Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 30 Sep 1996 21:05:36 -0700 (PDT) | From | "Erik Walthinsen (Omega)" <> | Subject | Fibre Channel for big Linux systems/clusters? |
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Is any support planned for Fibre Channel technology? I know adapters exist, all the way up to gigabit cards. FC handles all sorts of protocols on top of itself (I think), including SCSI (I know) and TCP/IP (maybe), so it might be a great solution to use when it comes time to cluster Linux boxen in big commercial settings.
The ability to cluster systems and disks into a mesh brings up interesting problems. First of all, this means software RAID needs to be stable and part of the kernel if possible. Clustered lock management would have to be implemented, again at the kernel level. Clustering support would have to be added (into the mandatory locking code?) into the VFS, etc. There'd be lots to do. It's almost a chicken/egg problem, unfortunately.
And if (multi-)gigabit networking were implemented, would something like CC-NUMA be possible? (see http://www-flash.stanford.edu/)
Is this feasible? Does anyone have the hardware? (yeah, right) Or might the Linux Development Grant Fund cover such a project? It would be prohibitively expensive (a switch runs ~$40k, a card is ~$4k), so probably not.
TIA, Omega
Erik Walthinsen - Programmer, webmaster, 3D artist, etc. __ __ / /\ / \ omega@sequent.com Work: (503)578-5314 / / \ | | M E G A omega@teleport.com Home: (503)281-4281 / / /\ \ _\ /_ psu12113@odin.cc.pdx.edu Majoring in CS / / /\ \ \ / /_/__\ \ \ Omega Station: http://www.teleport.com/~omega/ /________\ \ \ Info on Linux, Graphics, Descent, Laptops, etc. \___________\/
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