GlusterFS Presentation @FOSSCOMM2013

1. Store your trillions of bytes using
commodity hardware and open source
(GlusterFS)
Theophanis K. Kontogiannis
RHC{SA,E,EV,ESM,I,X}
tkonto@gmail.com
@tkonto

2. The problem
● Data growth beyond manageable sizes
● Data growth beyond cost effective sizes
How much would it cost to store 100PB of
non structured data in a storage???

3. The idea
Create a scalable data storing infrastructure
uniformly presented to clients using:
● Commodity (even off the Self) Hardware
● Open standards

4. The concept

5. The vision
GlusterFS:
Open – Unified - Extensible
Scalable – Manageable - Reliable
Scale-out Network Attached Storage (NAS) Software Solution
for
On Premise - Virtualized - Cloud Environments

6. The implementation
●
Open source, distributed file system capable
of scaling to thousands petabytes (actually,
72 brontobytes!)
and handling thousands of clients.
Processing:
1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1024 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
1024 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
1024 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
● 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.
● Based on a stackable user space design and can deliver
exceptional performance for diverse workloads.
● Self Healing
● Not tied to I/O profiles or hardware or OS
-The question is how much is a BrontoByte?
-The question is WHO CARES?

7. Really it can support that much?
Yes it can!
2^32 (max subvolumes of distribute translator)
X
18 exabytes (max xfs volume size)
=
72 brontobytes
(or 89,131,682,828,547,379,792,736,944,128bytes)
GlusterFS is supporting 2^128 (uuid) inodes

8. And this is how it goes

9. A bit of (business as usual) history
● Gluster Inc. was founded in 2005
● Focused in Public & Private Cloud Storage
● Main product GlusterFS was written by
Anand Babu Periasamy, Gluster’s founder
and CTO
● Received $8.5M in 2010 via VC funding
● Acquired for $136M by Red Hat in 2011

10. GlusterFS <--> Red Hat Storage
● Gluster.com redirects to RHS pages
● Gluster.org actively supported by RedHat
What is important is the integration of
technologies in ways that demonstrably
benefit the customers

11. Components
●
brick
The brick is the storage filesystem that has been assigned to a volume.
●
client
The machine which mounts the volume (this may also be a server).
●
server
The machine (virtual or bare metal) which hosts the actual filesystem in which
data will be stored.
●
subvolume
A brick after being processed by at least one translator.
●
volume
The final share after it passes through all the translators
●
Translator
Code that interprets the actual files geometry/location/distribution on disks
comprising a volume and is responsible for the perceived performance

12. The Outer Atmosphere View

13. The 100.000ft view
Storage Node

14. The 50.000ft View

15. The 10.000ft View

16. The ground level view

17. ...and the programmers view
if (!(xl->fops = dlsym (handle, "fops"))) {
gf_log ("xlator", GF_LOG_WARNING, "dlsym(fops) on %s",
dlerror ());
goto out;
}
if (!(xl->cbks = dlsym (handle, "cbks"))) {
gf_log ("xlator", GF_LOG_WARNING, "dlsym(cbks) on %s",
dlerror ());
goto out;
}
if (!(xl->init = dlsym (handle, "init"))) {
gf_log ("xlator", GF_LOG_WARNING, "dlsym(init) on %s",
dlerror ());
goto out;
}
if (!(xl->fini = dlsym (handle, "fini"))) {
gf_log ("xlator", GF_LOG_WARNING, "dlsym(fini) on %s",
dlerror ());
goto out;
}

18. Course of action
● Partition, Format and mount the bricks
● Format the partition
● Mount the partition as a Gluster "brick"
● Add an entry to /etc/fstab
● Install Gluster packages on nodes
● Run the gluster peer probe command
● Configure your Gluster volume (and the translators)
● Test using the volume

19. Translators?
Translator Type Functional Purpose
Storage Lowest level translator, stores and accesses data from local file system.
Debug Provide interface and statistics for errors and debugging.
Cluster Handle distribution and replication of data as it relates to writing to and
reading from bricks & nodes.
Encryption Extension translators for on-the-fly encryption/decryption of stored data.
Protocol Interface translators for client / server authentication and communications.
Performance Tuning translators to adjust for workload and I/O profiles.
Bindings Add extensibility, e.g. The Python interface written by Jeff Darcy to extend API
interaction with GlusterFS.
System System access translators, e.g. Interfacing with file system access control.
Scheduler I/O schedulers that determine how to distribute new write operations across
clustered systems.
Features Add additional features such as Quotas, Filters, Locks, etc.

20. Not flexible with command line?

21. Benchmarks?
Method and platforms pretty much standard:
● Multiple 'dd' of varying blocks are read and written from
multiple clients simultaneously.
●
GlusterFS Brick Configuration (16 bricks)
Processor - Dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 5160 @ 3.00GHz
RAM - 8GB FB-DIMM
Disk - SATA-II 500GB
HCA - Mellanox MHGS18-XT/S InfiniBand HCA
● Client Configuration (64 clients)
RAM - 4GB DDR2 (533 Mhz)
Processor - Single Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.40GHz
Disk - SATA-II 500GB
HCA - Mellanox MHGS18-XT/S InfiniBand HCA
●
Interconnect Switch: Voltaire port InfiniBand Switch (14U)

22. Size does not matter....

23. ...number of participants does

24. Suck the throughput. You can!

25. And you can GeoDistribute it :)
Multi-site cascading

26. Enough with food for thoughts...
● www.redhat.com/products/storage-server/
● www.gluster.org
Now back to your consoles!!!!
Thank you...