gluster, arbiter, thin-arbiter questions

Peter P <peter.a.pfeiffer@xxxxxxxxx> · Fri, 21 Apr 2023 14:01:32 -0400

      Good afternoon,

      I am looking for additional information about glusterfs, arbiters
      and thin-arbiters. The current stable release is gluster 11, so I
      am considering that version for deployment. My planned setup is: 
      4 storage servers in distributed + replicated mode.

      Server1, server2 : replica 2, arbiter 1

      Server3, server4 : replica 2, arbiter 1

      Since having replica 2 is not recommended due to split-brains I
      will have an arbiter.

      Generic questions:

          Is arbiter or thin-arbiter recommended in a production, large
          volume storage environment?
        Is thin arbiter code stable and deployment ready?

          Arbiter is file based and stores metadata for each file. In
          this scenario I would at least double the default inode count
          on the arbiter server. Thin-arbiter on the other hand is brick
          based but I have not found enough information if its inode
          usage is as inode hungry as the arbiter configuration. I am
          thinking, it should not be as it is brick based. So do I need
          to increase the inode count when using thin-arbiters? If yes,
          what is recommended?

          I've read old bug reports reporting that thin arbiter was not
          ready to serve multiple trusted pools. Is this still the
          case?  I may configure multiple trusted pools in the future.
        I have many linux boxes running different linux
          distributions and releases. Ideally the assortment of boxes
          would mount the same gluster pool/volume. I looked for
          information about older versions of gluster clients running on
          a range of older distributions mounting the most recent
          gluster 11 pool/volume? Does that work?  Can gluster client
          (version 10, 9, 8, 7, etc.) mount gluster 11 volume and run
          without significant issues?  I understand that older versions
          of client will not have the most recent features. Most recent
          features aside, is such configuration supported/stable?

      Thin-arbiter approach:  If I go with the thin-arbiter
      configuration I will use a 5^th server as this server
      can be outside of the trusted pool and can be shared among
      multiple trusted pools

      Server1, server2: replica 2, thin-arbiter server5

      Server3, server4: replica 2, thin-arbiter server5

      Old arbiter approach:  If I go with the older arbiter
      configuration, I am considering using 2 of the storage servers to
      act as both replica and an arbiter. Is that configuration
      possible/supported and reasonable?

      Server1, server2: replica 2, arbiter server3  

      Server3, server4: replica 2, arbiter server1

      In this configuration, I am considering using server3 to be
      arbiter for server{1,2} replica 2,  and using server1 to be
      arbiter for server{3,4} replica 2. 

      Questions:

        Is this a reasonable/recommended configuration?
         Should
          the arbiter metadata folder be inside or outside of the
          volume?

          In detail. Say server{1,2} replica has 1 brick each
            /gluster/brick1 with /gfs1vol1 as the volume

            Should the arbiter metadata folder location be:
              /gluster/arbiter/gfs1vol1   (outside of the  volume path) 
            or  
            /gfs1vol1/arbiter1/  (inside the volume path)

      Thank
        you for your thoughts,

      Peter

Virus-free.www.avg.com

________

Community Meeting Calendar:

Schedule -
Every 2nd and 4th Tuesday at 14:30 IST / 09:00 UTC
Bridge: https://meet.google.com/cpu-eiue-hvk
Gluster-users mailing list
Gluster-users@xxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-users