[Gluster-users] Usage of Quota Translator in 3.1

[Will Daniels]

Hi,

I was hoping to use gluster to create a single unified storage volume
then to be able to assign dynamic storage quotas to users for their home
directory within this distributed storage area.

I read about creating volume files and spotted the "quota" translator,
which looks like it might help to do what I want.

But I am using gluster 3.1 and tested out the CLI method to create my
distributed replicated volume. I see where it has written the volume
files under /etc/glusterd/vols but I suspect it would not be the right
way to just start editing the -fuse.vol file there to add a quota volume?

And anyway, I'm not sure about the right way to go about defining
this...instinctively I would think to add quota volumes "above" the main
distributed replicated volume for each user and then mount those quota
volumes under /home with autofs (or something like that).

Yet I also think that the chain of the volume/subvolume config should
have perhaps only one volume that is not a subvolume of something else?
In which case I can't have multiple quota volumes on top of the main
distributed storage volume?

I'm finding it all a bit difficult to understand in terms of where the
config comes from to be honest. If I want to mount volume bar defined on
server foo, it seems I can just use "foo:bar" as the device name in
fstab and it manages to find that OK, but I don't entirely understand
the mechanics of that. Is the fuse client talking to glusterd on server
foo, or something else? Is it only going to look for a dir "bar" under
/etc/glusterd/vols or is it searching all the .vol files for the defined
volume names? And can I define a volume in one file that references a
volume defined in another? Can I have multiple "top" volumes defined in
one file?

I have tried to read through the documentation, but my head is spinning
a bit and I expect somebody on the list would be able to answer these
questions very easily? Any info would be much appreciated, specifically
in relation to what I want to do with storage quotas. Is it an
appropriate use case for quota? Perhaps there is a better way to arrange
this?

Cheers!
-Will