1. BCLS.book Page 397 Thursday, August 26, 2004 12:37 PM
C H A P T E R 1 4
To Protect and Serve:
Providing Data to
Your Cluster
Chapter Objectives
• Introduce the concept of a cluster file system
• Explore available file system options
• Present examples of cluster file system configurations
T he compute slices in a cluster work on pieces of a larger problem. Without the ability to
read data and write results, the cluster’s computation is of little value. Whether the cluster
is a database cluster or a scientific cluster, the compute slices need coordinated access to the
shared data that is “behind” their computations. This chapter introduces some of the design
issues associated with providing data to multiple compute slices in a cluste