The days of DIY system administration are rapidly coming to a close. Why? Because the open source tools available are just too good not to use. Presenting Bcfg2, Cfengine, Chef and Puppet.
Caching is a concept used through computing. CPUs have several levels of cache; disk drives have cache; and the list goes on. Adding a small amount of high-speed data storage relative to a large amount of slower-speed storage can make huge improvements to performance. Enter two new kernel patches -- bcache and flashcache -- that leverage the power of SSDs.
One the coolest file systems in User Space has got to be GlusterFS. It has a very unique architecture that allows it to be configured for specific storage requirements and scenarios. It can be used as a high-performance parallel file system, or a cloud based file system, or even a simple NFS server. All of this in user-space. Could GlusterFS represent the future of file system development for Linux?
Have you ever wanted to look inside a tar.gz file but without expanding it? Have you ever wanted to just dump files in a .tar.gz file without having to organize it and periodically tar and gzip this data? This article presents another REALLY useful user-space file system, archivemount. It allows you to mount archives such as .tar.gz files as a file system and interact with it using normal file/directory tools.
Userspace file systems are one of the coolest storage options in Linux. They allow really creative file systems to be developed without having to go through the kernel gauntlet. This article presents one of them, SSHFS, that allows you to remotely mount a file system using ssh (sftp).
Have you been looking for open-source storage management tools that are easy to use and provide a graphical representation of your storage. Alas, there are no comprehensive tools but there are graphical tools that you can pair with command-line wizardry, particularly LVM.
It's common knowledge that Linux has a fair number of file systems. Some of these are unappreciated and can be very useful outside their "comfort zone". OCFS2 is a clustered file system initially contributed by Oracle and can be a great back-end file system for general, shared storage needs.
Having file systems in the kernel has its pros and cons. Being able to write file systems in user-space also has some pros and cons, but FUSE (File System in Userspace) allows you to create some pretty amazing results. This article takes a very brief look at user-space file systems and FUSE.
Disk space is always at a premium but how do you handle it when you have a disk or filesystem that's full? After today, you'll know how to boldly go into that dark realm.
In a recent walkthru we outlined the steps for taking an existing server and converting it into a NAS box. That article assumed that you already installed Linux on the server and you will maintain that installation (i.e. updates, security, etc.). This article takes examines an alternative: a dedicated NAS distribution called OpenFiler that allows you to very simply create a stand-alone NAS box that can be administered over the web.
If you blinked you might have missed the announcement of the new 2.6.34 kernel. Things have been happening very quickly around file systems and storage in the recent kernels so it's probably a good idea to review the kernels from 2.6.30 to 2.6.34 and see what developments have transpired.
Take some of the headaches out of managing sever farms with Cfengine 3. Use this automation introduction to save time, money and spare yourself crippling manual mistakes.
Standalone Network Attached Storage (NAS) servers provide file level storage to heterogeneous clients, enabling shared storage. This article presents the basics of NAS units (NFS servers) and how you can create one from an existing system.
Mmmm.... bacon. This article examines two mechanisms to prevent data loss -- write barriers and check summing. Both can be particularly important for drives with larger and larger caches. Pay attention: This can save your data bacon.
Last article we introduced the SMART capabilities of hard drives (who knew your drives were SMART?). In this article smartmontools, an application for examining the SMART attributes and trigger self tests, is examined.
Did you know your drive was SMART? Actually: Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. It can be used to gather information about your hard drives and offers some additional information about the status of your storage devices. It can also be used with other tools to help predict drive failure.
Sometimes you just have to get excited about what you can buy, hold in your hand, and use in your home machines. Let's look at some cool storage technology that the average desktop user can tackle.
System Administrator Dilemma #942: Send a Data Center Service Tech out to pop open the case to tell you what's in your system or use two simple commands.
Did you ever see one of those terrible Sci-Fi movies involving a killer Octopus? Ceph, while named after just such an animal, is not a creature about to eat an unlucky Spring Breaker, but a new parallel distributed file system. The client portion of Ceph just went into the 2.6.34 kernel so let's learn a bit more about it.
Metadata performance is perhaps the most neglected facet of storage performance. In previous articles we've looked into how best to improve metadata performance without too much luck. Could that be a function of the benchmark? Hmmm...
