[Gluster-users] Gluster+NFS as VM datastore for ESXi - issues

[Milo de Vries]

Hi all,

I've been trying out Gluster Platform, so some info will be from the management interface. If additional data from logs is required, please let me know which logfiles.

When using a Gluster NFS volume as a ESXi datastore, creation of a disk file (vmdk) takes a considerable amount of time (with unfsd using 10-50% cpu) and then crashes unfsd. A reboot of the system seems necessary to restore proper operation. On a mirror volume this resulted in a severely corrupted volume (red status icon), a regular volume was still seen as ok (green status icon) after the reboot. Accessing a directory on this volume (through the ESXi datastore browser) again results in a unfsd crash. None of these crashes result in errors logged to the Log Manager, I noticed unfsd had crashed by looking at /var/log/messages.

Has anyone successfully used Gluster+NFS as a datastore for ESXi? Which settings have been used for this setup?

How can I enable useful logging for unfsd, without being swamped in debug messages?

Also of interest: ESXi mentions that the datastore is responsible for deciding whether a disk file will be thin provisioned (pre-allocated or spare). It seems that unfsd is configured to pre-allocate disk files (not 100% sure about this), which is wasteful in regards of diskspace and might cause or considerably aggravate fore mentioned issue. Does anyone know how this behavior can be modified?


Sincerely,

Milo de Vries
Managed Hosting | Sys Admin

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