NFS

Ben Pfaff pfaffben@msu.edu
26 Jan 2001 13:47:15 -0500


Edward Glowacki <glowack2@msu.edu> writes:

> On 26 Jan 2001, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> > Edward Glowacki <glowack2@msu.edu> writes:
> > > [load-balancing NFS over 2 ethernet adapters?]
> > 
> > Round-robin DNS?
> 
> We thought of that too, but the question is, how does NFS handle
> host name lookups?  I would assume it would do it when it tries to
> mount the drive the first time, then use the IP from there on out,
> otherwise it would be bombarding the DNS server with requests.

That's my assumption too.  But in theory and on average, won't
this scheme work just as well whether the machines occasionally
change servers or not?  Of course, if you get pathological access
patterns, it could be a problem.

(If you did get them to occasionally re-look-up the IP address,
you could also hack BIND to, e.g., return the IP address of the
machine that currently has the lower load average.)