Configuring a High-Availability Storage with GlusterFS on Ubuntu

Reviewed on 09 April 2024 • Published on 28 September 2018

glusterfs
network
filesystem
high-availability-storage
Ubuntu

GlusterFS is an open-source, scalable network filesystem suitable for high data-intensive workloads such as media streaming, cloud storage, and CDN (Content Delivery Network). Each storage server will be a mirror of the other storage server, and files will be replicated automatically across both storage servers.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

A Scaleway account logged into the console
Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
An SSH key
3 servers running on Ubuntu
sudo privileges or access to the root user

Configuring the host file

Before installing glusterfs on all servers we need to configure the hosts’ file and add the GlusterFS repository to each server.

Connect to your server via SSH.

Update the apt-sources and the software already installed on the server.

apt update && apt upgrade -y

nano /etc/hosts

Paste hosts configuration below:

ip_address gluster01
ip_address gluster02
ip_address client01

Save and exit.

Ping each server using the hostname as below:

ping -c 3 gluster01
ping -c 3 gluster02
ping -c 3 client01

Note

If the ping command is not installed by default, you can install it with the apt install iputils-ping command.

Each hostname will resolve to each server’s IP address.

--- gluster01 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2033ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.560/0.604/0.627/0.031 ms
--- gluster02 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2050ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.497/0.593/0.688/0.080 ms
--- client01 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2036ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.672/0.728/0.802/0.054 ms

Adding the GlusterFS repository

Install the software-properties-common package to all systems.

apt install software-properties-common -y

Add the GlusterFS key and repository to all systems.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gluster/glusterfs-9

Installing a GlusterFS server

Install the glusterfs-server package on both gluster01 and gluster02 servers.

apt install glusterfs-server -y

Start the glusterd service, and enable it to launch at every system boot:

systemctl start glusterd.service
systemctl enable glusterd.service

GlusterFS server is now up and running on the gluster01 and gluster02 servers.

Check the services’ and the software’s versions:

systemctl status glusterd.service
glusterfsd --version

The command should return an active (running) status and glusterfs 9.5 version.

Configuring GlusterFS servers

The next step is configuring the servers by creating a trusted storage pool and creating a distributed GlusterFS volume.

From the gluster01 server, we need to add the gluster02 server to the GlusterFS storage pool.

gluster peer probe gluster02

The result peer probe: success is displayed. We added the gluster02 server to the storage trusted pool.

Check the storage pool status and list.

gluster peer status
gluster pool list

root@gluster01:~# gluster peer status
Number of Peers: 1
Hostname: gluster02
Uuid: 17e7a76f-f616-42e5-b741-63a07fd091d6
State: Peer in Cluster (Connected)
root@gluster01:~# gluster pool list
UUID					Hostname 	State
17e7a76f-f616-42e5-b741-63a07fd091d6	gluster02	Connected
ecc9cafa-b25d-477e-b6bc-403c051e752d	localhost	Connected

The gluster02 server is connected to the peer cluster, and it is on the pool list.

After creating the trusted storage pool, we will create a new distributed GlusterFS volume. We will create the new GlusterFS volume based on the system directory.

Setting up the distributed GlusterFS volume

Note

For the server production, it is recommended to create the GlusterFS volume using the different partition, not using a system directory.

Create a new directory /glusterfs/distributed on both the gluster01 and the gluster02 servers.

mkdir -p /glusterfs/distributed

Create a distributed glusterfs volume in the gluster01 server named vol01 with two replicas: gfs01 and gfs02.

gluster volume create vol01 transport tcp gluster01:/glusterfs/distributed gluster02:/glusterfs/distributed force

volume create: vol01: success: please start the volume to access data

Start the vol01 volume and check its information:

gluster volume start vol01
gluster volume info vol01

root@gluster01:/# gluster volume start vol01
volume start: vol01: success
root@gluster01:/# gluster volume info vol01
Volume Name: vol01
Type: Replicate
Volume ID: 814b103e-522c-48d2-8d1c-3301e10f3416
Status: Started
Snapshot Count: 0
Number of Bricks: 1 x 2 = 2
Transport-type: tcp
Bricks:
Brick1: gluster01:/glusterfs/distributed
Brick2: gluster02:/glusterfs/distributed
Options Reconfigured:
transport.address-family: inet
nfs.disable: on
performance.client-io-threads: off

At this stage, we created the Replicate type vol01 volume and two bricks on the gluster01 and gluster02 servers. All data will be distributed automatically to each replica server.

Configuring GlusterFS client

In this step, we will mount the glusterfs volume vol01 to the Ubuntu client, and we need to install the glusterfs-client to the client server.

Install the glusterfs-client on client01.

apt install glusterfs-client -y

Create a new directory: /mnt/glusterfs.

mkdir -p /mnt/glusterfs

Mount the distributed glusterfs volume (vol01) to the /mnt/glusterfs directory.

mount -t glusterfs gluster01:/vol01 /mnt/glusterfs

Check the amount of volume available in the system.

df -h /mnt/glusterfs

Note

To mount glusterfs permanently to the Ubuntu client system, we can add the volume to the /etc/fstab.

Edit the /etc/fstab configuration file: vim /etc/fstab.
Paste the following configuration: gluster01:/vol01 /mnt/glusterfs glusterfs defaults,_netdev 0 0.
Save and exit.
Reboot the server. When online, the GlusterFS volume ‘vol01’ is mounted automatically through the fstab.

Testing replication and mirroring

Mount the glusterfs volume vol01 to each glusterfs servers.
- On gluster01: mount -t glusterfs gluster01:/vol01 /mnt
- On gluster02: mount -t glusterfs gluster02:/vol01 /mnt

Back on client01, go to the ‘/mnt/glusterfs’ directory.

cd /mnt/glusterfs

Create three files using the touch command.

touch file01 file02 file03

Check on each gluster01 and gluster02 that the files that we created from the client machine are displayed.

cd /mnt/
ls -lah

The gluster01 machine returns:

root@gluster01:/mnt# ls -lah
total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4.0K Oct  1 15:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4.0K Sep 28 14:11 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Oct  1 15:40 file01
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Oct  1 15:40 file02
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Oct  1 15:40 file03

The gluster02 machine returns:

root@gluster02:/mnt# ls -lah
total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4.0K Oct  1 15:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4.0K Sep 28 14:11 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Oct  1 15:40 file01
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Oct  1 15:40 file02
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Oct  1 15:40 file03

As you can see, all the files we created from the client machine are distributed to all the GlusterFS volume node servers.