Gluster Storage Platform Installation Guide

Gluster Storage Platform

Installation

Copyright © 2010, GLUSTER, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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About Gluster Storage Platform Gluster Storage Platform is an open source clustered storage solution. The software is a powerful and flexible storage solution that simplifies the task of managing unstructured file data whether you have a few terabytes of storage or multiple petabytes. You can get started with just a single system configured as a standalone NAS server, and scale from there on as needed by adding new storage nodes into your configuration. You can then export the aggregate storage capacity into a single global name space which multiple clients can access seamlessly. Gluster Storage Platform integrates the Gluster File System (GlusterFS), which is a scalable clustered file system, with a Linux operating system layer and a web-based management interface and installer. Installation on a bare metal server takes less than 15 minutes. It supports native GlusterFS, CIFS and NFS client access protocols and Infiniband, GigE, 10GigE network interconnects/fabrics. The core component of Gluster Storage Platform, the GlusterFS is completely implemented in user space, and has a modular stackable design that can be easily configured to handle performance characteristics of different storage workloads. More information is available at the Gluster web site: http://www.gluster.com/

The Gluster Storage Platform documentation is available at: http://gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Gluster_Storage_Platform

This document provides a detailed description of how to install Gluster Storage Platform in 15

minutes or less as outlined in the installation video. This guide will detail how to install a two-

node storage cluster, first we’ll add Storage Server 1 and then add Storage Server 2 to the

cluster. In subsequent videos we’ll show how to create a storage volume across these storage

servers in addition to detailing how to mount the volume created on a client machine. Once

servers are installed and volumes are created the clients can connect to the Storage Server and

the setup would look like this:

GigE, 10GigE or InfiniBand Interconnect

Storage Server 1 Gluster Storage Platform Intel/AMD x86-64 system

Gluster Storage Client (client machine with user desired client OS - Linux/Unix/Windows

Storage Server 2 Gluster Storage Platform Intel/AMD x86-64 system

http://www.gluster.com/

http://gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Gluster_Storage_Platform


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Gluster Storage Platform Installation Installation is all about preparing at least one server with the management console enabled, and then adding more servers to create your desired cluster setup. Even if you have just one system, you can still use Gluster Storage Platform as a standalone NAS server with its web based management GUI. Later you can add more servers and turn the system into a powerful storage cluster. Installation is simple - there are only two screens to take care of, disk selection and network configuration (detailed below), and the whole process takes less than 15 minutes to complete.

Obtaining Software

Gluster Storage Platform can be downloaded from

http://www.gluster.com/products/download.php

Gluster Storage Platform is released under GNU GPL v3 or later license.

Minimum Requirements

1GB USB Disk as Install Media 1 or more storage servers (or virtual machines) with minimum configuration as follows:

o 8GB Disk o 1GB Memory o Intel/AMD 64bit hardware o 1GigE or 10GigE or Infiniband

Preparing Your Install Media

Gluster Storage Platform is released in the form of a compressed USB bootable disk image, and an ISO image. The instructions show how to prepare the USB install image on a Linux machine. After uncompressing the USB image, you transfer the platform image on to your USB disk (without any partitions) using the standard dd disk-dump utility.

Note1: Most desktops will automatically mount the USB disks upon insertion. Unmount it manually before you transfer the image.

Note2: To determine the device name of your USB disk, you can type 'dmesg | tail' inside your terminal. Alternatively you can also find from your /proc/devices file.

Assuming your USB disk is detected as /dev/sdc, you type for following commands:

root$ wget http://ftp.gluster.com/pub/gluster/gluster-platform/3.0/Gluster-

3.0.img.gz

root$ gunzip Gluster-3.0.img.gz

root$ dd if=Gluster-3.0.img of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

http://www.gluster.com/products/download.php

http://ftp.gluster.com/pub/gluster/gluster-platform/3.0/Gluster-3.0.img.gz

http://ftp.gluster.com/pub/gluster/gluster-platform/3.0/Gluster-3.0.img.gz


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Management Console / First Server Installation

If you are starting fresh, this is your first step in the installation process once you have prepared your install media (e.g. USB stick). You will install your first server, and management console using the steps below. You can add more servers to your configuration later.

Insert the USB stick into the USB slot on the system you are installing on, and boot it.

Note: The system motherboard needs to support booting from USB, and it needs to be enabled in the BIOS.

Installation will start, and after a splash screen, will show a time-out dialog asking you to interrupt it for installation of first server to begin. When this (below) dialog comes up, select "Start First Server Installation".

If you miss this step, it will time out and automatically proceed to an automated additional (remote) server installation mode, which is used to subsequent/additional server installations (explained below under Add Server). If it times out, and you wanted to install your first server, then your only option is to reboot and choose the correct selection.

Disk Selection

Next you need to select the disk you want to install Gluster Storage Platform on from a drop-down list of detected disks. The disk you select here will be made bootable and used as the disk for the NAS backend.


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Select the hard drive you want to install on, and click "Next".

Network Configuration

The network configuration dialog will then come up. You need to enter hostname, ip-address and gateway values. Other fields are optional.

After you have specified the required fields, press "Install". The installer will format the selected disk and install the Gluster Storage Platform image on to it. You will see an installation progress


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screen, and once complete the following confirmation dialog will be displayed which specifies the password you can use to log into the system subsequently.

Remove the USB install media at this point and click the "Reboot" button.

The system will then re-boot into the management console, and you will see the following screen.

Login using the password provided earlier.


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Gluster Management Console

Once you logon after re-boot, you will be presented a help screen. Review and close this screen to get into the management console (below) through which you can use to add servers, create volumes and monitor the system.

You can also manage the server entirely remotely from your browser. Simply point your browser to http://IP-ADDRESS (or hostname) of your server (i.e. the IP which you assigned during the installation). You will get the same login screen and features via the web browser as you would being physically on the installed system.

Add Server

To expand your storage setup, click the "Add Server" button under the "Server Manager" tab in the management console. The first time when you add a new server to the cluster, you will be prompted to enter an IP address range for the storage pool (unless you specify it by choosing the "Manage Storage Server Pool" button prior).


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Press "Next", and specify the IP address range in the dialog (below) that comes up. You simply reserve a range of IP addresses in advance for the storage servers. For example, if you are planning to scale the storage cluster to a maximum of 20 servers, then you will enter 192.168.1.12 - 192.168.1.20, where 192.168.1.11 is the IP address you already assigned for the management console. There is no harm in assigning more than what you are planning to scale.

Once you have entered the IP address range for additional servers, click "Next", and the management console will start probing for additional servers to boot up.


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The next step is to use the same installation media to boot your additional storage server(s). Insert the USB stick into a USB port on the 2nd server, and boot from it. It will time-out in 60 seconds, and automatically proceed to remote installation of the additional server. Even though it is possible to do so, especially if you have a console on your second server, you do not need to interrupt the boot process nor manually intervene. Once time-out happens, the management console will exit from probing servers to the following screen:

Enter the 2nd server hostname under the General tab. If desired, review the information pre-filled into the eth0 to see the network address assigned by the management console to this server.

Click "Add Server". Your remote server installation will complete, and you will see the following confirmation in your management console.

"Close" this dialog, and refresh the management console by switching between some tabs.

Both servers installed will now show in the "Server Manager" tab.


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Server Manager

After adding your servers the next step is to prepare the disk you selected at the time of installation. Select the all (check box) and click "Format Disk". This process takes few minutes to few hours depending on how big your RAID volume is. Here you can see the two servers added before formatting the disks:

You will see the following screen when formatting is complete:


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At this point you can add more servers, or proceed to creating volumes now.

Volume Manager

The Volume Manager is the heart of Gluster Storage Platform. By default, volume manager creates a distributed volume with a single global name space. All of the storage across all servers in cluster will appear as one large volume, when you mount the file system on your client machines. It uses an elastic hashing technique to intelligently distribute the files and to avoid hot-spots.

Volume Types

None: Selected by default, all your files will be distributed across servers.

Mirror: All your files are replicated twice. You need at least 2 servers (or multiples of two) to activate this feature.

Stripe: Each file is spread across 4 servers to share load within a file access. It helps in performance only in HPC / Supercomputing environment where there are 100s or 1,000s of clients pounding on a single large file (much larger than server's memory). You need a minimum of 4 (or multiples of four) servers to activate this feature.

Export Protocols

Native GlusterFS: Native GlusterFS protocol is designed for scalability and performance. It is intelligent and efficient in file access and is fully POSIX compliant and requires no modification to your application code.. It, however, works only on FUSE capable kernels such as Linux. You need to install a small user-space GlusterFS client on your system in order to natively mount the volumes.

NFSv3 TCP: Distributed NFS support brings scalability to NFS without imposing any additional software requirements on the client side. Most Unix and GNU/Linux operating systems have support for NFSv3 TCP protocol.

CIFS: Microsoft operating systems have built-in CIFS client support, making this protocol ideal for general-purpose file storage and archival in a Windows environment.


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To create a volume, navigate to the "Volume Manager" tab:

It will appear as above since no volumes have yet been created. Click on "Create Volume". The dialog below will appear (but will be empty).


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Enter the name for the volume you want to create, select volume type you want and the storage servers and disks you want included in this volume. Then select the export protocols, which clients can use to connect to this volume. If you select the CIFS protocol, also specify a user name and password that you can use from your Windows clients to connect to this volume. Then click "Create Volume". Your volume will be created. Click on "Start Volume" in the confirmation dialog that appears. That will start the volume you just created, and it will be ready for mounting by clients using the protocols you specified and show in the Volume Manager tab as:


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Mounting Gluster Volumes in a Client If you want to mount using Native GlusterFS client protocol, you have to install the GlusterFS client module, available on Linux systems only, on each client. The client software is available for download at the same location you obtained the Gluster Storage Platform from, and installs as a user space application. NFS and CIFS client software are typically already pre-installed on UNIX/Linux and Windows machines respectively. Gluster native client mount: as a root user, run the following command after installing the Gluster native client software mount -t glusterfs [StorageNodeIP]:[VolumeName]-tcp [mountpoint]

NFS mount: as a root user, run the following command (you may have to install NFS if your client OS does not already have it): mount -t nfs StorageNodeIP:/nfs/[VolumeName] [mountpoint]

Note: To have volume mounted every time on boot automatically, add the mount command to /etc/fstab

CIFS mount: On your Windows client machine, open "Computer" then "Network". The storage node(s) will appear. Double click on the storage node that you want to connect to. The CIFS exported volume will appear. Double click on it. It will ask you to enter user name and password, and then connect. You can also map this volume to a network drive, and tell Windows to reconnect automatically on login.

Additional Information

Additional documentation can be obtained from the Gluster website at

http://gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Main_Page

http://gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Main_Page