distributed file systems

[Jon Tegner]

We have a small cluster consisting of nine nodes, and we are currently
exporting /home from the master to every node using nfs.

We have also tried using pvfs, using partitions from all nodes in one
"parallel partition"- something which was slower than only using
nfs (since we don't have access to the source of the codes we use, we
cannot write in parallel). Maybe it would be better to only use two
nodes for every parallel partition, i.e., n1 and n2 builds home1, n3
and n4 builds home2 ... ?

Haven't tried, but it seems that afs should be slightly faster than
nfs, see

http://www.ait.iastate.edu/olc/storage/afs/nfs2afs.txt.html

My question now is if you have any suggestion of a "best method" for
a distributed file system to use in a cluster environment.

Regards,

Jon Tegner