[Gluster-users] Moving external storage between bricks

[Craig Carl]

James -
    The setup you've described is pretty standard, if we assume that you 
are going to mount each array at /mnt/array{1-8}, your volume will be 
called vol1, and your servers are named server{1-4} your gluster volume 
create command would be -

Without replicas -

#gluster volume create vol1 transport tcp server1:/mnt/array1 
server2:/mnt/array1 server3:/mnt/array1 server4:/mnt/array1 
server1:/mnt/array2 server2:/mnt/array2 server3:/mnt/array2 
server4:/mnt/array2 server1:/mnt/array3 server2:/mnt/array3 
server3:/mnt/array3 server4:/mnt/array3 server1:/mnt/array4 
server2:/mnt/array4 server3:/mnt/array4 server4:/mnt/array4 
server1:/mnt/array5 server2:/mnt/array5 server3:/mnt/array5 
server4:/mnt/array5 server1:/mnt/array6 server2:/mnt/array6 
server3:/mnt/array6 server4:/mnt/array6 server1:/mnt/array7 
server2:/mnt/array7 server3:/mnt/array7 server4:/mnt/array7 
server1:/mnt/array8 server2:/mnt/array8 server3:/mnt/array8 
server4:/mnt/array8
This would get you a single 512TB NFS mount.

With replicas(2) -

#gluster volume create vol1 replica 2 transport tcp server1:/mnt/array1 
server2:/mnt/array1 server3:/mnt/array1 server4:/mnt/array1 
server1:/mnt/array2 server2:/mnt/array2 server3:/mnt/array2 
server4:/mnt/array2 server1:/mnt/array3 server2:/mnt/array3 
server3:/mnt/array3 server4:/mnt/array3 server1:/mnt/array4 
server2:/mnt/array4 server3:/mnt/array4 server4:/mnt/array4 
server1:/mnt/array5 server2:/mnt/array5 server3:/mnt/array5 
server4:/mnt/array5 server1:/mnt/array6 server2:/mnt/array6 
server3:/mnt/array6 server4:/mnt/array6 server1:/mnt/array7 
server2:/mnt/array7 server3:/mnt/array7 server4:/mnt/array7 
server1:/mnt/array8 server2:/mnt/array8 server3:/mnt/array8 
server4:/mnt/array8
This would get you a single 256TB HA NFS mount.

Gluster specifically doesn't care about LUN/brick size, the ability to 
create smaller LUNs without affecting the presentation of that space is 
a positive side effect of using Gluster. Smaller LUN's are useful in 
several ways, faster fsck's on the LUN if that is ever required, there 
is a minor performance hit to running bricks of different sizes in the 
same volume, small LUNs make that easier.


Thanks,

Craig

-->
Craig Carl
Senior Systems Engineer
Gluster

On 12/01/2010 08:29 AM, Burnash, James wrote:
> Hello.
>
> So, here's my problem.
>
> I have 4 storage servers that will be configured as replicate + distribute, each of which has two external storage arrays, each with their own controller. Those external arrays will be used to store archived large (10GB) files that will only be read-only after their initial copy to the glusterfs storage.
>
> Currently, the external arrays are the items of interest. What I'd like to do is this:
>
> - Create multiple hardware RAID 5 arrays on each storage server, which would present to the OS as approx 8 16TB physical drives.
> - Create an ext3 file system on each of those devices (I'm using CentOS 5.5. so ext4 is still not really an option for me)
> - Mount those multiple file systems to the storage server, and then aggregate them all under gluster to export under a single namespace to NFS and the Gluster client.
>
> How do I aggregate those multiple file systems without involving LVM in some way.
>
> I've read that Glusterfs likes "small" bricks, though I haven't really been able to track down why. Any pointers to good technical info on this subject would also be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> James Burnash, Unix Engineering
>
>
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