Good day to you all!

Starting out is always an adventure, but starting out with multiple servers seems to be something new again.

Three Servers:
1. Used for web traffic. CentOS 5.2 with Apache loaded. PHP is also used on this machine with MySQL currently located here. This machine works fine with everything loaded on one CPU/machine. For security and other reasons, I want to separate MySQL and the files to their own machines (#2 & #3).
2. Again, CentOS 5.2. I want to use this machine as the database server to feed the Apache machine. My idea is to make this the MySQL machine, providing a dedicated CPU for this function.
3. The third CentOS 5.2 machine, with 2.5 TB of storage - expandable to ... in the future. I want to use this machine as the "file server" for the others. Another reason for having separate MySQL and files machines is that as the system grows, there will (hopefully) be additional machines sharing the load of the functions of 1 & 2.

Currently the machines are only connected through the primary internal Gig Ethernet network (Eth0) and port forwarded from the internet via the Cisco PIX Router. A second Gig port (Eth1) on each machine will be used to tie the 3 machines together. This second Gig "backbone" will not be used for anything except this data traffic between machines.

My problem lies in not knowing the best mechanism to share the files. My reading of late has taken me into NFS, but so far I have not been successful in making this work. Before I get too much further into it, I wish to ask if there is a "better way". It would also be helpful to know what is needed to make NFS work in the described configuration. I'm not above chucking it and using something that is better, but since it appears to be there already, it at least deserves a look.

Any and all advice will be appreciated. Hopefully I can get this up and running soon, with your guidance.

BTW - Moving from OpenVMS and Windows Server to Linux is turning into an interesting time. I can see why some become staunch supporters of Linux, to say the least.

ALG

All workstations using this system are Windows based, but their connectivity to this system will be strictly through browsers. (Thin client?)

There may be a need in the future to use some of the files storage areas from Windows.

Thanks again.
I look forward to your replies.

ALG

Do you need constant access, as in mounted directories referring to the other machines, or is this a matter of periodic backups? Are all the machines up all the time, or are some of them unavailable at times?

I ask because this makes a difference to the choice of network protocol.

As to NFS, it's easy to set up and people here will be happy to show you how. But NFS isn't necessarily the best choice for high-speed transfers.

A suggestion: don't put your city in your profile. State is good enough. Call me paranoid but it pays to be paranoid these days.
You might want to browse through the networking forums here at LQ. Lots of info there to help you out, just do some searches in that forum. You might wind up with Sambas for sharing files with the Windows machines. But NFS is really quite easy to set up, as you will see.

Constant access will be available.
So far my reading shows that though NFS is supposed to be easy to install and is available in every version of Linux, it is not the fastest access method. (I find it funny how the authors of these statements don't elaborate on what they know to be faster.)

Do you have a prefered method to connect several machines?

If you need to share files between Linux systems, NFS (try to use latest nfs v4) should be fine.
For the DB box, use the normal GRANT privs and network cxn via port 3306.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/
For the MS systems, you could use NFS or Samba. The latter enables you to share using MS protocols eg netbios/cifs/ etc.

Thanks.
I'm looking into the docs you referenced.

BTW; RHEL/Centos Admin/Deployment guide: http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_boo...ion/index.html