Red Hat GFS 5.2.1 -, Administrator'S Manual

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12 Chapter 2. System Requirements
Requirement Description
HBA (Host Bus Adapter) One HBA minimum per GFS node
Connection method Fibre Channel switch
Note: If an FC switch is used for I/O fencing nodes, you
may want to consider using Brocade and Vixel FC switches,
for which GFS fencing agents exist.
Note: When a small number of nodes is used, it may be
possible to connect the nodes directly to ports on the
storage device.
Note: FC drivers may not work reliably with FC hubs.
Table 2-2. Fibre Channel Network Requirements
2.4. Fibre Channel Storage Devices
Table 2-3 shows requirements for Fibre Channel devices that are to be connected to a GFS cluster.
Requirement Description
Device Type FC RAID array or JBOD
Note: Make sure that the devices can operate reliably when
heavily accessed simultaneously from multiple initiators.
Note: Make sure that your GFS configuration does not
exceed the number of nodes an array or JBOD supports.
Size 2 TB maximum, for total of all storage connected to a GFS
cluster. Linux 2.4 kernels do not support devices larger than
2 TB; therefore, the total size of storage available to GFS
cannot exceed 2 TB.
Table 2-3. Fibre Channel Storage Device Requirements
2.5. Network Power Switches
GFS provides fencing agents for APC and WTI network power switches.
2.6. Console Access
Make sure that you have console access to each GFS node. Console access to each node ensures that
you can monitor the cluster and troubleshoot kernel problems.
2.7. I/O Fencing
You need to configure each node in your GFS cluster for at least one form of I/O fencing. For more
information about fencing options, refer to Section 10.2 Fencing Methods .