Vincent, did you actually READ my post before writing yours?
I said quite clearly that the device would be MOUNTED. I.e. it would have
a file system on it.
My point being that if you remote mount it as a block device, then the
file system on the local machine caches (i.e. fast access) while the
remote machine provides (semi-)fast block access across the network.
diversity is a good thing.
On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Vincent Janelle wrote:
> *shrugs*, I use shared attached storage. Routing this stuff through
> nscd (which is what most of those user-space apps do) would be silly.
>
> You'd still need a filesystem on top of it for postgres, which negates
> the whole issue. You'd might was well just use a SAN then. Netapp
> announced that they're adding an option for this, the original poster
> might want to look into that.
>
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 15:15:01 -0700 (MST)
> "scott.marlowe" <scott.marlowe@ihs.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Vincent Janelle wrote:
> >
> > > On 30 Oct 2002 08:47:18 -0500
> > > Doug McNaught <doug@mcnaught.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Graeme Hinchliffe <graeme@vianetworks.co.uk> writes:
> > > >
> > > > > but dafs isn't nfs. we were trialing netapp for storage but are
> > > > > going back to local disks as the db ran VERY slowly in
> > > > > comparison. dafs should accelerate things from what i have read.
> > > >
> > > > If it presents a POSIX filesystem API then PG should work OK with
> > > > it.
> > > >
> > > > -Doug
> > >
> > > Doesn't appear to. A quick scan of the SDK docs appears as though
> > > as if its a direct implementation to access the storage of a device
> > > supporting it by applications, such as database servers over a
> > > network.. Kinda like raw devices.
> >
> > Look and see if there's some code out there for your OS (Linux???) to
> > mount a remote network device like this in loop back mode.
> >
> > Then you might be able to let the OS turn it into a file system for
> > the database, which would get you caching on the database server box
> > at the file system level, but block access across the network for
> > speed.
> >
> > Then test it as thouroughly as an Apollo mission. :-)