Open-source Shared Storage file system?

Can anyone advice for a production-level, open-source shared storage (SAN) file-system?

I read about GFS and GFS2, but the first one seems a bit outdated, and the second is not considered stable for production.

Are there others I can check into?

Solution 1:

There's OCFS2 from Oracle (OSS) that's generally considered to be quite a bit simpler than GFS2. There is a good list at wikipedia that includes both open source and commercial clustered file systems, although some of them won't apply for your needs.

Where did you read that GFS2 is not considered stable for production? Was it a recent comment from an authority on the subject?

Edit: Perhaps this list on wikipedia is a bit more to the point although it appears that OCF2 is the only other open source alternative to GFS/GFS2 in that list...

Solution 2:

GFS is used in production for RHEL4 and RHEL5. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for you.

RHEL5 and RHEL6 officially support GFS2, with RHEL6 only supporting GFS2.

My opinion: if Red Hat considers it stable enough to support, it's stable enough to use. Most of the time.

OCFS2 might be nice, though I never used it. What annoys be about it though, it the fact that I cannot find the source to the latest version of the OCFS2 kernel module anywhere. If anyone can provide a link: much obliged :)

Solution 3:

I would want to clarify that san and shared storage aren't necessarily the same thing. NFS can be used for shared storage, and depending on your needs, could actually be more appropriate than san connectivity with gfs2. Another option is Lustre http://www.lustre.org, but it may be a lot more complicated than you need. GFS2 also requires the clustering software running, even if you have no need for clustering otherwise.