Distributed File Systems and Beowulf ?

[Omar Kilani]

Hello,

I am planning a Beowulf at the moment - it's main function will be data 
searching, extraction and reporting, with some funky mathematics thrown in. 
Now, the proposed application of the Beowulf requires some sort of locally 
mirrored data on every node, as to eliminate need to open sockets or NFS (a 
few milliseconds takes too long for it's purpose ... 325! * 6000! bits of 
data to sort through ... basically.)

I was wondering if anyone had success with whatever implementation of a 
distributed file system, and if so, can tell me about it.
I was also wondering if it was possible to do something like RAID-5 or 
creating a network block device over the nodes, or something like that. 
Also, can ReiserFS or some other journaling file system be used locally on 
the nodes?

I'm really just taking many stabs into the darkness here - any help 
what-so-ever would be appreciated.
There's always MOSIX ... but we are leaning towards a Beowulf at the present.

Any advice would be great.

Best Regards,
Omar Kilani