[Gluster-users] Questions about expanding a volume

[John Lao]

Hi,

I am currently running glusterfs 3.1 with 3 bricks in distribute mode and I am thinking of adding a 4th brick.  How does gluster treat a new brick when it is added to an existing volume?  If I do not rebalance the volume will it send all/most new data to the new brick or will it still distribute it evenly?

Also, what's the performance impact on the volume when running a rebalance?  We have about 5.5TB of data, most files are less than 1 meg.

Thanks,

John Lao