distributed storage

[zhengyu at attbi.com]

Are there any initiatives to combine SAN/NAS with
cluster  computing platforms such as beowulf? For a large
cluster
each with direct attached storage, maintanance and
managability are definitely problematic.

> Hi everyone!
>     I'd like to hear your expert opinion on how to effectively use the
> distributed storage
> capacity of a cluster. Suppose you have hundreds of nodes, each with a local
> hard disk,
> thus the accumulated capacity is huge. Aslo you have large amount of data to
> be stored.
> How can we reliably take advantage of the storage on the nodes?
>    I checked out PVFS. It is nice, but it seems to me the reliability is an
> issue -- if one of the 
> storage nodes goes down, the whole FS is not available (correct me if I am
> wrong). 
> CXFS and GFS are not our options because they cost $$. 
> Any suggestions on how we can best use the capacity, while having no
> problems 
> when one or two nodes crash? 
> 
> Thanks.
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>