pNFS server for testing (alpha test stage)

[Rick Macklem]

Oh, and I forgot to mention...
Thanks go to Matt Olander for his donation of a laptop.
Without it, there would be no pNFS server to alpha test.

Thanks again Matt, rick

----- Original Message -----
> Hi,
> 
> I've been working on a pNFS server for FreeBSD over the last few
> months and it is now at what I would consider alpha test. One
> thing I know is currently broken is appending to files (which
> sometimes get truncated). I'm sure there are lots of others.
> The dream is that someday this will allow a FreeBSD NFS service
> to scale beyond what a single server configuration can handle.
> 
> Performance could be described as slow->very slow with the
> exception of reading/writing, which works at wire speed on
> my slow hardware (100Mbit/sec). Hopefully some of this will
> be resolved over time, but I'd guess that things like file
> creation will always be slow compared to doing NFS against
> a file system like ZFS.
> 
> I will continue to work on it and update the project on svn
> but, to be honest, it won't go much further unless others
> jump "on the bandwagon" to do testing on larger hardware
> configurations than I have.
> 
> Essentially this server consists of a GlusterFS cluster
> and uses GlusterFS's NFSv3 server to implement the data
> server component (read/write of files). Since the NFSv3
> Read/Write RPCs are directed to the system in the GlusterFS
> cluster that the file exists on, it is hoped that this
> will scale.
> Multiple metadata servers (NFSv4.1 servers that do everything
> except reading/writing) may be possible, but that is a
> ways off.
> 
> At this time I have only tested against the modified NFSv4.1
> client in the projects area for FreeBSD. I hope to start
> testing against a Linux client sometime soon. (It uses a
> pNFS layout scheme called "Flexible File Layout" which is
> still at the internet draft stage.)
> 
> Anyhow, if anyone is interested in testing this, I have
> a primitive document at:
>   http://people.freebsd.org/~rmacklem/pnfs-setup.txt
> that will hopefully give you a starting point and, as
> this file notes, the modified sources are in FreeBSD's
> subversion repository in base/projects/pnfs-server.
> 
> Have fun with it, if you try it, rick
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