FRS on GFS?

[Former Member]

I have the following question being asked by one of our SA's...

If we are not mistaken we can only create one FRS on a Business Object XI cluster architecture and the Input and Output file repository need to be seen by every nodes in the cluster. In order to achieve redundancy for this folder weu2019d like to know if BO support a GFS filesystem (clustered filesystem that every node can see as a local directory) for these directories. This would be a simpler setup than having a clustered nfs share or a CIFS (Microsoft share).

Does anyone on here know the answer to this? Many thanks.

[Former Member]

I'm not too sure about GFS. But I can talk about the first part about the number of FRS.

For the file repository, you need one Input file repository location (think of it as a tree of directories and files) and one output file repository location. The input file repository and output file repository can be on different places.

If your BOE deployment consists of multiple machines (nodes), it is not required that each machine has access to the file repository location. The is a server of type called File Repository Server (which is what FRS typically stands for) on the platform. You need at least one Input FRS server process and one Output FRS server process running. Only the Input FRS server process access to the Input file repository location, and only the Output FRS server process access to the output file repository locaiton. Other server types do not touch the file repository directly.

However, if you prefer, you can run multiple input FRS and multiple output FRS server processes. In this case, it will be in an active/passive arrangement. Only one of the Input FRS server is active and other is standby. The same can be said about the output FRS server. It is basicall for fault tolerance so that if the main FRS dies (e.g. machine failure), it will fail over to the standby one and the latter will then become active. In this arrangement, each FRS server process need to access the file respository location.

[Former Member]

Nice Derek,

Understood that you mean, but I have a question:

In my environment, I have 2 BOE XI, each one with CMS. In this case, I have a cluster, right?

I can create a folder, a dashboard, whatever and on the any node and would see this on any node too.

When I stopped one of both, I can see the reports, folders, dashboards without problem. But I can't edit this if the document were created on the other node. Understand me?

This is normal? is expect or not?

Regards.

[Former Member]

You have to have Input and Output FRS on each CMS box and make sure both Input FRS are pointing to same shared location (similarly for Output FRS). this way even if one server goes down you will be able access the report, modify and save it.

Also you should be able to use GFS, but not sure how the performance will be.

[Former Member]

Great,

I thought exactly this, use GFS to share.

And, has another directory that you advise me to shared?

Thanks!