Installation guide

Chapter 3. Getting Started

This chapter describes procedures for initial setup of GFS and contains the following sections:

• Section 1, “Prerequisite Tasks”

• Section 2, “Initial Setup Tasks”

1. Prerequisite Tasks

Before setting up Red Hat GFS, make sure that you have noted the key characteristics of the

GFS nodes (refer to Section 5, “Before Setting Up GFS”) and have loaded the GFS modules in-

to each GFS node.Also, make sure that the clocks on the GFS nodes are synchronized. It is re-

commended that you use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) software provided with your Red

Hat Enterprise Linux distribution. In addition, if you are using GNBD multipath, make sure that

you understand GNBD multipath considerations. For information on GNBD multipath, see the

document Using GNBD with Global Filesystem.

Note

The system clocks in GFS nodes must be within a few minutes of each other to

prevent unnecessary inode time-stamp updating. Unnecessary inode time-stamp

updating severely impacts cluster performance.

2. Initial Setup Tasks

Initial GFS setup consists of the following tasks:

1. Setting up logical volumes.

2. Making a GFS files system.

3. Mounting file systems.

Follow these steps to set up GFS initially.

1. Using CLVM (Cluster Logical Volume Manager), create a logical volume for each Red Hat

GFS file system.

Note

You can use init.d scripts included with Red Hat Cluster Suite to automate

activating and deactivating logical volumes. For more information about init.d