On Nov 19, 2008, at 12:15 AM, Harry M. Greenblatt wrote:
There are, of course, alternatives these days in the Unix world to NFS, in the form of other distributed file systems,
Let us not forget the most sane and far superior alternative to a distributed file system: a local file system. I've been running a local file system for several years now and I find that it is faster and more reliable than distributed alternatives like NFS.
NFS was invented to solve the specific problems of computing and storage resource limitations in a shared computing environment. Its buggy implementation, poor performance, and complete lack of security are symptoms of its anachronistic status. In the world of $400 core2duos, 4GB addressing, and 1TB hard drives, do we really need the overhead of distributed file systems?
To emulate some of the functions of a distributed file system like data backup, consistent system configuration, facilitation of shared projects, and one-to-many user-to-computer relationships, I suggest a combination of SVN and scheduled backups using something like rsync or unison.
My advice to those running a distributed file system is to consider deeply whether they really need it. If one has a core facility of four or five computers with a homogeneous set of programs, then, yes, NFS is probably a good idea in such an environment. Beyond that, one is basically begging for unrelenting network problems no matter which server they run.
-- James Stroud UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics Box 951570 Los Angeles, CA 90095 http://www.jamesstroud.com
