[Gluster-devel] Re :Confusion GlusterFS over GFS(Global File system)

[mohan L]

Dear all,

 I am looking for GlusterFS and GFS(Red Hat Global File system) to set up shared database storage. I am confused some thing.Now i am writting this  in some assumption   but i am not clear my assumption  is correct  or not . in case  any  thing  wrong  please  guide  me .Thanks  for  your time  .

We have five socail  web sites  ,we are using MySQL  to store user  profile . Now we are currently using NFS to meet data sharing requirement (for each site with a single NFS server with its own local storage connected to a number of clients on network).For Example  : Let us assume A ,B,C,D,E are our sites and NFS1,NFS2,NFS3,NFS4,NFS5 are five NFS server .If a user search in site A  it seraches only NFS1 only but i want to make it to serach on all servers.storage  scalability , high performance can't bet achived in current NFS set up.The sucess of our bussness  requires 100% availability , scalability ,high performance ,data sharing for our web serving infrastrusture. 
                                    
To find solution for those requirement i am looking cluster file system to setup test environment for that .I am new to both networking and cluster file system but i am familer with Linux. 

I saw GlusterFS and GFS .Finaly i took GlusterFS installed one two machines ,it works fine .but yesterday i found one forum ,there somebody is telling 

1).GFS/OCFS is about sharing the block device. 
2).NFS/PNFS/GlusterFS is about
sharing the filesystem (and DRBD seems like a nice solution to
replicate block devices)

link :
http://kerneltrap.org/node/6814

now my question is 
1). what is the difference between sharing file system and sharing block device? which one is best for shared data base storage .
2).How do compare GlusterFS and GFS?

3).Is any one can recomand which one is best for our above requirement  with some reson?

4).we are using MyISAM as storage engine, GlusterFS  can support it? Is there any relevent document related to MySQl with GlustterFS? i googled it ,but badly  i am not get relavent information.

5).I have  8 machine for testing perpose ,but i have installed only two machine only ,one for GlusterFG server and GlusterFS client on another machine .using clien volume file i am mounted /var/dir from server to client . Here i have two issue what is the job of GlusterFS Server and GlusterFS client?

6).Next i want to install GlusterFS server on 5 machine with own local storage and GlusterFS client  on one machine,then i want to mount different directories from server to one client machine . Is it correct way?

7). mysql default path is  /var/lib/mysql/ . how do i mount this directory to client? can i mount like normal directory?



Please can any one help me.

Thanks to your time

Rg
L.mohan