Implementing Journaling in a Linux Shared Disk File System

In computer systems today, speed and responsiveness is often determined by network and storage subsystem performance. Faster, more scalable networking interfaces like Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet provide the scaffolding from which higher performance computer systems implementations may be constructed, but new thinking is required about how machines interact with network-enabled storage devices. In this paper we describe how we implemented journaling in the Global File System (GFS), a shared-disk, cluster file system for Linux. Our previous three papers on GFS at the Mass Storage Symposium discussed our first three GFS implementations, their performance, and the lessons learned. Our fourth paper describes, appropriately enough, the evolution of GFS version 3 to version 4, which supports journaling and recovery from client failures. In addition, GFS scalability tests extending to 8 machines accessing 8 4-disk enclosures were conducted: these tests showed good scaling. We describ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: MSS
• Authors: Kenneth W. Preslan, Andrew P. Barry, Jonathan Brassow, Russell Cattelan, Adam Manthei, Erling Nygaard, Seth Van Oort, David Teigland, Mike Tilstra, Matthew T. O'Keefe, Grant Erickson, Manish Agarwal
• Keywords: GFS Cluster Infrastructure, GFS Implementations, GFS Version, Hardware, MSS 2000