote: >> Hello, >> I have a situation here at the office I would like some advice on. >> >> I have 6 Sun Fire x4550(Thumper) that I want to aggregate the storage >> and create a unified namespace for my client machines. My plan was to >> export the zpools from each thumper as an iscsi target to a Solaris >> machine and create a RAIDZ zpool from the iscsi targets. I think this >> is what they call RAID plaiding(RAID on RAID). This Solaris frontend >> machine would then share out this zpool via NFS or CIFS. >> > > What is your operating definition of "unified namespace." In my mind, > I've been providing a unified namespace for 20+ years -- it is a process > rather than a product. For example, here at Sun, no matter where I login, > I get my home directory. > >> My question is what is the best solution for this? The question i'm >> facing is how to add additional thumpers since you cannot expand a >> RAIDZ array. >> > > Don't think of a thumper as a whole disk. Then expanding a raidz2 > (preferred) > can be accomplished quite easily. For example, something like 6 > thumpers, each > providing N iSCSI volumes. You can add another thumper, move the data > around > and end up with 7 thumpers providing data -- online, no downtime. This > will take > a good long while to do because you are moving TBytes between thumpers, but > it can be done. > > IMHO, there is some ugliness here. You might see if pNFS, QFS, or Lustre > would better suit the requirements at the "unified namespace" level. > -- richard > -- Larry Lui BIRN Coordinating Center UC San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093 email: llui at ncmir dot ucsd dot edu phone: 858-822-0702 fax: 858-822-0828 _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
