[plug] Filesystems for slow networks

[Brad Campbell]

Adon Metcalfe wrote:
> I use Glusterfs ;P
> 
> http://www.gluster.org/
> 
> basically it has a feature called AFR (Automatic File Replication) which 
> replicates a file to all servers in the afr group when it is 
> created/accessed if available (uses extended attributes to keep track of 
> this data), and because its done only when a file is accessed, if there 
> is a period of downtime, the network load isn't saturated when it comes 
> back up, it only syncs the files that people access that gluster figures 
> out are out of sync. I'm using 1.3.10 from intrepids repo, though 2.0 is 
> meant to be wayyyy better (can do all sorts of cool stuff see: 
> http://www.gluster.org/docs/index.php/Whats_New_v2.0, specifically 
> atomic write support).
> 
> And its incredibly simple to configure, 1 config file for server, 1 
> config file for client, replication can be specified on either the 
> client or server, uses existing filesystem with extended attributes as 
> data store, so really easy to move data into :)

This looks like it might do what I need also.

There are a few of us setting up a distributed "home-office" system where we can all work from home 
and share resources. One of the bug requirements for this is a replicated file store at each house.

The idea is along the lines of a single file-server like you would have in a normal office, but 
because of the speed/latency of home ADSL connections I thought it would work better if we could 
cluster the storage with local distributed replicas. I'd not found anything that looked remotely 
suitable until you pointed out Glusterfs. This *looks* like it might do what we need, but I can't 
find any information on using more than one distributed replica. Can you elaborate a little on your 
usage case for the FS ?

Brad
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