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Re: [nfsv4] FedFS Meeting Minutes, 10/22/2009

See my comments inline [psl].


On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 02:59:42PM -0400, Everhart, Craig wrote:

On Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:53 PM, LeMahieu, Paul wrote:

These topics have been discussed in the past. I'm trying to
refresh my memory on where we left things. Two questions:

   1) Did we ever work on a doc describing the root fileset
details (database schema, etc)?
   2) How do file servers exporting the root fileset export
both the unified namespace root fileset, and other exports?
Are we expecting a separate IP for a server to export "/" of
the root fileset, so the physical path of other exports don't
appear in the namespace?


(1) I don't think we ever did this.


I'm not sure I understood the question.  Was the question "how to
identify the root FSL for some domain?"?  If so, a) I've asked this
before, b) I think one answer is: that's a local problem for root
servers.  Not a very satisfying answer, that.
It'd be nice to be able to store at least [and probably only] the "root junctions" in a database, possibly the NSDB itself, or perhaps a DNS TXT 
RR (you'll really want DNSSEC though!), so that root server roles are
trivial to configure (add the server location to the root FSN's FSL
list, twiddle a bit on the server.



[psl]
My question was not about identifying the root FSL, but rather about the storing the entire "top-of-tree" root fileset, a collection of many top-level junctions, in the database. This makes it easier to deploy and manage root fileservers. The simplest use case I have is the /home use case. Today, I update an automount map, and my change is distributed. How will I add a new home user directory with Fed FS? Will I be able to update a database entry adding /home/bob, or will I have to update that on a physical file server, and rely on that filesystem being replicated by some proprietary means to other root file servers? 

--Paul


(2) This is one of the updates pending for the old draft of mine on
locating NFSv4 roots for organizations. Someone else recommended that 
the indicated servers should export the organizational roots on some
reserved name (e.g., /.organization) rather than just "/". That way, as 
you observe, the indicated file servers could export both an
organizational root and other things as well.


To support virtualization without having to rely on separate IP
addresses (and host names) for each domain you really want something
like:

   /.nfsv4root/                (a directory present at the root of the
                                pseudo-fs on root fileservers)
   /.nfsv4root/<domainname>    (a junction)
                    |
		     +--------->root FSL for <domainname>

I think (2) must be resolved ASAP.

Nico
--