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

["Everhart, Craig" <Craig.Everhart at netapp.com>]

In-line. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: LeMahieu, Paul [mailto:LeMahieu_Paul at emc.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 5:44 PM
> To: Nicolas Williams
> Cc: Everhart, Craig; Lentini, James; nfsv4 at ietf.org
> Subject: 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
> 

As James mentioned, this work is stalled, not forestalled.

As to the "proprietary" mention, I always thought we'd get to an IETF
protocol to replicate file systems, following some basic namespace work
with FedFS.  And aren't LDAP replication schemes proprietary, today?

I rather like the idea of updating a physical file system when I want to
edit data.  Perhaps I'm old-fashioned.

I'll stop now.

		Craig