Michael,

It might work.  You should play with Coda and see for yourself.  The
scalability at the moment might be too low for your needs. 

We very much encourage you to try this, because we like hearing about
problems and fixing them.

In your situation, two Coda clients could act as the servers to the two
sites - they would provide high availability if the WAN link to the Coda
server went down.  Coda does not allow access to the server file space
except through a Coda client.

- Peter -



Michael Rothwell wrote:
> 
> Hello. I just joined the CODA list, and I have a very practical question.
> 
> We have been attempting to get Veritas software running on Solaris machines
> to properly replicate data between two servers that will one day be in
> different states and connected via a WAN. Unfortunately, the replication
> software attempts to open all inodes on the filesystem at once and reliably
> causes a really bad kernel panic. Veritas has admitted that it will not work
> in our situation and has bowed out. So we're looking for other solutions.
> Storagetek is one possibility.
> 
> The deal is, we will have mirrored file servers and mirrored web servers in
> two different locations that must be kept in sync. If the D.C. facility goes
> out, the Cary facility has to handle all the load until the DC facility
> comes online (at which point the DC facility must be synchronized). Also, if
> a CGI or other program on a webserver in D.C. updates a file, the
> counterpart Cary webserver must see the change. The webservers should not be
> able to clobber each other's file changes. Veritas accomplished this by
> locking files opened for writing.
> 
> It looks like Coda may do what we need, from reading the documentation. Does
> anyone have any insight? Or questions about our setup? I'd be very happy to
> start using Linux and Coda rather than Solaris and X or Network Applicance.
> I'd be happy to use anything that works.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Michael Rothwell
>   Director, Internet Application Development
>   InterLan Technologies
>   111 Corning Road #150
>   Cary, NC 27513
>   v: (919) 852-0690
>   f: (919) 852-0501
>   e: rothwell_at_interlan.net