[NTLUG:Discuss] RE: Practice with clustering at home?

[Bryan J. Smith]

Burton Strauss <Burton_Strauss at comcast.net> wrote:
> Danger Leaping Lemurs: Bryan, you saw the letters U S and B
> and jumped to the wrong conclusion.  And started off
> flogging deceased equines per usual.

Many people have not been exposed to FireWire, and only USB,
because of marketing.  I wanted to point that out.

Skip it if you don't care.  But many people come to the
conclusion that because FireWire can be used in a
multitargetted environment, USB should be able to as well.

> What Thomas was really asking is for information on using
> FireWire for a low-end cluster. 

I know.
And I still do _not_ recommend it.
I'd get some old SCSI hubs instead.
Or look into some of the new SAS options.

I've _personally_ run GFS on FireWire and I've pulled my hair
out more than it's worth.
FireWire is really _not_ built for multitargeting.

> (1) IIRC you would need to run GFS or another cluster aware
> file system - in the pointer below, Oracle's RAC does that
> for you.

There are _lots_ of solutions that do.

> (2) Pointers:
> Oracle has a couple of examples posted, the older (9) one
> at
> http://www.oraclenotes.com/articles/RacLinuxFirewire.htm
> and 10g at
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hunter_rac10g.html
> which has more details re hardware config.

Expect _massive_data_loss_.  Again, FireWire was _not_
designed for multi-targetting, only multi end-device
transfers.

As noted:  
"should never be run in a production environment and that it
is not supported by Oracle or any other vendor"

I think the statement that it costs $8-10k where FireWire
only costs $1.8k is a little bit mis-leading though.

> These people http://www.micronet.com/General/ have product
> for sale, no clue beyond that.

Even Apple has had to admit that FireWire does not work well
as a multi-targetted bus.

SAS, however, does, and it's not that much more expensive.


-- 
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