Block device translator Block device translator (BD xlator) is a new translator added to GlusterFS recently which provides block backend for GlusterFS. This replaces the existing bd_map translator in GlusterFS that provided similar but very limited functionality. GlusterFS expects the underlying brick to be formatted with a POSIX compatible file system. BD xlator changes that […]

As described in my previous blog post, QEMU supports talking to GlusterFS using libgfapi which is a much better way to use GlusterFS to host VM images than using the FUSE mount to access GlusterFS volumes. However due to some bugs that exist in GlusterFS-3.4, any invalid specification of GlusterFS drive on QEMU command line […]

In my last blog post on QEMU-GlusterFS, I described the integration of QEMU with GlusterFS using libgfapi. In this post, I give an overview of the recently added discard support to QEMU’s GlusterFS back-end and how it can be used. Newer SCSI devices support UNMAP command that is used to return the unused/freed blocks back […]

GlusterFS is a distributed file system implemented in user space. It is strictly not a native file system in itself but is an aggregator of different file systems. GlusterFS can aggregate individual file system mount points or directories (called bricks in gluster terminology) to provide a single unified file system namespace. In addition to NFS […]