[Ocfs2-users] OCFS 1.2.4 and extended attributes

[Cline, Ernest]

The system I am using OCFS2 for is for development, so the access is
subversion checkins/outs, via samba (so users can use windows) and just
hosting web files.  The developers just use one system, because samba is
not cluster aware, but the webserver side is load balanced, so this is a
lot easier to do with shared file systems.  I have found OCFS2 to be
comperable to GFS and also not too bad compared to just direct disk
access from a machine with local storage (although, the machine with
local storage was much older, about 5 year old hardware, so not a great
comparison, but for us, very tolerable).  

I thought the point of OCFS2 was a more general purpose cluster
filesytem, with OCFS being for just database access?  We also have an
Oracle RAC instance that uses OCFS, but obviously, that is a requirement
for RAC.  From the OCFS2 project page:
"Unlike the previous release (OCFS), OCFS2 is a general-purpose file
system that can be used.."  

It does seem to work perfectly for serving webpages with apache, editing
files via ssh/vi or eclipse mounted via a samba share.  I would love the
extended attributes, and ideally file system ACLs, but I can live
without them.

-----Original Message-----
From: HAWKER, Dan [mailto:dan.hawker at astrium.eads.net] 
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 1:32 PM
To: Cline, Ernest; ocfs2-users at oss.oracle.com
Subject: RE: [Ocfs2-users] OCFS 1.2.4 and extended attributes


Hi Ernest,

What kind of files are you serving up from you OCFS2 shared filesystem
and the services that access it??? Am in the process of deciding on a
Cluster FS for a mixed development network here, and although I like the
lack of complexity in OCFS2 (as you have rightly mentioned, its much
simpler than GFS), I am more concerned with performance, as OCFS2 is
more targetted
(obviously) at database access rather than as a regular filesystem. Most
of my guys will be developing code (directly via ssh, eclipse, etc) on a
series of servers that will directly access the shared filesystem.

What performance figures are you getting??? If OCFS2 is comparable to
GFS (of course all have a performance penalty due to locks and things),
I'd be willing to take a small hit for the ease of use.

Regards

Dan