[Gluster-devel] Is it possible to turn an existing filesystem (with data) into a GlusterFS brick ?

[Sander Eikelenboom]

Friday, November 11, 2016, 3:47:26 PM, you wrote:

> Reposting to gluster-users as this is not development related. 

I posted @devel, because in the most likely case of "No", it could become a 
feature request ;-)

--
Sander


> On November 11, 2016 6:32:49 AM PST, Pranith Kumar Karampuri <pkarampu at redhat.com> wrote:
>  




> On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Pranith Kumar Karampuri <pkarampu at redhat.com> wrote:





> On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 6:24 PM, Saravanakumar Arumugam <sarumuga at redhat.com> wrote:


>  
>  On 11/11/2016 06:03 PM, Sander Eikelenboom wrote:
>  
>  L.S.,
>  
>  I was wondering if it would be possible to turn an existing filesystem with data
>  (ext4 with files en dirs) into a GlusterFS brick ?
>  
>  It is not possible, at least I am not aware about any such solution yet.
>  
>  
>  I can't find much info about it except the following remark at [1] which seems
>  to indicate it is not possible yet:
>  
>          Data import tool
>  
>          Create a tool which will allow importing already existing data in the brick
>          directories into the gluster volume.
>          This is most likely going to be a special rebalance process.
>  
>  So that would mean i would always have to:
>  - first create an GlusterFS brick on an empty filesystem
>  - after that copy all the data into the mounted GlusterFS brick
>  - never ever copy something into the filesystem (or manipulate it otherwise)
>    used as a GlusterFS brick directly (without going through a GlusterFS client mount)
>  
>  because there is no checking / healing between GlusterFS's view on the data and the data in the
>  underlying brick filesystem ?
>  
>  Is this a correct view ?
>  
>  
>  you are right !
>  Once the data is copied into Gluster, it internally creates meta-data about data(file/dir).
>  Unless you copy it via Gluster mount point, it is NOT possible to create such meta-data.




> No, it is possible. You just need to be a bit creative.


> Could you let me know how many such bricks you have which you want to convert to glusterfs. It seems like you want replication as well. So if you give me all this information. With your help may be we can at least come up with a document on how this can be done.




> Once the import is complete, whatever you are saying about not touching the brick directly and doing everything from the mount point holds. But we can definitely convert an existing ext4 directory structure into a volume.
>  

>  
>  
>  Thanks,
>  Saravana

>  
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