[svlug] how to set up a cluster

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya marc

> Marc  wrote:
> 
> The goal is to cluster the application

"cluster" ??

you have 2 dells for the server ?? and bunch of users ??

> so that there is no possibility of downtime.

all machines die ... in on form or another .. at the wrong time

and most likely will dies when you're not there or the one critical
night that everybody expects their jobs to be done by morning

> This is to be a dev environment that will have quite a lot of
> users.

good .. lots of testors !!

>  I am wondering how things like LVM and NFS come

if you want "no possibility of down time", the above 2 are good ways
to kill your systems

you may want lvm if you expect to run out of space in say /home

you may want nfs is you expect people to mount "one" disk on multiple
machines for whatever odd reasons

i'd say avoid both if you really want "no possibility of downtime"

> into play with the GFS once it is all up and running.  It is a given that
> SAMBA will probably have to be running on there at some point, not sure how
> that plays into the mix.

samba, when properly configured, is not as bad as nfs on network/system reliability

> Also I am worried about block size.

you're worrying about the wrong things for "starting out"

and yes, you right too that you want large block sizes if you are
editing video clips ..

> for text storage.  However, this is a multimedia type company, and much of
> the data may be full multimedia files (jpeg, video, game stuff, music, you
> name it).

thats when the fun starts ...

> 
> Does anyone know of a good starting point, best practices, HOWTO's, etc.?
>

buying for most folks is a better bet than building it yourself unless
you can in fact build it correctly yourself and the vendors versions is
all !#$% up

whe the boss asks what's going on:
it's usually a safe bet to say "dell's tech support" is working on the
problem  vs you saying "i donno how to fix it or i donno why its unreliable" 
- replace "dell" with any other vendor you like to buy your widgets from

c ya
alvin