[Gluster-devel] Announcing Gluster for Container Storage (GCS)

[Vijay Bellur]

Hi all,

We would like to let you  know that some of us have started focusing on an
initiative called ‘Gluster for Container Storage’ (in short GCS). As of
now, one can already use Gluster as storage for containers by making use of
different projects available in github repositories associated with gluster
<https://github.com/gluster> & Heketi <https://github.com/heketi/heketi>.
The goal of the GCS initiative is to provide an easier integration of these
projects so that they can be consumed together as designed. We are
primarily focused on integration with Kubernetes (k8s) through this
initiative.

Key projects for GCS include:
Glusterd2 (GD2)

Repo: https://github.com/gluster/glusterd2

The challenge we have with current management layer of Gluster (glusterd)
is that it is not designed for a service oriented architecture. Heketi
overcame this limitation and made Gluster consumable in k8s by providing
all the necessary hooks needed for supporting Persistent Volume Claims.

Glusterd2 provides a service oriented architecture for volume & cluster
management. Gd2 also intends to provide many of the Heketi functionalities
needed by Kubernetes natively. Hence we are working on merging Heketi with
gd2 and you can follow more of this action in the issues associated with
the gd2 github repository.
gluster-block

Repo: https://github.com/gluster/gluster-block

This project intends to expose files in a gluster volume as block devices.
Gluster-block enables supporting ReadWriteOnce (RWO) PVCs and the
corresponding workloads in Kubernetes using gluster as the underlying
storage technology.

Gluster-block is intended to be consumed by stateful RWO applications like
databases and k8s infrastructure services like logging, metrics etc.
gluster-block is more preferred than file based Persistent Volumes in K8s
for stateful/transactional workloads as it provides better performance &
consistency guarantees.
anthill / operator

Repo: https://github.com/gluster/anthill

This project aims to add an operator for Gluster in Kubernetes., Since it
is relatively new, there are areas where you can contribute to make the
operator experience better (please refer to the list of issues). This
project intends to make the whole Gluster experience in k8s much smoother
by automatic management of operator tasks like installation, rolling
upgrades etc.
gluster-csi-driver

Repo: http://github.com/gluster/gluster-csi-driver

This project will provide CSI (Container Storage Interface) compliant
drivers for GlusterFS & gluster-block in k8s.
gluster-kubernetes

Repo: https://github.com/gluster/gluster-kubernetes

This project is intended to provide all the required installation and
management steps for getting gluster up and running in k8s.
GlusterFS

Repo: https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs

GlusterFS is the main and the core repository of Gluster. To support
storage in container world, we don’t need all the features of Gluster.
Hence, we would be focusing on a stack which would be absolutely required
in k8s. This would allow us to plan and execute tests well, and also
provide users with a setup which works without too many options to tweak.

Notice that glusterfs default volumes would continue to work as of now, but
the translator stack which is used in GCS will be much leaner and geared to
work optimally in k8s.
Monitoring
Repo: https://github.com/gluster/gluster-prometheus

As k8s ecosystem provides its own native monitoring mechanisms, we intend
to have this project be the placeholder for required monitoring plugins.
The scope of this project is currently WIP and we welcome your inputs to
shape the project.

More details on this can be found at:
https://lists.gluster.org/pipermail/gluster-users/2018-July/034435.html

Gluster-Containers

*Repo: https://github.com/gluster/gluster-containers
<https://github.com/gluster/gluster-containers>This repository provides
container specs / Dockerfiles that can be used with a container runtime
like cri-o & docker.Note that this is not an exhaustive or final list of
projects involved with GCS. We will continue to update the project list
depending on the new requirements and priorities that we discover in this
journey.*

*We welcome you to join this journey by looking up the repositories and
contributing to them. As always, we are happy to hear your thoughts about
this initiative and please stay tuned as we provide periodic updates about
GCS here!Regards,*

*Vijay*

*(on behalf of Gluster maintainers @ Red Hat)*
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