installer-with-ocfs2

Summary

OCFS2 has grown a lot since we first introduced it in ubuntu and it has features that allow its usage as any other filesystem including the option to turn from local to cluster in a second. Integrating OCFS2 in the installer would be a win for mass deployment of cluster nodes and also as alternative FS to the "usual suspects".

Use Cases

* User foo wants to deploy an optimized SOHO server that will require a lot of DB access. He wants /var/lib/bigdatabase to be on a proper filesystem. OCFS2 is the right choice since it has been designed with DB in mind and Ubuntu offers it as option in the installer. No need to hack the FS at a later stage, no need to modify the machine.

* The same user foo will realize in time that he needs to grow his DB and share it across several machines. Extremely proud of this previous installations he can just flip one switch and the OCFS2 volume can now be mounted in clustered mode and ready to be shared across 256 nodes.

* Company bar wants to deploy a set of large DB clusters. OCFS2 is their choice and Ubuntu installer has preseedable support for it. Ubuntu is the solution that will save company hours of manual work to setup the filesystem on all the machines.

Implementation

* ocfs2-tools to provide a proper udeb (mkfs.ocfs2 and co.)

* create partman-ocfs2 based on partman-ext3

* make sure to ship ocfs2 kernel modules in udeb.

Outstanding Issues

* Decide if we want to offer the option of cluster mount/format in the installer or allow only local.

  • For the former we need to find a proper way to propagate cluster.conf


CategorySpec

installer-with-ocfs2 (last edited 2008-08-06 16:15:47 by localhost)