This post describes recent tests done by Red Hat on an 84 node gluster volume.  Our experiments measured performance characteristics and management behavior. To our knowledge, this is the largest performance test ever done under controlled conditions within the organization (we have heard of larger clusters in the community but do not know any details about them). Red Hat officially …Read more

When reading a recent article by Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, I was struck by a comparison made between OpenStack and the interstate highway system. The article in Wall Street and Technology…

New Linux Container Virtualization Technology from Docker

The Docker, new container-based virtualization tech startup has started it’s venture to the server virtualization industry by offering their newest version of the software, the Docker 0.8. The company has been known for their production of a faster alternative when it comes to running virtual machines over that of hypervisors.

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 […]

Shortly before VMware’s VSAN was released, I had designed my new lab using GlusterFS across 2 to 4 nodes on my Dell C6100. Since this server did not have a proper RAID card and had 4 nodes total, I needed to design something semi-redundant incase a host were to fail. Scaling: You have a few […]

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 […]

Anyone who knows me knows, that I’ve been a VMware user for a long time. I’ve spent a large chunk of my career building virtualization solutions for different companies based on VMware tech. I’ve been active in the VMware community, and I’ve got to say it’s one of the healthiest I’ve seen in a long… Read more »

I just wrapped up my presentation at the Gluster Workshop at CERN where I discussed Open Source advantages in tackling converged infrastructure challenges. Here is my slidedeck. Just a quick heads up, there’s some animation that’s lost in the pdf export as well as color commentary during almost every slide. During the presentation I demo’ed… Read more »

This started as a response to a twitter conversation with @DuncanYB and @joshobrien77  re: converged infrastructure. Duncan recently posted a great blog post about Converged compute and storage. Go read that first. I’ll wait here. Welcome back! Ok, to start I agree with Duncan’s comments that Nutanix is certainly in the leader group for what’s… Read more »

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 […]

One of the cooler new features in oVirt 3.1 is the platform’s support for creating and managing Gluster volumes. oVirt’s web admin console now includes a graphical tool for configuring these volumes, and vdsm, the service for responsible for controlling oVirt’s virtualization nodes, has a new sibling, vdsm-gluster, for handling the back end work. Gluster and […]

Using RAW Devices In VirtualBox VMs

Usually, VirtualBox creates its virtual machines in disk images
(.vdi, .vmdk, etc.). This tutorial explains how you can use RAW devices
from the host (partitions, LVM volumes, etc.) and create a VirtualBox VM
in …

OpenVZ: Mounting Host Devices/Partitions/Directories In A Container With Bind Mounts (Debian/Ubuntu)

Sometimes you are in a situation where you need to mount a hard
drive, partiiton or directory from the OpenVZ host inside an OpenVZ
container – fo…