Red Hat GFS 6.1 -, Administrator'S Manual

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6 Chapter 1. GFS Overview
LAN
Clients
GNBD
servers
Disk
A
GFS
Applications
Disk
B
Disk
D
Disk
C
Disk
E
Disk
F
Shared Files
Figure 1-3. GFS and GNBD with Directly Connected Storage
1.3. GFS Functions
GFS is a native file system that interfaces directly with the VFS layer of the Linux
kernel file-system interface. GFS is a cluster file system that employs distributed
metadata and multiple journals for optimal operation in a cluster. Cluster management
of GFS nodes is managed through Red Hat Cluster Suite. Volume management
is managed through CLVM (Cluster Logical Volume Manager). For information
about Red Hat Cluster Suite refer to Red Hat Cluster Suite Configuring and
Managing a Cluster . For information about using CLVM, refer to the LVM HOWTO
(http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/index.html).
Note
CLVM is a cluster-wide implementation of LVM, enabled by the CLVM daemon,
clvmd
running in a Red Hat Cluster Suite cluster. The daemon makes it possible to use LVM2
to manage logical volumes across a cluster, allowing all nodes in the cluster to share the
logical volumes.