Gluster users - Apr 2015 - GlusterFS with iSCSI and PaceMaker

Hi All,

I'm new to Gluster and I'm trying to work through some test
configurations.

What I am trying to do is use Gluster to create a mirrored and scalable
storage array. My plan is once I setup Gluster is to then export the
GlusterFS via an iSCSI interface which will have an Active/Standby failover
managed via Pacemaker.

I am curious if anyone has tried anything similar and if you have what
iSCSI driver are you using.

Thanks,

Justin
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Hi Justin,

I have been running gluster on ISCSI for a few years now using pacemaker 
to control it.  My ISCSI Targets are Qnap servers, and I am using the 
built in open-iscsi linux packages.  My client servers are running 
gentoo linux.  In my setup I am using 2 ISCSI targets that get mounted 
into my client servers, with gluster on top in a simple mirror setup.  I 
then mount my gluster instance into each of my servers.  I am not using 
Active/Standby since gluster allows both "bricks" to be active at the 
same time.

I'm not a linux guru,  I have a setup that mostly works for me, but if I 
can help let me know.

Pat.

On 20/04/2015 7:14 PM, Justin Chin-You wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm new to Gluster and I'm trying to work through some test 
> configurations.
>
> What I am trying to do is use Gluster to create a mirrored and 
> scalable storage array. My plan is once I setup Gluster is to then 
> export the GlusterFS via an iSCSI interface which will have an 
> Active/Standby failover managed via Pacemaker.
>
> I am curious if anyone has tried anything similar and if you have what 
> iSCSI driver are you using.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Justin
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gluster-users mailing list
> Gluster-users at gluster.org
> http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-users
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Justin,


I do something similar, but not quite as complex.


I have a replicated (x2) Gluster volume where I drop thin-provisioned iSCSI
volume files to be served up via tgtd on CentOS6.  I mount the Gluster volume
locally on both Gluster servers (FUSE driver), then point the tgtd daemons to
the image files.  I use this as a back-end for a VMware ESXi datastore, so
I'm using the multipath iSCSI functionality of ESXi to handle the failover
between the nodes.


I was previously doing this with DRBD/Pacemaker/Corosync, but ESXi freaks out
when all paths to a datastore go down, and it takes ~2-5 seconds for the entire
cluster stack to go down and come back up during an orderly failover (to say
nothing of a catastrophic failover), so that model just didn't work for me.


I've since done some testing with just a simple VIP in Keepalived on top of
Gluster using LIO and the libgfapi stuff on CentOS7, and that seemed to work
great -- but I have some other incompatibilities with CentOS7, so I decided not
to pursue that for this project -- maybe another one on the horizon.


I briefly tried testing the libgfapi driver on CentOS6 with my current
production setup, but when I started the rebuild tgtd instance it gave my iSCSI
LUNs different LUN numbers so my ESXi cluster didn't recognize them as
different paths to the same LUN.  I couldn't be bothered to work out the
reason for this change, so I just switched back in the meantime.  I will
probably play with it a bit in a test environment when I have time -- the
libgfapi stuff should be faster and more efficient than going through the FUSE
stuff.


What would the Pacemaker CRM handle for you, besides a shared VIP?  Would you
want it to start/stop the iSCSI target daemon as well?  (If so, why?)  Is there
any reason to use a full CRM for this versus a simple VIP in something like
keepalived?


Good luck, and let us know how you get on!


Regards,

Jon Heese



________________________________
From: gluster-users-bounces at gluster.org <gluster-users-bounces at
gluster.org> on behalf of Justin Chin-You <justin.chinyou at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 10:14 PM
To: gluster-users at gluster.org
Subject: [Gluster-users] GlusterFS with iSCSI and PaceMaker

Hi All,

I'm new to Gluster and I'm trying to work through some test
configurations.

What I am trying to do is use Gluster to create a mirrored and scalable storage
array. My plan is once I setup Gluster is to then export the GlusterFS via an
iSCSI interface which will have an Active/Standby failover managed via
Pacemaker.

I am curious if anyone has tried anything similar and if you have what iSCSI
driver are you using.

Thanks,

Justin
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