[Gluster-users] Remove-Brick / Rebalance questions

[Maik Kulbe]

Hi,

I'm currently looking into removing a brick from a Gluster-cluster(Gluster 3.4.1 on Ubuntu, replica 2 distributed on 6 bricks, lots of small files/many folders) because it became a performance bottleneck in the last weeks.

I'm not really sure what exactly happens if I remove that brick with 'gluster volume remove-brick' as I can't find any specific documentation on 3.4 and the docs for 3.3 are a little bit blurry on this. I assume the data on the bricks to be removed will be rebalanced to the other bricks before the bricks are removed from the cluster?
If so, will I need an additional rebalance afterwards?

Also I plan to add new bricks in the future but I'm a little bit afraid that the rebalance might kill the overall performance of the cluster. Is there a way to limit the rebalance(and also the remove-brick) process so users can work while the cluster rebalances or removes a brick?

Thanks in advance,
Maik