IIRC, Sistina was working on a project called GFS, and they eventually changed it to a non-open source project. A group is working from the last open source release of GFS at http://opengfs.sourceforge.net/ Also, last time I looked (a couple of years ago) GFS/OpenGFS didn't support running samba or nfs on the gfs distributed file system. You may want to check with Sistina to see if this has changed for their code base. If it has, and you're looking for a turnkey product, then they may be your best option. Something else that may be useful is NBD http://www.xss.co.at/linux/NBD/ The Network Block Device project would let you aggregate the disk space from several different systems over a network to a master system, and then export all of that storage space via nfs or samba or some other protocol to all of your other systems. There's also AFS and Coda. http://www.unc.edu/atn/dci/dci_components/afs/ http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/ I've played with nbd a little, but nothing in a production environment. It doesn't provide any sort of data integretity checking like the others do. You could however do software raid across your nbd providing systems, which would provide at least some redundancy. In other words, you'd have for example 4 storage servers, each with some form of redundant storage (raid 5 probably, either hardware or software). Then, on your master server you build a software raid 5 out of the nbd storage servers, losing 1 server's worth of storage but protecting against any one storage server failing. Of course, your master server is still a single point of failure, as is the network switch for your storage lan. I don't know how any of these solutions perform for day to day usage. Jeff On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Brent Friedman wrote: > I was asked to look into feasibility for setting up a Linux (or *bsd) > based SAN. I know there have been some kernel mods for this kind of > stuff, but I don't know their current status, and quick googles show > something called netMD at a conference in ottawa, but no website for it. > I used to work at the Utech Center near campus, and I think the people > at Sistina were doing something like this. > > Because of various development environments, I need the SAN to be > reachable from anything (meaning Windoze, AIX, Solaris or other Linux > boxen). I am not very versant in vfs, lvm, etc., but I have the time to > deal with a manual. > > Any comments on what will/won't work, or suggestions on sites/mailing > lists for linux SANs? > > Thanks, > > Brent Friedman > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list