You could run OCFS using NetApps as a block storage device (iSCSI or Fibre Channel), not NFS.
However, I recommend against doing this.
If you have a NetApps already, you are much better off just running Oracle over NFS, which is certified and supported by Oracle on NetApps through the Oracle Storage Certification Program.
 
There are actually two versions of OCFS, ocfs and ocfs2, and they are both weak.  The first one was good *only* for oracle data files - you could not do regular file system operations in it reliably.
The second one, an open source rewrite now maintained by SuSE Linux, is *only* good for standard files - it is not validated or approved by Oracle for use storing Oracle data files.  You can use it for shared oracle home (where the Oracle binaries live, etc), but you can use NFS for that too.
 
If you are looking for a Linux cluster file system, there are multiple other better options out there than OCFS.  A detailed discussion of Linux CFS options is out of scope for this thread - drop me a line if you want the rundown - but for the NetApps customer, Oracle over NFS is a better approach all around.   It's more reliable, you can use it for both files and databases, it's certified, and it is in production in lots of places.
 
Carter
 


From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Steven Mandrake
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 6:42 AM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: OCFS support

Hi Guys,
 
Does NetAPP support OCFS? Is this done at the NFS level or at the SAN level? I can't find any docs on NetAPP showing they support this.
 
Thanks,
 
Steven