[Gluster-users] HA NFS

[Layer7 Consultancy]

Hi all,

I am considering the built-in NFS functionality of Gluster to build a
virtual server environment. The idea is to have 4 or 5 hosts (KVM or
Xen) that all contain around 300GB of 15K rpm SAS storage in a RAID5
array. On each of the host servers I would install a VM with the
Gluster Platform and expose all of this storage through NFS to my
OpenQRM installation, which would then host all the other VM's on the
same servers.
An alternative idea is to have the storage boxes separate from the VM
hosts, but the basic idea stays the same I think.

Now from what I understand, the NFS storage that is exposed to the
clients is approached through the management IP of the first Gluster
Platform server. My biggest question is what exactly happens when the
first storage node goes down. Does the platform offer some kind of
VRRP setup that fails over the IP to one of the other nodes? Is the
lock information preserved and how does this all work internally?

Since I would be using KVM or Xen, it would in theory be possible to
build the FUSE client on the host servers, though I am still in doubt
on how OpenQRM will handle this. When choosing local storage, OpenQRM
expects raw disks (I think) and creates LVM groups on these disks in
order to allow snapshotting and backups. OpenQRM would also not know
this is shared storage.

Does anyone have some insight on a setup like this?

Best regards,
Koen