Gluster users - Feb 2015 - Question to help clarify something with regard to GlusterFS

Hi all,

I've been experimenting with Gluster for about a week now trying to get a
feel for it to see how it might work for us as a back end storage for our
virtual hosts.  While I was reading one day I came across this:


15. I am getting weird errors and inconsistencies from a database I am
running in a Gluster volume

Unless your database does almost nothing, this is expected. Gluster does
not support structured data (like databases) due to issues you will likely
encounter when you have a high number of transactions being persisted, lots
of concurrent connections, etc. Gluster *IS*, however, a perfect place to
store your database backups.

from the troubleshooting page.  This concerns me a little, but I want to
make sure I understand whether this will affect me or not.  Ok, so my file
store wouldn't be storing a database directly, but it would store a VM that
within it would host a database (like MSSQL Server - and actually it would
be a few VMs that would host databases, 2 MSSQL and several MySQL) - would
this experience the same "inconsistencies" as if I had a database
directly
stored on gluster, or is it not a problem due to it being VM traffic rather
than a bunch of separate connections to a DB stored in a GlusterFS?

For now I've had to cross off Gluster, but I began to wonder if I
understood the warning in troubleshooting correctly.

Thanks in advance for any info!

-Tony
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Hello Tony,

You need to understand what Gluster is intended for and nature of
virtualization.
A database needs high iops rates because of continuous CRUD operations.
There are distributed solutions in the industry like hadoop.
For traditional database structures, it's better to keep database on a
block storage.
Don't confuse with DB and Virtualization. These both are different worlds
and has different characteristics.
Gluster is a file system not a storage appliance.
I recommend you to check block storage alternatives like iSCSI SAN
appliances for DB specific tasks in cost centric perspective.
For vmWare environment, VSAN and Raw Device Mapping would serve you best.

Best Regards
Aytac Zeren



On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 4:53 AM, Tony Harris <nethfel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've been experimenting with Gluster for about a week now trying to get
a
> feel for it to see how it might work for us as a back end storage for our
> virtual hosts.  While I was reading one day I came across this:
>
>
> 15. I am getting weird errors and inconsistencies from a database I am
> running in a Gluster volume
>
> Unless your database does almost nothing, this is expected. Gluster does
> not support structured data (like databases) due to issues you will likely
> encounter when you have a high number of transactions being persisted, lots
> of concurrent connections, etc. Gluster *IS*, however, a perfect place to
> store your database backups.
>
> from the troubleshooting page.  This concerns me a little, but I want to
> make sure I understand whether this will affect me or not.  Ok, so my file
> store wouldn't be storing a database directly, but it would store a VM
that
> within it would host a database (like MSSQL Server - and actually it would
> be a few VMs that would host databases, 2 MSSQL and several MySQL) - would
> this experience the same "inconsistencies" as if I had a database
directly
> stored on gluster, or is it not a problem due to it being VM traffic rather
> than a bunch of separate connections to a DB stored in a GlusterFS?
>
> For now I've had to cross off Gluster, but I began to wonder if I
> understood the warning in troubleshooting correctly.
>
> Thanks in advance for any info!
>
> -Tony
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gluster-users mailing list
> Gluster-users at gluster.org
> http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-users
>
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