load balancing at fastmail.fm

[David Carter]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007, Marten Lehmann wrote:

> because NFS is the only standard network file protocol. I don't want to 
> load a proprietary driver into the kernel to access a SAN device.

Fair enough, although NFS is likely to be really rather slow compared to a 
block device which just happens to be accessed via a fibre channel link.

I would be surprised if NFS worked given that it is only a approximation to 
a "real" Unix filesystem. Cyrus really hammers the filesystem.

>> I've heard horror stories about all the common Linux filesystems and I've 
>> personally watched fsck.ext3 (supposedly the safest option) unravel a 
>> filesystem, with thousands of entries left in lost+found.
>
> ext3 with journal? I have never experienced this.

It was in a RAID set which had had a dodgy disk, but there was a definite 
urk moment when I saw what fsck had done. Fortunately not critical data.

>> ZFS looks nice.
>
> Well, but you are on your own because this project for linux is pretty 
> young.

I don't have any problem with OpenSolaris, though it would be a little 
amusing given that we moved from Solaris to Linux about 4 years back.

-- 
David Carter                             Email: David.Carter at ucs.cam.ac.uk
University Computing Service,            Phone: (01223) 334502
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street,       Fax:   (01223) 334679
Cambridge UK. CB2 3QH.