About Shared File Systems and the Linux Client

A shared file system is a distributed, multihost file system that you can mount on multiple hosts. One Oracle Solaris OS host acts as the metadata server, and the others act as clients. You can also designate one or more Oracle Solaris clients as potential metadata servers, enabling you to switch metadata servers.

The Linux client is restricted to client-only behavior. Unlike shared Oracle Solaris clients, the Linux client cannot be configured as a potential metadata server. The Linux client supports interaction with Sun Storage Archive Manager (SAM) software, but does not support archiving commands such as stage, archive, release, and samu. The Linux client only supports file system commands.

The file system functionality is largely the same for the Oracle Solaris and Linux clients. Software components are stored in the /opt/SUNWsamfs, /etc/opt/SUNWsamfs, and /var/opt/SUNWsamfs directories on the Linux client, just as they are on an Oracle Solaris system. The sam-fsd and sam-sharefsd commands function the same way on both platforms.

Within a shared file system, the Sun QFS software can be installed on Linux clients as well as on Oracle Solaris clients. The Sun QFS Linux client software supports the following Linux distributions on x64 platforms:

• Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5.4

• Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5.6

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (via OEL 5.4)

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 (via OEL 5.6)

• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (service pack 4)

• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (service pack 2)

• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (service pack 3)

• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (service pack 1)