[lustre-discuss] Lustre kernel module compatibility

[Andreas Dilger]

On May 21, 2019, at 10:15, Tauferner, Andrew T <andrew.t.tauferner at intel.com> wrote:
> 
> Is it okay to run Lustre 2.12.x kernel modules on clients that are part of a 2.10.x Lustre installation?  What I mean is that the servers and the clients have installed version 2.10.x RPMs.  For what it’s worth, this seems to work okay.

Lustre releases are tested against the next higher/lower release for clients/servers, as well as the previous LTS release.  In this case, 2.10 and 2.12 are expected to work together without issues.  While it is possible for a wider range of versions to interoperate (e.g. some people have tested/used 2.5 and 2.10 together), we do not test this due to limits on our testing resources.

> The alternative is to keep using the 2.6.99 vintage Lustre kernel modules that come with kernel.org kernels with the 2.10.x software.

The in-kernel version is not really tested and is not recommended for use.

> I’d really like to get all Lustre code to the 2.12 version but I’m not sure that I can convince our cluster administrator of that.  Thanks.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Principal Lustre Architect
Whamcloud