[Lustre-discuss] "easier" lustre alternatives?

[chris (fool) mccraw]

hey folks,

I've spent some time trying to figure out how to integrate current
kernels with lustre (last post to the mailing list is just the latest
woe), and so i'm wondering what people who want to use current,
non-rpm-based distros are using instead of lustre?  while the
performance of lustre has been great in our environment, the ease of
using redhat/centos has been shrinking (from a user perspective) as it
ages.

i'm somewhat new to the distributed file system game (this decade--i
used pvfs with great success back in the heyday of the ibm sp/2) so i
don't really know what the current best-of-breed that can match lustre
performance and is more easily integrated with more current OS's
(particularly ubuntu/debian-testing) might be.  or, better yet, a
thing that is already merged with the vanilla kernel sources from
kernel.org.

a quick survey shows a dizzying array of options and i'm guessing
someone else has done a survey of the current state of the myriad
projects already, or has made a decision to migrate away from lustre
so i would love to pick your brain.

any suggestions?  we are willing to spend some effort migrating, but
we'd like something, well, easier to use when we upgrade OS, and that
doesn't basically require an rpm-based distro on the servers.  beyond
that, our only real requirements are native infiniband support and
speed =)

thanks for your advice!