Setting up GlusterFS Network Storage under Ubuntu

GlusterFS is an open source, distributed file system capable of scaling to several petabytes (actually, 72 brontobytes!) and handling thousands of clients. GlusterFS clusters together storage building blocks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect, aggregating disk and memory resources and managing data in a single global namespace. GlusterFS is based on a stack-able user space design and can deliver exceptional performance for diverse workloads.

GlusterFS supports standard clients running standard applications over any standard IP network. No longer are users locked into costly, monolithic, legacy storage platforms. GlusterFS gives users the ability to deploy scale-out, virtualized storage – scaling from terabytes to petabytes in a centrally managed and commoditized pool of storage.

Attributes of GlusterFS include:
 * Scalability and Performance
 * High Availability
 * Global Namespace
 * Elastic Hash Algorithm
 * Elastic Volume Manager
 * Gluster Console Manager
 * Standards-based
Server Side Setup for GlusterFS:
GlusterFS package is available in the default available repository under Ubuntu, you can search "glusterfs-server" and install it using Software Center or can install it using command:

sudo apt-get install glusterfs-server

After successful installation, open the terminal and type following command and check if the installation was successful:

$ glusterfs --version
glusterfs 3.2.5 built on Jan 31 2012 07:43:07
Repository revision: git://git.gluster.com/glusterfs.git
Copyright (c) 2006-2011 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.

Now create the directory that you wanted to export and adjust the configuration parameters of GlusterFS configuration file (/etc/glusterfs/glusterd.vol) as shown in the picture below, look at the documentation for more details about these configuration parameters.

After making all the required changes in glusterd.vol configuration file, start the GlusterFS server using command: sudo service glusterfs-server start

Client Site Setup for GlusterFS:
GlusterFS Client package is available in the default available repository under Ubuntu, you can search "glusterfs-client" and install it using Software Center or can install it using command:

sudo apt-get install glusterfs-client

Now create the directory where you want to mount the export from the glusterfs server and adjust the configuration parameters of GlusterFS client configuration file (/etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol ) as shown in the picture below, look at the documentation for more details about these configuration parameters. 

Manually Mounting Volumes
To manually mount a Gluster volume
# mount -t glusterfs HOSTNAME-OR-IPADDRESS:/VOLNAME MOUNTDIR
For example:

sudo mount -t glusterfs 10.0.2.15:/testdata /mnt/glusterfs

To automatically mount a Gluster volume using fstab
To mount a volume, edit the /etc/fstab file and add the following line:
HOSTNAME-OR-IPADDRESS:/VOLNAME MOUNTDIR glusterfs defaults,_netdev 0 0
For example:

10.0.2.15:/testdata /mnt/glusterfs glusterfs defaults,_netdev 0 0

Testing Mounted Volumes
To test mounted volumes, Use the following command:

sudo mount

If the gluster volume was successfully mounted, the output of the mount command on the client will be similar to this example:

/etc/glusterfs/glusterfs.vol on /mnt/data type fuse.glusterfs (rw,allow_other,default_permissions,max_read=131072)