The feature is a useful one, according to Dan Kusnetzky, VP of system software research at IDC. "They're attempting to go back in time to do what Digital Equipment [now a part of HP] did with VAX clusters, where all of the files on all of the systems were shared," he says. "That's always been the high-water mark for clustering technology, but it's still something many systems can't do today."
In addition, the GFS 5.2 software offers prepackaged OmniLock modules aimed specifically at quickly configuring high-availability, high-performance environments. This shortens the time needed to deploy mission-critical applications, the company says. Like previous versions, the new software offers meta-data journaling, which is a mechanism used to track meta-data changes like altered file-names. The new version extends this capability to include pure data journaling, which is useful for tracking changes to the data itself in small files like email.
Other features carried over from previous versions of the software include a dynamic multipathing capability, which ensures that there are two separate paths from the server to the storage device. If one path goes down, the system picks up automatically, Sistina says.
Sistina, of course, is not the only player on the clustered file system block. Companies like Advanced Digital Information Corp. (Nasdaq: ADIC), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), PolyServe Inc., Qlusters, and Sanbolic Inc. also have offerings in this space, and Spinnaker Networks Inc. sells a NAS hardware system that incorporates a clustered file system (see PolyServe Musters Reliable Clusters).
Sistina, however, has been around for longer than most, and boasts more than 50 customers, including Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT). Joaquin Ruiz, Sistina's VP of marketing and product management, also says that the company's other product line, the logical volume manager (LVM), its open-source contribution to the Linux kernel, has about 50,000 installations. The company says it's constantly expanding its customer base, especially through its partnerships with Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and Fujitsu Ltd. (OTC: FJTSY).
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