NFS or Gluster?

jlpoole · Guru Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 481 Location: Salem, OR

I'd like to have directory & file sharing among my Gentoo Linux servers. Gluster looked interesting, but new. NFS seems to be the old standard, but I remember hearing from a colleague that NFS is less than ideal. I also saw this unresolved recent posting about NFS failing on kernel 3.3? I was going to go with NFS for all my servers, but the recent kernel issue give me pause.

A search of "NFS Gluster" came back only with 1 record, so I don't think anyone has broached the subject of comparing the two.

My needs are all within a firewall (for now).

What are people's recommendations: NFS or Gluster?

For reference, here related links:

Gentoo-wiki: Gluster FS
Gentoo-wiki: NFS

ianw1974 · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2012 8:03 am Post subject:

Hi,

GlusterFS is good, because you replicate the data between your machines. However, you would need to have them all on all the time. If you just turn one on, and not the rest, your filesystem will be read-only. I tried this once, and it was a pain because I wanted the data to be there, and when another machine came online that it would synchronise.

There's also drbd, but then only one partition is mounted at the same time. This would mean doing some HA as well so that you can at least have a virtual IP (VIP) for access to the share, so that if the primary server is unavailable, you will still have access to the secondary when it becomes active.

If you're just wanting to share data simply, you could NFS, and use rsync to replicate to the other machines when they are online. It depends how you are going to do it. Have all your machines on all the time? Or just from time to time, require the need to replicate when you switch them on.

Another alternative would be to consider sparkleshare, which is similar in respect to dropbox, but that you have it on your own servers, rather than out on the internet somewhere like dropbox.

Hope maybe it helps a little bit.
_________________
Ian Walker

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........

Linux Systems Limited | Masternode Monitoring