Sharing volumes via SAN?
Hi,
I'd like to share LVM volumes hosted on a SAN between two systems. I do not want to mount at the same time (ie: GFS), but rather I just want to be able to swap them between hosts. I'm assuming this is possible now by simply assigning SAN LUNs to both systems, but I don't see much talk of about a piece of LVM that handles knowing which host "owns" a given LV.
Background: In Solaris, when using Sun's VM, one can create a shared diskset which is seen by two hosts, but only one can do IO against the volumes at a given time. Solaris also implements a forcible take mechanism which allows the passive host to take the volumes from the active host, panicing the active host out. Regular takes are also implemented, to allow the volumes to migrate between hosts if first released by the active host.
It doesn't seem like LVM does this out of the box, probably because it lacks a built-in lock manager. If it does, could someone point me to a resource that shows how it works?
In the event LVM doesn't do this, is this something that CLVM will do? Was there ever a version of CLVM for the 2.4.x kernel series?
Thanks!
Signature · 1 line
adam
Quoted 17 lines · Adam D. Morley
Hi,
I'd like to share LVM volumes hosted on a SAN between two systems. I do not want to mount at the same time (ie: GFS), but rather I just want to be able to swap them between hosts. I'm assuming this is possible now by simply assigning SAN LUNs to both systems, but I don't see much talk of about a piece of LVM that handles knowing which host "owns" a given LV.
Background: In Solaris, when using Sun's VM, one can create a shared diskset which is seen by two hosts, but only one can do IO against the volumes at a given time. Solaris also implements a forcible take mechanism which allows the passive host to take the volumes from the active host, panicing the active host out. Regular takes are also implemented, to allow the volumes to migrate between hosts if first released by the active host.
Quoted 4 lines
It doesn't seem like LVM does this out of the box, probably because it lacks a built-in lock manager. If it does, could someone point me to a resource that shows how it works?
See Q#6:
http://sources.redhat.com/lvm2/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Quoted 5 lines
In the event LVM doesn't do this, is this something that CLVM will do? Was there ever a version of CLVM for the 2.4.x kernel series?
Thanks!