[gfarm-discuss:30087] New to Gfarm: limitations?

["Jordan Mendler" <jmendler@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I just installed gfarm on 1 node and will soon scale up it for our testing. We are looking at many options (including some of what I listed on http://jordan.spicylogic.com/blog/?p=8) for a backup system we are building to store lots and lots of genomic sequencing data. I have a couple questions though:


1) Is there somewhere that I can find a list of the limitations of Gfarm? I have found a couple (like inability do a df or chown through fuse), but is there somewhere to get a complete list? The FAQ does not seem to focus on 2.0 
2) How stable of 2.0? Have people run it in large production environments, or is reliability and data safety in more of an early development stage?
3) Is HA done automatically? For example, if I want each file to have 2 copies in a 5 node cluster, and 1 node dies. Is a copy of the files from the dead node automatically copied to other machines so there is again 2 copies of each file? If I reinstall the dead node, will it then automatic rebuild/rebalance with files from various other nodes?
4) Is performance a focus of gfarm and has anyone used it as something like cluster temp space, or the focus more on highly available large volumes?
5) If anyone has any experience, how does Gfarm compare to some of the other distributed filesystems? Lustre lacks true HA (only through shared-storage and heartbeat), but GlustreFS and cleversafe look promising. Perhaps someone can shed some insight as to how Gfarm compares.


Thanks so much for the help. The fact that I was able to deploy an initial gfarm in a couple hours (including all prep and research) is very impressive and a sign of your good work.

Cordially,
Jordan