[Gluster-users] I'm new to Gluster, and have some questions

[Rudi Ahlers]

Hi all,

I'm considering setting up Gluster, and have a few questions if you don't mind.


1. Which option is better? I already have a few CentOS 5.5. server
setup. Would it be better to just install GlusterFS, or to install
Gluster Storage Platform from scratch? How / where can I see a full
comparison between the 2? Are there any performance / management
benefits in choosing the one of the other?

2. I need reliability and speed. From what I understand, I could setup
2 servers to work similar to software RAID1 (mirroring). Is it also
correct to assume that I could use 4 servers in a RAID10 / 1+0 type
setup? But then obviously serverA & serverB will be mirrored, and
serverC & serverD together? What happens to the data? Does it get
filled randomly between the 2 sets of servers, or does it get put onto
serverA & B first, till it's full then move over to C & D?

3. Has anyone noticed any considerable differences in using 1x 1GB NIC
& 2x 1GB NIC's bonded together? Or should I rather use a Quad port NIC
if / where possible?

4. How do clients (i.e. users) connect if I want to give them normal
FTP / SMB / NFS access? Or do I need to mount the exported Gluster to
another Linux server first which runs these services already?

5. If there's 10 Gluster servers, for example, with a lot of data
spread out across them. How do the clients connect, exactly? I.e. do
they all connect to a central server which then just "fetches and
delivers" the content to the clients, or do the client's connect
directly to the specific server where their content is? i.e. is the
network traffic split evenly across the servers, according to where
the data is stored?

tia :)

-- 
Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
SoftDux

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