Global File System
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In computing, the Global File System (GFS) is a shared disk file system for Linux computer clusters.
GFS differs from distributed file systems (such as AFS, Coda, or InterMezzo) because it allows all nodes to have direct concurrent access to the same shared block storage.
GFS has no disconnected operating-mode, and no client or server roles. All nodes in a GFS cluster function as peers. System administrators often use Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or AoE devices for GFS shared storage. Using GFS in a cluster requires a lock manager plug-in like GULM, a server based lock manager which implements redundancy via failover, or a Distributed Lock Manager (DLM) which is the current preferred approach. There is also a "nolock" lock manager which can be used in single node deployments when GFS acts just like any other local filesystem. GFS comes as free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.[1][2]
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[edit] History
GFS was originally developed as 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.
Developers forked OpenGFS from the last public release of GFS and then further enhanced it to include updates allowing it to work with OpenDLM. But OpenGFS and OpenDLM became defunct, since Red Hat purchased Sistina in December 2003 and released GFS and many cluster infrastructure pieces under the GPL in late June 2004.
Red Hat subsequently financed further development geared towards bug-fixing and stabilization. A further development, GFS2[3]is derived from GFS and was included along with its distributed lock manager (shared with GFS) into the version 2.6.19 of the mainline Linux kernel.
GFS now forms part of the Fedora and Centos Linux distributions. Users can purchase it as a commercial product to run on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The following list summarizes some version numbers and major features introduced:
- v1.0 (1996) SGI IRIX only
- v3.0 Linux-port
- v4 Journaling
- v5 Redundant Lock Manager
- v6.1 (2005) Distributed Lock Manager
[edit] See also
| Free software Portal |
- Comparison of file systems
- GPFS
- Lustre
- GlusterFS
- List of file systems
- Oracle cluster file system (OCFS)
- SAN file system
- Fencing
[edit] References
- ^ Teigland, David (29 June 2004), Symmetric Cluster Architecture and Component Technical Specifications, Red Hat Inc, <http://people.redhat.com/~teigland/sca.pdf>. Retrieved on 3 August 2007.
- ^ Soltis, Steven R; Erickson, Grant M & Preslan, Kenneth W (1997), ""The Global File System: A File System for Shared Disk Storage"", IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, <http://www.diku.dk/undervisning/2003e/314/papers/soltis97global.pdf>.
- ^ Whitehouse, Steven (27-30 June 2007). "The GFS2 Filesystem". Proceedings of the Linux Symposium 2007: 253-259.
[edit] External links
- Red Hat GFS Product Page
- Red Hat Cluster Suite and GFS Documentation Page
- GFS Project Page
- DataCore's GFS Informations
- OpenGFS Project Page
- Gluster file system
- The GFS2 development git tree
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| Defunct products | Red Hat Linux · Red Hat Database · Fedora Legacy |
| Important people | Matthew Szulik · Bob Young · Marc Ewing · Michael Tiemann |
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