[Gluster-users] some thoughts please on setting up a software archive based on glusterfs

[webmaster at securitywonks.org]

Dear Keith



> At 08:30 AM 7/29/2008, webmaster at securitywonks.org wrote:
>>It's great to hear that you are using cpanel based on gluster, I read in
>>"WHO's USING GLUSTER", whether it is you who is trying to offer cpanel
>>hosting based on gluster file system?
>
> I hadn't thought to post one, I just did.

happy to hear you posted in "Who's using Gluster", all the best :) please
let me know, once your experiment results are stable and all manual things
are automated :)
>
>>If it works fine with single gluster client and multiple gluster servers,
>>it will be helpful as I can start with one gluster client. Otherwise, if
>>it demands more gluster clients (I can use round robin method), but
>>running multiple clients on multiple dedicated servers is not cost
>>effective in this time.
>
> Well, the single client is going to be the bottleneck.  So I wouldn't
> worry about striping the data, since you only have one client pumping
> it out to the Internet, you wont get much performance gain by having
> the same file served from multiple striped servers.  You will,
> however, gain a lot from adding a local caching translator.

if I have to add multiple gluster clients, how to do? whether the only way
is to use multiple dedicated servers for the cause?

or is it economical to setup multiple VPS on a physical server and use for
multiple gluster clients ? (I am just trying to make it economical if
possible, while trying to gain some extra performance). just trying to
think in different methods to do this economically, what do you say sir?

>
>>agreed, I am in dilemma actually between DRBD and mysql replication
>> setup.
>>Anyhow, finally, to keep things small to start, I had finally decided to
>>start with one server for mysql and as I use memcache, I think, it will
>>save from the heavy load of mysql requests atleast for some upcoming
>>months I hope.
>
> mysql replication doesn't save server load as much as people might
> think.  Since it replicates queries and not data changes, the slave
> has to do the processing as well.  Where it saves, is when you have
> queries that do a lot of processing on data but don't modify
> anything.  In these cases, nothing is replicated, but when a table
> update happens, the same processing happens on the slave.
>
>>why I asked is, Round Robin is a method which just plainly distributes
>> the
>>requests and ALU (least connection method) distributes request to the
>>server with least number of connections. So I thought about them.
>
> you'll have to ask someone on the gluster development team for sure,
> but I *think*, the ALU only works on a per server basis.
> In other words.  If you have 2 clients, one might have 3 connections
> to server A, so under ALU, the next connection will be created to
> server B.  However, client 2 is not aware of this, and so it  may
> create a connection to server A.  So now server A has 4 and server B
> has 2, perhaps.
>
> Although it's possible, the clients ask the server first to find out
> it's real connection load, but I don't think this is currently the case.
>
need to think about Alu translator, once again then, thanks for your input
on this,


>>so, you feel comfortable with regular shared hosting kind of requirements
>>in your current experimentation,  right?
>
> I have one pair of servers which seems relatively trouble free.
> I had some problems with gluster hanging on a busier set of servers,
> but it seems the troubles are related to lack of memory.  so boosting
> the ram on those servers seems to have helped.
> it's not been running long enough to really have confidence is any
> particular reason for the trouble, however.
>

what is the hardware configuration, it will be helpful, to know, share the
configuration details if you like, we will be glad to know


>>this is a really nice input, "adding more disk space in client and using
>>it to cache and server future requests. when I read this, I find it
>>similar to memcache (inwhich, memcache server hosts the cache from mysql
>>database in RAM)".
>
> similar, but it's disk based caching, but still it'll serve the files
> faster than fetching them over the network.

but if we do cache on all gluster clients, end of the day, I doubt, these
may become like regular file servers know, any updates may not only
stimulate synchronisation between glusterfs servers, but also updation of
gluster client cache know, please share your thoughts and observations
further, thank you

what is your recommended configuration of gluster clients?

>
> I've got memcached enabled for PHP but I dont believe I'm using it
> for mysql, I havn't had that much database load, but it's nice to
> know you find success with it should I need to get more performance
> out of mysql.
>

memcached needs code changes, it will be helpful, try it, it will support
the cause, many big sites use it


>>try csync2, it can sync to any number of hosts:
>>
>>http://oss.linbit.com/csync2/
>
> Yes, I'm aware of it.  I went with unison initially because I had
> only 2 hosts and it was a faster startup solution.  Now thinking
> about going to 3+ Unison will work, but csync2 is probably a more
> efficient solution.

agreed :)

>
>>how it will be if I refer this email in the mailing list to the gluster
>>support team when trying to explain my requirement?
>
> feel free.
>
> Keith
>
>
thank you my friend, will you notify me, when your cpanel setup is ready
with automation?

thank you once again

With Best Regards
Raghu Veer