3 Setting Up The GlusterFS Client

client1.example.com:

On the client, we can install the GlusterFS client as follows:

apt-get install glusterfs-client

Then we create the following directory:

mkdir /mnt/glusterfs

That's it! Now we can mount the GlusterFS filesystem to /mnt/glusterfs with the following command:

mount.glusterfs server1.example.com:/testvol /mnt/glusterfs

(Instead of server1.example.com you can as well use server2.example.com or server3.example.com or server4.example.com in the above command!)

You should now see the new share in the outputs of...

mount

root@client1:~# mount
/dev/mapper/server5-root on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
server1.example.com:/testvol on /mnt/glusterfs type fuse.glusterfs (rw,allow_other,default_permissions,max_read=131072)
root@client1:~#

... and...

df -h

root@client1:~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/server5-root
                       29G  1.1G   27G   4% /
udev                  238M  4.0K  238M   1% /dev
tmpfs                  99M  212K   99M   1% /run
none                  5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none                  247M     0  247M   0% /run/shm
/dev/sda1             228M   24M  193M  11% /boot
server1.example.com:/testvol
                      116G  4.2G  106G   4% /mnt/glusterfs
root@client1:~#

Instead of mounting the GlusterFS share manually on the client, you could modify /etc/fstab so that the share gets mounted automatically when the client boots.

Open /etc/fstab and append the following line:

vi /etc/fstab

[...]
server1.example.com:/testvol /mnt/glusterfs glusterfs defaults,_netdev 0 0

(Again, instead of server1.example.com you can as well use server2.example.com or server3.example.com or server4.example.com!)

To test if your modified /etc/fstab is working, reboot the client:

reboot

After the reboot, you should find the share in the outputs of...

df -h

... and...

mount

4 Testing

Now let's create some test files on the GlusterFS share:

client1.example.com:

touch /mnt/glusterfs/test1
touch /mnt/glusterfs/test2
touch /mnt/glusterfs/test3
touch /mnt/glusterfs/test4
touch /mnt/glusterfs/test5
touch /mnt/glusterfs/test6

Now let's check the /data directory on server1.example.com, server2.example.com, server3.example.com, and server4.example.com. You will notice that each storage node holds only a part of the files/directories that make up the GlusterFS share on the client:

server1.example.com:

ls -l /data

root@server1:~# ls -l /data
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2012-12-17 14:26 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2012-12-17 14:26 test2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2012-12-17 14:26 test5
root@server1:~#

server2.example.com:

ls -l /data

root@server2:~# ls -l /data
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2012-12-17 14:26 test4
root@server2:~#

server3.example.com:

ls -l /data

root@server3:~# ls -l /data
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2012-12-17 14:26 test6
root@server3:~#

server4.example.com:

ls -l /data

root@server4:~# ls -l /data
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2012-12-17 14:26 test3
root@server4:~#

5 Links

• GlusterFS: http://www.gluster.org/
• GlusterFS 3.2 Documentation: http://download.gluster.com/pub/gluster/glusterfs/3.2/Documentation/AG/html/index.html
• Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/