[ivdfs-devel] Re: Greetings

[Sean E. <ed...@no...>]

Ok, that sounds good. I must have misunderstood.

On Wednesday 20 September 2006 16:49, Nigel Kukard wrote:
> Yo,
>
> Stupid subject line.
>
> > Just a thought regarding the client/server as opposed to the P2P
> >  architecture, the way I see it is that doing a P2P system would be
> >  beneficial in the sense of collaborative editing. On the other hand, you
> >  could end up with a client/server architecture as well, through the use
> > of dedicated servers, which just mirror the network filesystem as a
> > whole. It would allow, say, 2 workstations and a backup server to be
> > constantly synced together,
>
> I think the subject is getting a bit confused.
>
> P2P is peer-to-peer. Defined as each peer being equal in the duties it
> performs. This is what we want. It eliminates the single point of
> failure with a master-slave architecture.
>
> > whereas with a client-server structure you wouldn't have that
> >  advantage. Really the only difference would be that a workstation
> > running IVDFS would be able to accept updates and update its own local
> > copy, as well as sending updates to the "server(s)", and the "server(s)"
> > would be able to function as
> > workstations as well, and write to its own local system and update the
> > other machines on the grid. And, more importantly, the filesystem /could/
> > still function as the proposed client/server layout.
>
> This is the behavior were after.
>
> The point I tried to make is the goal for ivdfs is not anonymous file
> sharing, for instance bittorrent, gnutella ... etc. Or storing of
> anonymous data in using hashes ... etc. It could be designed into ivdfs,
> I have nothing against that, its just not one of the primary goals for
> the project.
>
> The primary goal is replication and raid-like behavior for high
> availability file storage across different networks, servers or whatever
> in the simplest manner possible, and to preserve the underlying
> filesystem in such a way that using plain replications its possible to
> stop ivdfs and still access the files on the local filesystem.
>
> So to address your comment above, one could mount a server fs on his/her
> workstation and have it setup in such a way that only files in ones own
> directory be replicated and the rest pulled directly off the server, or
> any other way in which you see fit  :o)
>
>
> -Nigel