If you are connecting your gateway to an NFS file system, there are two options for how to mount it.
- A soft mount, which means that the application, or gateway, connection will attempt to mount the drive and once connected, will start to process the file. If for some reason the gateway cannot reach the file system after a period set by the nfstimeout parameter, then it will receive an error. However, if the file system goes down during the transaction, the transaction will stop and there may be some data corruption. The advantage of a soft mount is that it has minimal impact on gateway performance; a disadvantage is the potential for data corruption.
- A hard mount; once the gateway is connected to the file system it is more of a “hard connection”, meaning that the gateway or server will continue to attempt to reconnect if the file system is unreachable. Once reached, it will continue the transaction, assuring the integrity of the system and data. The advantage is that data integrity and messaging is assured; the disadvantage is there is a performance impact with the constant connection.
We recommend a soft mount when the data integrity is not as critical and therefore your application, or gateway, will know there was an error in the connection. As an example – a backup that was interrupted and not completed. We recommend a hard mount when data integrity and the need to complete a transaction is of utmost importance.
If you would like to speak with an iSOA Trusted Advisor or engage our team for assistance please email us at info@isoagroup.com, or call us at 707-773-1198