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When to use Storage Foundation Cluster File System

You should use SFCFS for any application that requires the sharing of files, such as for home directories and boot server files, Web pages, and for cluster-ready applications. SFCFS is also applicable when you want highly available standby data, in predominantly read-only environments where you just need to access data, or when you do not want to rely on NFS for file sharing.

Almost all applications can benefit from SFCFS. Applications that are not "cluster-aware" can operate on and access data from anywhere in a cluster. If multiple cluster applications running on different servers are accessing data in a cluster file system, overall system I/O performance improves due to the load balancing effect of having one cluster file system on a separate underlying volume. This is automatic; no tuning or other administrative action is required.

Many applications consist of multiple concurrent threads of execution that could run on different servers if they had a way to coordinate their data accesses. SFCFS provides this coordination. Such applications can be made cluster-aware allowing their instances to co-operate to balance client and data access load, and thereby scale beyond the capacity of any single server. In such applications, SFCFS provides shared data access, enabling application-level load balancing across cluster nodes.

• For single-host applications that must be continuously available, SFCFS can reduce application failover time because it provides an already-running file system environment in which an application can restart after a server failure.
• For parallel applications, such as distributed database management systems and Web servers, SFCFS provides shared data to all application instances concurrently. SFCFS also allows these applications to grow by the addition of servers, and improves their availability by enabling them to redistribute load in the event of server failure simply by reassigning network addresses.
• For workflow applications, such as video production, in which very large files are passed from station to station, the SFCFS eliminates time consuming and error prone data copying by making files available at all stations.
• For backup, the SFCFS can reduce the impact on operations by running on a separate server, accessing data in cluster-shareable file systems.

The following are examples of applications and how they might work with SFCFS:

• Using Storage Foundation Cluster File System on file servers

  Two or more servers connected in a cluster configuration (that is, connected to the same clients and the same storage) serve separate file systems. If one of the servers fails, the other recognizes the failure, recovers, assumes the primaryship, and begins responding to clients using the failed server's IP addresses.

• Using Storage Foundation Cluster File System on web servers

  Web servers are particularly suitable to shared clustering because their application is typically read-only. Moreover, with a client load balancing front end, a Web server cluster's capacity can be expanded by adding a server and another copy of the site. A SFCFS-based cluster greatly simplifies scaling and administration for this type of application.