Global File System
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Global File System (or GFS) is a shared-storage journaled cluster, or distributed file system. It uses either a redundant server locking mechanism (called GULM), or it can use a distributed lock manager (GDLM).
GFS does not belong in the same league as projects such as AFS, Coda, or Intermezzo. It has no client side caching of any sort. By design it talks directly to storage (although that can happen by exporting the storage via GNBD, iSCSI, etc.). GFS has no concept of client and server: only raw storage and mounters exist.
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History
GFS originally developed as a part of a thesis project at the University of Minnesota. At some point it made its way to Sistina Software, where it lived for a time as an open source project. Sometime in 2001 Sistina made the choice to make GFS a commercial product -- not under an open source license. OpenGFS forked from the last public release of GFS. In December 2003 Red Hat purchased Sistina.
In late June 2004, Red Hat released GFS and many cluster infrastructure pieces under the GPL. Red Hat's current goal for the project (aside from the normal bug fixing and stabilization) envisages inclusion in the mainline Linux kernel.
External links
Background
- Symmetric Cluster Architecture (http://people.redhat.com/~teigland/sca.pdf) -- paper (pdf) describing gfs and future development
- http://www.diku.dk/undervisning/2003e/314/papers/soltis97global.pdf -- a good paper about the technical background of GFS and how it compares to other network filesystems
- Old but still useful GFS 5.1.1 user manual: pdf (http://home.postech.ac.kr/~salesian/cs499/pds/GFS_User_Manual.pdf), html (http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:XMoxshOAZ2UJ:home.postech.ac.kr/~salesian/cs499/pds/GFS_User_Manual.pdf)
Documentation (https://open.datacore.ch/page/GFS)
- Home of DataCore's GFS Informations (https://open.datacore.ch/page/GFS)
The entry page to all GFS information hosted on DataCore's Open Source (https://open.datacore.ch/) webserver. - GFS Installation on Gentoo Systems (https://open.datacore.ch/page/GFS.Install)
This page explains how to compile, install and configure GFS on a Gentoo (http://gentoo.org) system. - How to use GNBD to export or import devices for GFS (https://open.datacore.ch/page/GFS.GNBD.Usage)
One can export local devices with GNBD and import them on a remote system. This allows sharing a local device between two cluster nodes. GFS can use that device locally and remotely at the same time. - Prelimary Bonnie++ GFS Benchmarks (https://open.datacore.ch/DCwiki.open/Wiki.jsp?page=GFS.Bonnie) | History of the GFS development (https://open.datacore.ch/page/GFS.History)
Some background information on performance and history of GFS.
Related projects
- Alternate implementation (http://opengfs.sourceforge.net/) of GFS, forked when Sistina closed the source a while ago. Has undergone further development and incorporates recent updates allowing it to work with OpenDLM (http://opendlm.sourceforge.net).