[Gluster-users] [Gluster-devel] Gluster on an ARM system

[Pavan T C]

On Friday 12 August 2011 08:48 AM, Emmanuel Dreyfus wrote:
> John Mark Walker<jwalker at gluster.com>  wrote:
>
>> I've CC'd the gluster-devel list in the hopes that someone there can help
>> you out. However, my understanding is that it will take some significant
>> porting to get GlusterFS to run in any production capacity on ARM.
>
> What ARM specific problems have been identified?
>

The biggest issue, IMO, will be that of endianness.
GlusterFS has been run only on Intel/AMD architecture, AFAIK. I have not 
heard of any SPARC installations. That means that the code has been 
tested only on little-endian architecture. The worst problems come in 
when there is interaction between entities of different endianness.

However, there is another side to this. From what I know, ARM is 
actually a bi-Endian processor. If the ARM cores have the system control 
co-processor, the endianness of the ARM processor can be controlled by 
software. So, if we make ARM to work as a little-endian processor, we 
should work well even in a mixed environment. But then, ARM is a 32-bit 
processor. I am unsure/ignorant of the stability of 32-bit GlusterFS.

If we can solve the two major issues mentioned above viz. Endianness and 
stability of GlusterFS on 32-bit, we should theoretically be able to get 
GlusterFS working on ARM without any other major work.

Again, I cannot vouch for the above statement. Just my thoughts from 
what I know.

Pavan