3 Setting Up The GlusterFS Client

client1.example.com:

GlusterFS isn't available as a package for CentOS 5.4, therefore we have to build it ourselves. First we install the prerequisites:

yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'

yum groupinstall 'Development Libraries'

yum install libibverbs-devel fuse-devel

Then we load the fuse kernel module...

modprobe fuse

... and create the file /etc/rc.modules with the following contents so that the fuse kernel module will be loaded automatically whenever the system boots:

vi /etc/rc.modules

modprobe fuse

Make the file executable:

chmod +x /etc/rc.modules

Then we download the GlusterFS 2.0.9 sources (please note that this is the same version that is installed on the server!) and build GlusterFS as follows:

cd /tmp
wget http://ftp.gluster.com/pub/gluster/glusterfs/2.0/LATEST/glusterfs-2.0.9.tar.gz
tar xvfz glusterfs-2.0.9.tar.gz
cd glusterfs-2.0.9
./configure

At the end of the ./configure command, you should see something like this:

[...]
GlusterFS configure summary
===========================
FUSE client        : yes
Infiniband verbs   : yes
epoll IO multiplex : yes
Berkeley-DB        : yes
libglusterfsclient : yes
argp-standalone    : no

make && make install
ldconfig

Check the GlusterFS version afterwards (should be 2.0.9):

glusterfs --version

[root@client1 glusterfs-2.0.9]# glusterfs --version
glusterfs 2.0.9 built on Mar 1 2010 15:58:06
Repository revision: v2.0.9
Copyright (c) 2006-2009 Gluster Inc. <http://www.gluster.com>
GlusterFS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of GlusterFS under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
[root@client1 glusterfs-2.0.9]#

Then we create the following two directories:

mkdir /mnt/glusterfs
mkdir /etc/glusterfs

Next we create the file /etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol:

vi /etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol

volume remote1
  type protocol/client
  option transport-type tcp
  option remote-host server1.example.com
  option remote-subvolume brick
end-volume

volume remote2
  type protocol/client
  option transport-type tcp
  option remote-host server2.example.com
  option remote-subvolume brick
end-volume

volume remote3
  type protocol/client
  option transport-type tcp
  option remote-host server3.example.com
  option remote-subvolume brick
end-volume

volume remote4
  type protocol/client
  option transport-type tcp
  option remote-host server4.example.com
  option remote-subvolume brick
end-volume

volume distribute
  type cluster/distribute
  subvolumes remote1 remote2 remote3 remote4
end-volume

volume writebehind
  type performance/write-behind
  option window-size 1MB
  subvolumes distribute
end-volume

volume cache
  type performance/io-cache
  option cache-size 512MB
  subvolumes writebehind
end-volume

Make sure you use the correct server hostnames or IP addresses in the option remote-host lines!

That's it! Now we can mount the GlusterFS filesystem to /mnt/glusterfs with one of the following two commands:

glusterfs -f /etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol /mnt/glusterfs

or

mount -t glusterfs /etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol /mnt/glusterfs

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

mount

[root@client1 ~]# mount
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
glusterfs#/etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol on /mnt/glusterfs type fuse (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/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                       29G  2.2G   25G   9% /
/dev/sda1              99M   13M   82M  14% /boot
tmpfs                 187M     0  187M   0% /dev/shm
glusterfs#/etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol
                      112G  2.3G  110G   2% /mnt/glusterfs
[root@client1 ~]#

(server1.example.com, server2.example.com, server3.example.com, and server4.example.com each have about 28GB of space for the GlusterFS filesystem, so that the resulting share has a size of about 4 x 28GB (112GB).)

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

[...]
/etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol  /mnt/glusterfs  glusterfs  defaults  0  0

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/export 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/export

[root@server1 ~]# ls -l /data/export
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-02-22 20:15 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-02-22 20:15 test2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-02-22 20:15 test5
[root@server1 ~]#

server2.example.com:

ls -l /data/export

[root@server2 ~]# ls -l /data/export
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-02-22 20:15 test4
[root@server2 ~]#

server3.example.com:

ls -l /data/export

[root@server3 ~]# ls -l /data/export
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-02-22 20:15 test6
[root@server3 ~]#

server4.example.com:

ls -l /data/export

[root@server4 ~]# ls -l /data/export
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-02-22 20:15 test3
[root@server4 ~]#

5 Links

• GlusterFS: http://www.gluster.org/
• CentOS: http://www.centos.org/