Gluster users - Oct 2013 - Fwd: New home user considering Gluster FS.

Sirs,
Sirs,

I am a retired IT with lots of experience, but NOT in this area.

I have a bunch of Icy Dock devices, each holding 4 disks, formatted 
NTFS, EXT3 and EXT4. 16 disks in all.

I have filled them up using the USB interface.

They contain data files I want to have backup copies of. I have 
duplicates of files and directories, purposely to ensure that on the day 
the need comes up, at least one of the sets of backups will be working.

However, managing these boxes and the backups is becoming tedious and I 
would like to simplify the situation.

What I need is:

a) a file server that can hold about 18 disks
b) a file system that will protect the data.

This sound simple, but when I began looking around at SAN's and NAS's I 
found them overly complicated, expensive, and their demands are far from 
what I wish to fulfill.

I continued my research and found Gluster FS. Perhaps this is the tool I 
need...

my notion is that I have parts for a pc which I would use to make the 
server. The CPU is the i7-870 LGA1156 (4 cores). I have a good 
enthusiast motherboard, and plenty of memory I can put into it.

I would have to get a new case to put the pc into, that must also hold 
about 18 disks. I would have the OS drive be a velociraptor (300 GB), 
should be enough. I think I should put the Ubuntu Server OS on this pc, 
with Gluster FS.

My plan would be to install the OS, etc on the Velociraptor, and have 
one or two empty drives to begin the data cluster / volume.

I would copy one of my backup disks into the Gluster FS volumes using 
USB to read the data, then shut down the server, add the drive to the 
server, power up, configure Gluster FS to add the new disk to the volume.

And continue this until done. But I have plenty of questions...

Does the disks in a specific volume have to be the same size? I have 
some 1TB drives, a bunch of 2TB drives, and a few 3TB drives.

would I have to have 3 volumes? or can I add each disk into an existing 
volume? is there a logical limitation to how many disks should be in a 
volume?

I am NOT looking to do any sort of RAID, I don't feel they are 
necessary, as I think GlusterFS does all I need in the safety regard. Is 
GlusterFS the equivalent of Raid6? or better?

It looks like GlusterFS is intended for corporations, and what I want is 
simpler than such organizations require. Yet the volume of data I have 
is too much for simple file systems.

Your advice is appreciated,

Best regards, Bob Hyatt


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On 10/21/2013 09:28 AM, Bob Hyatt wrote:
>
> Does the disks in a specific volume have to be the same size? I have
> some 1TB drives, a bunch of 2TB drives, and a few 3TB drives.
They don't have to be, but things can be easier to conceptualize if 
they're all the same. I'd be inclined to use LVM, e.g. to create as many
3TB or 4TB LVM volumes from the drives you have.
>
> would I have to have 3 volumes? or can I add each disk into an existing
> volume? is there a logical limitation to how many disks should be in a
> volume?
You can grow gluster volumes by adding more bricks in a "distribute" 
volume. If you use LVM to assemble four LVM volumes of, say, 4TB; use 
them as bricks to create a single GlusterFS 2?2 distribute+replicate 
volume for a total of 8TB replicated storage.
>
> I am NOT looking to do any sort of RAID, I don't feel they are
> necessary, as I think GlusterFS does all I need in the safety regard. Is
> GlusterFS the equivalent of Raid6? or better?
Gluster's replicate volume is analogous to RAID 1 mirror. At this time 
that's the only RAID-like functionality that GlusterFS has. (N.B. lots 
of people like to think of GlusterFS's stripe volume as RAID 0, but 
that's a bad assumption.)
>
> It looks like GlusterFS is intended for corporations, and what I want is
> simpler than such organizations require. Yet the volume of data I have
> is too much for simple file systems.
GlusterFS is Open Source. Nothing says that home users and hobbyists 
like you can't use it if it suits your purpose.


-- 

Kaleb