Accessing A Single iSCSI LUN From Multiple Linux Systems
Q. I'd like to share iSCSI storage with our 3 node web server cluster. How can multiple systems access a single iSCSI LUN under Linux operating system? Can I connect multiple servers to a single iSCSI LUN?
A. Short answer - no it is not possible.
Long answer - It is possible to access a single iSCSI LUN using cluster aware file system such as GFS or OCFS2. You can also use NFS or Samba for sharing file system. iSCSI provides no file locking. This may result into serious data corruption. To share LUN simply use cluster aware file system.
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Tags: data corruption, gfs, iscsi initiator, iscsi san, linux systems, multiple systems, nfs, Samba, server cluster, share iscsi storage, storage, web server ~ Last updated on: April 18, 2008
April 21st, 2008 (4 weeks ago) at 12:18 pm
Using NFS or Samba will allow all the hosts to access the same file system, but that solution comes with a single point of failure in the NFS or SMB server. Even the iSCSI server is a single point of failure as well. Storage on a highly-available SAN with multiple paths to the end nodes has proven to be an effective solution for this scenario.