GFS2

GFS2
Developer(s)Red Hat
Full nameGlobal File System 2
Introduced2005 with Linux 2.6.19
Structures
Directory contentsHashed (small directories stuffed into inode)
File allocationbitmap (resource groups)
Bad blocksNo
Limits
Max no. of filesVariable
Max filename length255 bytes
Allowed filename
characters
All except NUL
Features
Dates recordedattribute modification (ctime), modification (mtime), access (atime)
Date resolutionNanosecond
AttributesNo-atime, journaled data (regular files only), inherit journaled data (directories only), synchronous-write, append-only, immutable, exhash (dirs only, read only)
File system
permissions
Unix permissions, ACLs and arbitrary security attributes
Transparent
compression
No
Transparent
encryption
No
Data deduplicationacross nodes only
Other
Supported
operating systems
Linux
GFS
Developer(s)Red Hat (formerly, Sistina Software)
Full nameGlobal File System
Introduced1996 with IRIX (1996), Linux (1997)
Structures
Directory contentsHashed (small directories stuffed into inode)
File allocationbitmap (resource groups)
Bad blocksNo
Limits
Max no. of filesVariable
Max filename length255 bytes
Allowed filename
characters
All except NUL
Features
Dates recordedattribute modification (ctime), modification (mtime), access (atime)
Date resolution1s
AttributesNo-atime, journaled data (regular files only), inherit journaled data (directories only), synchronous-write, append-only, immutable, exhash (dirs only, read only)
File system
permissions
Unix permissions, ACLs
Transparent
compression
No
Transparent
encryption
No
Data deduplicationacross nodes only
Other
Supported
operating systems
IRIX (now obsolete), FreeBSD (now obsolete), Linux

In computing, the Global File System 2 or GFS2 is a shared-disk file system for Linux computer clusters. GFS2 allows all members of a cluster to have direct concurrent access to the same shared block storage, in contrast to distributed file systems which distribute data throughout the cluster. GFS2 can also be used as a local file system on a single computer.

GFS2 has no disconnected operating-mode, and no client or server roles. All nodes in a GFS2 cluster function as peers. Using GFS2 in a cluster requires hardware to allow access to the shared storage, and a lock manager to control access to the storage. The lock manager operates as a separate module: thus GFS2 can use the Distributed Lock Manager (DLM) for cluster configurations and the "nolock" lock manager for local filesystems. Older versions of GFS also support GULM, a server-based lock manager which implements redundancy via failover.

GFS and GFS2 are free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.[1][2]

  1. ^ Teigland, David (29 June 2004). "Symmetric Cluster Architecture and Component Technical Specifications" (PDF). Red Hat Inc. Retrieved 2007-08-03. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. ^ Soltis, Steven R.; Erickson, Grant M.; Preslan, Kenneth W. (1997). "The Global File System: A File System for Shared Disk Storage" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2004-04-15.