Cluster Harddrive Using Firewire? 23
Ironstorm asks: "Recently I've started to see Firewire harddrives being sold from companies like Maxtor & Western Digital and now I'm pondering firewire storage solutions for high-availability clusters. Does anyone know if it would be possible to share a harddrive between two cluster nodes on a Firewire bus? Or have a node mount another node's Firewire drive if the other node has failed?"
Re:Of Course. (Score:1)
Their overview shows the original scenario he asked about, but with a SCSI bus or FC. All their downloads are for IA-32 Linux.
should work (Score:2)
Re:Drive lettering (Score:2)
The problem occurs when some software does not use a file system and does direct disk access. Some databases do this for example. This type of software usually does not use a drive lettered partition. It relies on disk and partition numbers and may or may not get broken when the numbering changes. Win2k disk and partition numbering is simpy based on discovery order. This in turn is based on the order in which drivers are loaded and where hardware is located on PCI and storage buses (SCSI/FibreChannel/FireWire). Put a new FibreChannel card in front of your old scsi and suddenly the database doesn't work. Write a special driver for you superduper disks that loads before the standard win2k driver and you may screw things up.
As others of noted Win2k supports mounting now. This lets you just have C as a sort of "/".
As for driver letters on firewire things should go like this in the win2k world:
PCI (if firewire pci card) or root bus driver (built into mother board) finds firewire bus, loads firewire bus driver.
Standard firewire bus driver finds device.
An additional driver or two will load some or all of which would be vendor specific. It could run like the standard scsi port driver/ vendor scsi miniport combonation. It would present an upword interface the same as presented by the normal scsi port/miniport combo but send firewire out the bottom.
This would let the standard pnp disk, partition, and file system drivers load on top.
They would talk scsi ops down the stack where the firewire scsi port/miniport would translate and encapsulate as needed and send it out, using the Firewire bus driver. Numbering occurs as things are discovered. Letters are assigned to partitions trying to use what was stored, moving up letters if a conflict occurs.
Peer-to-peer (Score:2)
Re:Drive lettering (Score:2)
Re:Of Course. (Score:1)
In this case, the poster could not imagine a negative result, but that does not mean he is capable of imagining universality of a positive. Although this might not be explicitly stated, it is usually assumed.
Windows for one, still in the 'sucks department' (Score:1)
Of the os'es installed (latest {Free,Open}BSDs, Win2k and BeOS 5 pro) only the win2k server supports SBP-2, so it is the only machine able to mount them.
Even if another operating system could mount the drives, it would only be able to mount it read-only (assuming it could) since I am unable to get Win2k to mount these partitions as read-only. I am also unable to turn off the write cache, and since windows is not known for its stability, its an almost guarantee for scrambled data.(pointers desired if you have any)
Another thing I wonder about is direct node to node transfers. In theory, I should be able to transfer from one firewire device to another without going through a third party device (like a computer). Maybe the protocol does this automatically, maybe not, but it would be nice to use this for mirroring drives.
WARNING - meta-commentary ahead (Score:1)
This is a reason that duplicate 'Ask Slashdot' columns happen. I have similar questions, I ask and nobody gets around to responding. I will grant that this is not much better than the original poster got.
This stuff could be the coolest consumer computer products in years, and yet
Anyway, I mostly posted this, so if I get to the point where I will have to 'Ask Slashdot' directly and get the obligatory "Dude, wasn't that question just asked this millenium?". I can then point them to my post to show that
Re:Interesting... (Score:1)
If your planning on carrying the drive around a lot, external powesupply is a pain in the ass..
Device Bay (Score:2)
Nobody uses it. Apple, even though they use FireWire, is still into Little Boxes All Over The Table. Granite Microsystems [granitemicrosystems.com] sells some small Device Bay racks and a very few devices to put in them. As far as I know, nobody else actually has Device Bay products.
1394 - Ask for it by Number [askfor1394.com].
A (long, Flash-based) message from the 1394 trade association.
Re:Of Course. (Score:1)
This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography.
Re:Of Course. (Score:1)
Follow this link [slashdot.org] and observe his statement:
Isn't Bruce Willis believe in Scientology?
I guess that he hasn't been Keeping
This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography.
Re:Of Course. (Score:1)
If you don't get the reference, you're a pretty shitty grammer nazi.
Of Course. (Score:2)
Umm... wait. You are using VMS, right? Or do you want to give us some clue what kind of operating system and hardware you plan to use this on?
Drive lettering (Score:2)
Slightly off topic
How does windows assign drive letters to these drives? My "cold swap" pullout IDE drives require a reboot (in win 9x/nt/2k ) so the drive letters can be assigned. Even worse, the drive letters change on my Primary Master drive when I add/remove my secondary Slave drive.
FYI, Linux doesn't require a reboot as long as a hard drive was detected on bootup. And obviously drive letters & Mount points are not a problem.
Does windows require some add on software for Firewire Drives? Or will it simply just add a drive letter for each partition.
Anybody care to share their 2¢?
Re:Drive lettering (Score:3)
9x follows its own queer way of assigning drive letters: /dev/hda1, if FAT, gets C:; /dev/hdb1, if FAT, gets D:; /dev/hdc1, if FAT, gets E:; /dev/hdd1, if FAT, gets F:; (here's where it gets gay) /dev/hda2, if FAT, gets G:. The first partition on a drive gets a drive letter before the second partition on the first drive.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Re:Of Course. (Score:1)
You shouldn't try not to use double negatives in no sentences!
We both know, bellings, that double negatives are awkward, so try and be a little more careful in your future posts.
Glad that I could help.
Re:Of Course. (Score:1)
Modal Logic is formal logic with the addition of "necessarily" and "possibly" in front of "true" and "false" (WARNING: simplistic definition).
Re:Drive lettering (Score:1)
"mount
Re:Drive lettering (Score:1)
I refuse to ever install any MS software ever again, because, imho, it fucking sucks.
No Windows for this server...
Re:Drive lettering (Score:1)
Interesting... (Score:1)
How come they're spinning so slow? I'd thought that they would have them running at 10 or 15k!
I couldn't find the specs on the Maxtor drives...
NO (Score:3)