There is a new version of this tutorial available for Debian 12 (Bookworm).

High-Availability Storage With GlusterFS 3.2.x On Debian Wheezy - Automatic File Replication (Mirror) Across Two Storage Servers

This tutorial shows how to set up a high-availability storage with two storage servers (Debian Wheezy) that use GlusterFS. Each storage server will be a mirror of the other storage server, and files will be replicated automatically across both storage servers. The client system (Debian Wheezy as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86_64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

 

1 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use three systems, two servers and a client:

  • server1.example.com: IP address 192.168.0.100 (server)
  • server2.example.com: IP address 192.168.0.101 (server)
  • client1.example.com: IP address 192.168.0.102 (client)

All three systems should be able to resolve the other systems' hostnames. If this cannot be done through DNS, you should edit the /etc/hosts file so that it looks as follows on all three systems:

vi /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
192.168.0.100   server1.example.com     server1
192.168.0.101   server2.example.com     server2
192.168.0.102   client1.example.com     client1

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

(It is also possible to use IP addresses instead of hostnames in the following setup. If you prefer to use IP addresses, you don't have to care about whether the hostnames can be resolved or not.)

 

2 Setting Up The GlusterFS Servers

server1.example.com/server2.example.com:

GlusterFS is available as a package for Debian Wheezy, therefore we can install it as follows:

apt-get install glusterfs-server

The command

glusterfsd --version

should now show the GlusterFS version that you've just installed (3.2.7 in this case):

root@server1:~# glusterfsd --version
glusterfs 3.2.7 built on Nov 12 2012 19:30:08
Repository revision: git://git.gluster.com/glusterfs.git
Copyright (c) 2006-2011 Gluster Inc. <http://www.gluster.com>
GlusterFS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of GlusterFS under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
root@server1:~#

If you use a firewall, ensure that TCP ports 111, 24007, 24008, 24009-(24009 + number of bricks across all volumes) are open on server1.example.com and server2.example.com.

Next we must add server2.example.com to the trusted storage pool (please note that I'm running all GlusterFS configuration commands from server1.example.com, but you can as well run them from server2.example.com because the configuration is repliacted between the GlusterFS nodes - just make sure you use the correct hostnames or IP addresses):

server1.example.com:

On server1.example.com, run

gluster peer probe server2.example.com
root@server1:~# gluster peer probe server2.example.com
Probe successful
root@server1:~#

The status of the trusted storage pool should now be similar to this:

gluster peer status
root@server1:~# gluster peer status
Number of Peers: 1
Hostname: server2.example.com
Uuid: d19cb707-7b23-4d11-8e9c-183cd0a18d96
State: Peer in Cluster (Connected)
root@server1:~#

Next we create the share named testvol with two replicas (please note that the number of replicas is equal to the number of servers in this case because we want to set up mirroring) on server1.example.com and server2.example.com in the /data directory (this will be created if it doesn't exist):

gluster volume create testvol replica 2 transport tcp server1.example.com:/data server2.example.com:/data
root@server1:~# gluster volume create testvol replica 2 transport tcp server1.example.com:/data server2.example.com:/data
Creation of volume testvol has been successful. Please start the volume to access data.
root@server1:~#

Start the volume:

gluster volume start testvol

It is possible that the above command tells you that the action was not successful:

root@server1:~# gluster volume start testvol
Starting volume testvol has been unsuccessful
root@server1:~#

In this case you should check the output of...

server1.example.com/server2.example.com:

netstat -tap | grep glusterfsd

on both servers.

If you get output like this...

root@server1:~# netstat -tap | grep glusterfsd
tcp        0      0 *:24009                 *:*                     LISTEN      1548/glusterfsd
tcp        0      0 localhost.localdom:1019 localhost.localdo:24007 ESTABLISHED 1548/glusterfsd
root@server1:~#

... everything is fine, but if you don't get any output...

root@server2:~# netstat -tap | grep glusterfsd
root@server2:~#

... restart the GlusterFS daemon on the corresponding server (server2.example.com in this case):

server2.example.com:

/etc/init.d/glusterfs-server restart

Then check the output of...

netstat -tap | grep glusterfsd

... again on that server - it should now look like this:

root@server2:~# netstat -tap | grep glusterfsd
tcp        0      0 *:24010                 *:*                     LISTEN      1458/glusterfsd
tcp        0      0 localhost.localdom:1021 localhost.localdo:24007 ESTABLISHED 1458/glusterfsd
root@server2:~#

Now back to server1.example.com:

server1.example.com:

You can check the status of the volume with the command

gluster volume info
root@server1:~# gluster volume info
Volume Name: testvol
Type: Replicate
Status: Started
Number of Bricks: 2
Transport-type: tcp
Bricks:
Brick1: server1.example.com:/data
Brick2: server2.example.com:/data
root@server1:~#

By default, all clients can connect to the volume. If you want to grant access to client1.example.com (= 192.168.0.102) only, run:

gluster volume set testvol auth.allow 192.168.0.102

Please note that it is possible to use wildcards for the IP addresses (like 192.168.*) and that you can specify multiple IP addresses separated by comma (e.g. 192.168.0.102,192.168.0.103).

The volume info should now show the updated status:

gluster volume info
root@server1:~# gluster volume info
Volume Name: testvol
Type: Replicate
Status: Started
Number of Bricks: 2
Transport-type: tcp
Bricks:
Brick1: server1.example.com:/data
Brick2: server2.example.com:/data
Options Reconfigured:
auth.allow: 192.168.0.102
root@server1:~#

 

3 Setting Up The GlusterFS Client

client1.example.com:

On the client, we can install the GlusterFS client as follows:

apt-get install glusterfs-client

Then we create the following directory:

mkdir /mnt/glusterfs

That's it! Now we can mount the GlusterFS filesystem to /mnt/glusterfs with the following command:

mount.glusterfs server1.example.com:/testvol /mnt/glusterfs

(Instead of server1.example.com you can as well use server2.example.com in the above command!)

You should now see the new share in the outputs of...

mount
root@client1:~# mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=10240k,nr_inodes=126813,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=102704k,mode=755)
/dev/mapper/server1-root on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=205400k)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw,relatime,errors=continue)
rpc_pipefs on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw,relatime)
server1.example.com:/testvol on /mnt/glusterfs type fuse.glusterfs (rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,max_read=131072)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
root@client1:~#

... and...

df -h
root@client1:~# df -h
Filesystem                    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                         29G  1.2G   26G   5% /
udev                           10M     0   10M   0% /dev
tmpfs                         101M  240K  101M   1% /run
/dev/mapper/server1-root       29G  1.2G   26G   5% /
tmpfs                         5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs                         201M     0  201M   0% /run/shm
/dev/sda1                     228M   18M  199M   9% /boot
server1.example.com:/testvol   29G  1.2G   26G   5% /mnt/glusterfs
root@client1:~#

Instead of mounting the GlusterFS share manually on the client, you could modify /etc/fstab so that the share gets mounted automatically when the client boots.

Open /etc/fstab and append the following line:

vi /etc/fstab
[...]
server1.example.com:/testvol /mnt/glusterfs glusterfs defaults,_netdev 0 0

(Again, instead of server1.example.com you can as well use server2.example.com!)

To test if your modified /etc/fstab is working, reboot the client:

reboot

After the reboot, you should find the share in the outputs of...

df -h

... and...

mount

 

4 Testing

Now let's create some test files on the GlusterFS share:

client1.example.com:

touch /mnt/glusterfs/test1
touch /mnt/glusterfs/test2

Now let's check the /data directory on server1.example.com and server2.example.com. The test1 and test2 files should be present on each node:

server1.example.com/server2.example.com:

ls -l /data
root@server1:~# ls -l /data
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:53 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:53 test2
root@server1:~#

Now we shut down server1.example.com and add/delete some files on the GlusterFS share on client1.example.com.

server1.example.com:

shutdown -h now

client1.example.com:

touch /mnt/glusterfs/test3
touch /mnt/glusterfs/test4
rm -f /mnt/glusterfs/test2

The changes should be visible in the /data directory on server2.example.com:

server2.example.com:

ls -l /data
root@server2:~# ls -l /data
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:53 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:54 test3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:54 test4
root@server2:~#

Let's boot server1.example.com again and take a look at the /data directory:

server1.example.com:

ls -l /data
root@server1:~# ls -l /data
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:53 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:53 test2
root@server1:~#

As you see, server1.example.com hasn't noticed the changes that happened while it was down. This is easy to fix, all we need to do is invoke a read command on the GlusterFS share on client1.example.com, e.g.:

client1.example.com:

ls -l /mnt/glusterfs/
root@client1:~# ls -l /mnt/glusterfs/
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:53 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:54 test3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:54 test4
root@client1:~#

Now take a look at the /data directory on server1.example.com again, and you should see that the changes have been replicated to that node:

server1.example.com:

ls -l /data
root@server1:~# ls -l /data
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:53 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:54 test3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 30 17:54 test4
root@server1:~#

 

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