[Gluster-users] Self-heal impact on performance: is there a definitive answer?

[R.C.]

Hi to everyone.

Experimenting with GlusterFS, my first intent is to evaluate the possibility 
to create an affordable SAN storage for various environments (datastore, VM 
disk images and so on...).

Looking at my tests results, my first concern is about system performance 
during self-heal process.

In a replica 3 volume (or replica 2, by the way), when a node goes offline 
(wherever the problem lies) and than comes back, the self-heal process eats 
a lot of system resources but, and this is the main problem, the volume 
becomes quite unusable.
During self-heal time, writing data to the cluster (say thru SAMBA) reaches 
speeds in the 100KB/s order: quite unacceptable for a SAN storage (neither 
for a simple NAS storage, anyway).

Is there a way to "move to background" the self-heal process and retain 
client writing (and reading) speeds acceptable?

Raf