[Gluster-users] Rebalancing with no new bricks.

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:57:15 -0400
Jeff Darcy <jdarcy at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 06/12/2013 09:46 AM, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > The true question is indeed: why does he need "tricks" at all to come to
> > something obvious for humans: a way of distributing files over the glusterfs
> > so that "full" means really all bricks are full.
> 
> That's my view too.  I keep trying.
> 
> > 3) The data must be left accessible even if glusterfs is not used on the
> > bricks any longer - without copying "back".
> 
> This part is already true in practically all cases.  You can ignore the 
> .glusterfs directory and extra xattrs, or nuke them, and you have a perfectly 
> normal file/directory structure that's usable as-is.  The exceptions are if you 
> use striping or erasure coding, but (like RAID) those are fundamentally ways of 
> slicing and dicing data across storage units so some reassembly would be necessary.

I only tried to list _the_ major advantages glusterfs could/should have over
almost all other competitors.
Of special importance is "1)" and "3)" because it allows everyone to "go and
try" without having to fiddle around with tons of data.
"2)" is convenience, something a good piece of software should deliver :-)

-- 
Regards,
Stephan