Gluster 3.1 Release Notes: What's New in Gluster 3.1?

This section describes the new features available in Gluster v3.1. These features include:

Elastic Volume Management

Gluster v3.1 allows you to dynamically change the configuration of GlusterFS volumes without having to restart servers or remount volumes on clients. You can perform this type of elastic volume management using a new Gluster daemon called glusterd. Using the glusterd command line, you can, for example, easily expand, shrink, migrate, and rebalance volumes without having to schedule downtimes.

This contrasts with Gluster 3.0.x where any change to the configuration of GlusterFS volumes only came into effect after restarting the glusterfs process. For example, if you modified a translator on the client, the client had to remount the volume. Similarly, if you modified a translator on the server, you needed to restart the glusterfs process on the server.
Gluster Console Manager

GlusterFS 3.1 offers a single command line utility known as the Gluster Console Manager to simplify configuration and management of your storage environment. The Gluster Console Manager provides functionality similar to the LVM CLI (Logical Volume Manager) or ZFS Command Line Interface, but across multiple storage servers. You can use the Gluster Console Manager online, while volumes are mounted and active.
GlusterFS native NFS support

GlusterFS 3.1 offers built-in, native NFSv3 protocol support.