>> My manager asked me if I could a mirror copy of our /var/mail on another >> system, just in case the system went down. He suggested that Windows has DFS >> (Distributed File System) and I said I would look into it. > > Microsoft's DFS is a method for creating another copy of your data and > being able to point clients to it on the fly. The closest analog on > Solaris is NFS client failover, where you can list multiple locations > to mount something from. It's best used with read-only mounts, as then > the location info is in the kernel and failover is transparent. Sun > hasn't provided a tool to do the copies; I'd suggest periodic rsync.
Thanks for the replys and I will need to have a closer look at rsync, but I just thought since cachefs was there and working it would be a simple thing to do. > How do you want to be able to access e-mail when the main server is > down? Do you need something that just works for everyone, or do you > need something for just a few people? How are people accessing the > e-mail - IMAP or NFS access to /var/mail? The truth is that our main building is going to be rewired and there are going to be some major power outage over weekends, so the plan was to use an off site machine we already have to offer some basic services when the main servers are down like e-mail and web for the people who don't have a life ;-) > >> Over the weekend I thought of CacheFS which comes will solaris which allows >> you to have a local copy of a network drive, so that it can improve the "NFS >> server performance and scalability by reducing server and network load.". My >> joy was short lived when I relaises that when the server goes down your >> local copy of that NFS is not accessable. >> >> I don't see why CacheFS can not work in this situation, so that if there is >> a local version of the file use it and not just hang....... > > I don't think CacheFS is a good match here. There is a "disconnected > mode" where the server isn't consulted, but in my experience you can't > ensure that all blocks of all files will be available in the cache. > Also, CacheFS doesn't work with NFSv4 :-( As I said at first glance Cachefs looked perfect for the jobs and it was so easy to set up, but by the looks of it it may be better to start using rsync. The NFSv4 point is interesting and it looks like cachfeFS will become another EOL product. Thanks again Andrew This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
