OCFS2: Unappreciated Linux File System

“It’s common knowledge that Linux has a fair number of file
systems. Some of these are unappreciated and can be very useful
outside their “comfort zone”. OCFS2 is a clustered file system
initially contributed by Oracle and can be a great back-end file
system for general, shared storage needs.

“Lately I’ve been talking about NAS servers focusing on NFS. One
of the difficult aspects to a NAS server is how to properly expand
it in terms of capacity and performance. In many situations you are
limited to the capacity provided by the server/storage which
depends upon the hardware but in almost all situations you are
limited to a single NFS gateway because the underlying file system
is local to the server (Note: there are exceptions but they are
proprietary and many times that means more money). Wouldn’t it be
nice to scale the storage as needed and share it across multiple
NFS gateways (or even CIFS gateways)? One approach to this is a
clustered file system.

“A clustered file system is one that is mounted on multiple
servers at the same time.”

Complete
Story