MSA2021fc volumnes's visibilty and linux ext3 filesystem

[fondep]

Hi,

I've been setting up an hp msa2021fs Fibre Channel disk array with many of our Linux machines. and i've created too partitions disk into the MSA, after i make ext3 file system on them.

These partitions are visible from many hosts,
the problem is that when i create a file in one of these partitions from host A.
The host B can not directly see the file created.

Please can you help to identify this problem.
Thanks in advance

[Uwe Zessin]

ext3, like many other file systems, does not provide shared access from multiple hosts. As soon as the second host mounts the file system, corruption as started(!), because each host assumes exclusive access.

Mounting the file system read-only on all other hosts will not help, because changes from the first host are not communicated to the file system handlers on the remaining hosts.

[fondep]

But it worked for me, at the beginning of deployment.

I shared a ext3 volumne for writing and reading.
So you recommend me to change the file system, to another that support the shared access.

[Uwe Zessin]

fondep,

I have experience with *true* shared filesystems for 23+ years now. Trust me - it DOES NOT *work* properly.

Do some extensive file system operations on a single volume - create some folders and files from two servers concurrently and then run a file system check.

[fondep]

Thank you for your reply,

So i've searched for a linux cluster filesystem, and i've found GFS but i'm not sure that it supported by the data protector tape.

Also, I don't want the other aspects of clustering, just the shared file
system.