<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div class="WordSection1">
Good afternoon,<br>
<br>
I am looking for additional information about glusterfs, arbiters
and thin-arbiters. The current stable release is gluster 11, so I
am considering that version for deployment. My planned setup is:
4 storage servers in distributed + replicated mode.<br>
<br>
Server1, server2 : replica 2, arbiter 1<br>
Server3, server4 : replica 2, arbiter 1<br>
<br>
Since having replica 2 is not recommended due to split-brains I
will have an arbiter.
<br>
<br>
Generic questions:<br>
<ul>
<li>
Is arbiter or thin-arbiter recommended in a production, large
volume storage environment?</li>
<li>Is thin arbiter code stable and deployment ready?</li>
<li>
Arbiter is file based and stores metadata for each file. In
this scenario I would at least double the default inode count
on the arbiter server. Thin-arbiter on the other hand is brick
based but I have not found enough information if its inode
usage is as inode hungry as the arbiter configuration. I am
thinking, it should not be as it is brick based. So do I need
to increase the inode count when using thin-arbiters? If yes,
what is recommended?
</li>
<li>
I've read old bug reports reporting that thin arbiter was not
ready to serve multiple trusted pools. Is this still the
case? I may configure multiple trusted pools in the future.</li>
<li>I have many linux boxes running different linux
distributions and releases. Ideally the assortment of boxes
would mount the same gluster pool/volume. I looked for
information about older versions of gluster clients running on
a range of older distributions mounting the most recent
gluster 11 pool/volume? Does that work? Can gluster client
(version 10, 9, 8, 7, etc.) mount gluster 11 volume and run
without significant issues? I understand that older versions
of client will not have the most recent features. Most recent
features aside, is such configuration supported/stable?</li>
</ul>
<br>
<b>Thin-arbiter approach:</b> If I go with the thin-arbiter
configuration I will use a 5<sup>th</sup> server as this server
can be outside of the trusted pool and can be shared among
multiple trusted pools<br>
<br>
Server1, server2: replica 2, thin-arbiter server5<br>
Server3, server4: replica 2, thin-arbiter server5<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Old arbiter approach:</b> If I go with the older arbiter
configuration, I am considering using 2 of the storage servers to
act as both replica and an arbiter. Is that configuration
possible/supported and reasonable?
<br>
<br>
<i>Server1</i>, server2: replica 2, arbiter <b>server3</b> <br>
<b>Server3</b>, server4: replica 2, arbiter <i>server1</i><br>
<br>
In this configuration, I am considering using server3 to be
arbiter for server{1,2} replica 2, and using server1 to be
arbiter for server{3,4} replica 2.
<br>
<br>
Questions:<br>
<ul>
<li>Is this a reasonable/recommended configuration?<span
style="font-family:Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span
style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font:7.0pt
"Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>Should
the arbiter metadata folder be inside or outside of the
volume?
</li>
<ul>
<li>In detail. Say server{1,2} replica has 1 brick each
<b>/gluster/brick1 </b>with<b> /gfs1vol1 </b>as the volume</li>
<li>
Should the arbiter metadata folder location be:
/gluster/arbiter/gfs1vol1 (outside of the volume path)
or
<b>/gfs1vol1/</b>arbiter1/ (inside the volume path)</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<br>
<span
style="font-size:12.0pt;color:#333333;background:#FEFEFE;mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">Thank
you for your thoughts,</span><br>
<span
style="font-size:12.0pt;color:#333333;background:#FEFEFE;mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">Peter</span><br>
</div>
<div id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br /><table style="border-top: 1px solid #D3D4DE;"><tr><td style="width: 55px; padding-top: 13px;"><a href="http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient" target="_blank"><img src="https://s-install.avcdn.net/ipm/preview/icons/icon-envelope-tick-green-avg-v1.png" alt="" width="46" height="29" style="width: 46px; height: 29px;"/></a></td><td style="width: 470px; padding-top: 12px; color: #41424e; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Virus-free.<a href="http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient" target="_blank" style="color: #4453ea;">www.avg.com</a></td></tr></table><a href="#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2" width="1" height="1"> </a></div></body>
</html>