“I had a course on distributed system in my Engineering curriculum, and I was really fascinated with the way people use this technology for work. As my interest grew in this field, I started to read a lot on this. As a result, while browsing a few pages, I found a link to Google File System. Honestly, it didn’t make any sense to me. Where would Google deploy this proprietary file system? Or is Google planning to have an operating system? I decided to have a look at it nonetheless and here’s a quick overview of my findings.”
It’s getting old. Give it some time, this’ll be on snopes.
Has anybody stopped to think that GFS is what google uses for their fantastic server farm and search engine?
NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why did I insert common sense here? I’m fired.
</SARCASM>
Why did you not read the article to see it wasn’t speculation about a possibly GoogleOS at all, and instead described the distributed filesystem for their server farm?
From the blurb quoted by Thom, taken from the first paragraph of the article, emphasis by me:
“ Honestly, it didn’t make any sense to me. Where would Google deploy this proprietary file system? Or is Google planning to have an operating system?”
As you can see, speculation about a GoogleOS is in the first paragraph… or did you not read the article? ;P
Isn’t that the *cough* perfect type for a search engine?
Yeah, there’s more of that common sense. I can’t help it, really.
But being as Google is so secretive, some idiot out there has to start speculating and inserting opinion….. it’s the lack of fact that opens the door for this. It’s the same thing as conspiracy theorists.
All you have to do is read the feature list and it screams at you “i’m used primarily for http://www.google.com “.
‘quick overview’ doesn’t even begin to describe how quickly this article was written: It’s unstructured, the author seems to have mixed GoogleFS(1) with GmailFS(2) on the second page and it doesn’t link to it’s sources.
All in all Google FS is a intresting filesystem, but if you are interested in it I advise you to just look at the PDF (3) and skip this article all together.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_File_System
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GmailFS
3) http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html
I know a kid who does this sort of thing alot – takes a class and/or reads an article, then thinks he is an expert in that area.
It is bad enough to rehash already readily available information, its another to rehash it and make it worse with errors and misleading information.
I think the author it’s a little out of it’s league.
Since when AFS = Amiga File System?
AFS is a distributed file system developed by Carnegie Mellon University and it wasn’t used in Amiga for sure…
I also liked the part that GFS uses Gmail accounts for the storage medium and it’s made in phyton…
So is saying that google uses gmail accounts to store the information in it’s servers?
What google did when gmail didn’t exist? Maybe they used hotmail…
As ddrum points out above, AFS is not Amiga File System.
Quick googling would’ve shown the author that:
AFS = Andrews File System
That’s, “Andrew File System”, no ‘s’, project was named for one of the founders of Carnegie Mellon.
“In our next article, we will look into its architecture and its overall structure.” I really want to see this guys next article as no-one outside Google knows this…
… or maybe he just read the paper published by google. http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs-sosp2003.pdf
Stopped reading after this paragraph…
“This filesystem actually provides a mountable Linux filesystem and uses our GMail accounts as a storage medium. It is a Python application and uses the FUSE userland framework to provide the filesystem, and uses libgmail library to communicate with GMail.”
Come on, really… don’t the editors of osnews review the articles a little more than the title? Please, consider removing the link to this article, or I’ll have to delete osnews.com from my bookmarks, and never visit it again for the rest of my life. I promise
Serioulsy, I think the level quality of the articles linked by osnews is not always the best, but this has lowered the barrier to the ground.
Amiga FS? Confusing GFS with the GmailFS hack? And people does not notice this? Damned…
I agree – Y must we have this rubbish on OSnews – speculative crap IMO .
How about that poor dolphin when the DB is down ?
Maybe OSnews is against dolphins & we should alarm WWF (not wrestling BTW) cause of cruelty to Flipper ?
Ehhh … am I the only one who took it for granted that Google has their own filesystem to deal with “the world’s data” or knowledge or whatever – wasnt this already common knowledge & sense ?
Do we really need a “news” item every time random idiot on net with access to blog has an enlightenment & thinks there will definatly be a Google OS when s/he think so – ?
He simply rephrased & also didnt – simply copy+paste from the wording what he found & hasnt in the slightest explained why he mentions a Google OS at all – I guess he just felt it or what ?
I just feel like blowing up teddy bears – ooops – somebody read that ?
How about a tab at the top of OSn for crappy news so that all that rubbish can be looked at at will not “force” .
Is it possible to suggest news stories ?
How about voting for articles at least so that crap can be hidden quickly ?
Edited 2006-05-30 00:57
Dear osnews, can we have added an opposite to the ‘Recommend’ button please? Maybe a ‘superficial’ or ‘innacurate’ buttons or something…?
It is indeed a quick overview, so quick that mistakes are made and its misleading, in addition to being superficial. This certainly shouldn’t have made it onto osnews.com
But all the best to the author to try better next time, you gotta starts somewhere, and there is always room for improvement. Most of the comments are not at the author but at it surprisingly being posted on osnews.com.
I heard that google has a file system called FSFAT. If you think Sun’s ZFS is amazing wait until google releases the source and binary for FSFAT.
FSFAT=File System For A Toilet. It weighs the amount of fecal and urine samples for you to analyze.
…let me just post the “article” to osweekly.com
Edited 2006-05-30 06:00
Just another substandard and uninformed osweekly article that for some inexplicable reason got linked from osnews.
…just to point out that I have to remove it from my list of sites which I visit daily.
Though the guy may have ‘good’ intentions about informing OSNews’s community. I think he failed… I do not look forward at the sequel of that article.
I will provide you a very good summary of the “article” in two sentences:
Google uses an internally developed distributed file system to store data necessary to provide services such as web search that require fast access to very large data sets. Unfortunately since I don’t know how to read properly (much less anything about filesystems) please do not rely on my article as a factual source of any information whatsoever.
Guys isnt it too much? I mean if you know this much about OS, why dont u ppl start writing? I agree that the author has committed a lot of mistakes but anyways screwing him this bad isnt fair.
For example: take GNU/Linux controversy article on osweekly. I cant see a reasonm as why some stupid above find that article sub standard. Give me a break.
Its not about him – its about the fact that this is linked to on OSnews – this guy can post whatever he wants to – I dont care – but Im against rubbish being linked to on OSnews .
& yes this certainly is not the first time rubbish has been linked.
@Thom : Not trying to directly insult you – but
– is there a way we can influence the OSnews content ?
Modding articles up & down .. etc .. ?
Hey, the guy has an “Engineering curriculum”, it must be enough to be linked on osnews…
Was that sarcastic?