Clustered File System - Shared-disk

Shared-disk

A shared disk file system uses a storage area network (SAN) to provide direct disk access from multiple computers at the block level. Translation from file-level operations that applications use to block-level operations used by the SAN must take place on the client node. The most common type of clustered file system, a shared disk file system adds a mechanism for concurrency control which gives a consistent and serializable view of the file system, avoiding corruption and unintended data loss even when multiple clients try to access the same files at the same time. Shared disk file systems also usually employ some sort of a fencing mechanism to prevent data corruption in case of node failures.

The underlying storage area network might use any of a number of block-level protocols, including SCSI, iSCSI, HyperSCSI, ATA over Ethernet (AoE), Fibre Channel, network block device, and InfiniBand.

There are different architectural approaches to a shared disk file system. Some distribute file information across all the servers in a cluster (fully distributed). Others utilize a centralized metadata server. Both achieve the same result of enabling all servers to access all the data on a shared storage device.