multiple machines mounting same filesystem on vmware

[CyberNerd]

I'm building a new webserver (RHEL5.4 on ESXi)
the /var/www partition is going to be a separate partition on an FC SAN.

in the future I would like a separate smb fileserver to also be able to read/write to the same filesystem at the same time as the webserver

I know that I can do this with GFS, but I don't have very much experience of it so I am wondering if I can create a vmware filesystem and have another vmware server mount the same filesystem. Does vmware manage multiple read/writes at the lower level or does the native (RHEL) fs need to deal with that.

please forgive me if this doesn't make sense.

[Ric_]

You can't do that... you will get data corruption.

What you need to do is export an NFS or SMB share from your webserver and write to that instead.

[CyberNerd]

Thanks. That was (sort of) the answer I was looking for.

I'll setup a GFS2 partition and do it that way. I know that redhat can use clustered filesystems, just wasn't sure about vmware.

The ultimate goal is to somehow merge the shared staff area (mapped drive) into the moodle file repository - when v2 arrives. somehow.

[Ric_]

The ultimate goal is to somehow merge the shared staff area (mapped drive) into the moodle file repository - when v2 arrives. somehow.

A simple, but effective, way of managing all that rubbish I suppose.

[apaton]

I'll setup a GFS2 partition and do it that way. I know that redhat can use clustered filesystems, just wasn't sure about vmware..

I'm with Ric_ that I would use NFS.
GFS2 seems over kill, but must admit I've never used GFS.

Just read, redhat.com | Red Hat GFS vs. NFS: Improving performance and scalability which says good things about GFS. I know NFS, it is so simple to setup and will work. .

Is GFS simple to set up and manage?

Andy

[CyberNerd]

I was reading up on GFS this morning, GFS itself looks simple enough - just partition the filesystem as an LVM volume and then mkfs.gfs2. same as any other filesystem (although quotas are a bit different). However, it looks to me that to get the full functionality and do what I want, I would need to setup a cluster and use RH Advanced server (more money) or revert to centos.
As this is a distant project, I'll hedge my bets and setup a GFS partition - then I can either export it as an NFS or do the cluster thing at a later date.