[Gluster-users] Pausing rebalance

[Franco Broi]

Before attempting a rebalance on my existing distributed Gluster volume
I thought I'd do some testing with my new storage. I created a volume
consisting of 4 bricks on the same server and wrote some data to it. I
then added a new brick from a another server. I ran the fix-layout and
wrote some new files and could see them on the new brick. All good so
far, so I started the data rebalance. After it had been running for a
while I wanted to add another brick, which I obviously couldn't do while
it was running so I stopped it. Even with it stopped It wouldn't let me
add a brick so I tried restarting it, but it wouldn't let me do that
either. I presume you just reissue the start command as there's no
restart?

[root at nas3 ~]# gluster vol rebalance test-volume status
                                    Node Rebalanced-files          size       scanned      failures       skipped         status run time in secs
---------      -----------   -----------   -----------   -----------   -----------   ------------   --------------
localhost                7       611.7GB          1358             0            10        stopped          4929.00
localhost                7       611.7GB          1358             0            10        stopped          4929.00
 nas4-10g                0        0Bytes          1506             0             0      completed             8.00
volume rebalance: test-volume: success: 
[root at nas3 ~]# gluster vol add-brick test-volume nas4-10g:/data14/gvol
volume add-brick: failed: Volume name test-volume rebalance is in progress. Please retry after completion
[root at nas3 ~]# gluster vol rebalance test-volume start
volume rebalance: test-volume: failed: Rebalance on test-volume is already started

In the end I used the force option to make it start but was that the
right thing to do?

glusterfs 3.4.1 built on Oct 28 2013 11:01:59
Volume Name: test-volume
Type: Distribute
Volume ID: 56ee0173-aed1-4be6-a809-ee0544f9e066
Status: Started
Number of Bricks: 5
Transport-type: tcp
Bricks:
Brick1: nas3-10g:/data9/gvol
Brick2: nas3-10g:/data10/gvol
Brick3: nas3-10g:/data11/gvol
Brick4: nas3-10g:/data12/gvol
Brick5: nas4-10g:/data13/gvol