Quick Start Guide

Here are the bare minimum steps you need to get Gluster up and running. If this is your first time setting things up, it is recommended that you choose your desired setup method i.e. AWS, virtual machines or baremetal after step four, adding an entry to fstab. If you want to get right to it (and don't need more information), the steps below are all you need to get started.

You will need to have at least two nodes with a 64 bit OS and a working network connection. At least one gig of RAM is the bare minimum recommended for testing, and you will want at least 8GB in any system you plan on doing any real work on. A single cpu is fine for testing, as long as it is 64 bit.

Partition, Format and mount the bricks

Assuming you have a brick at /dev/sdb:

    fdisk /dev/sdb and create a single partition

Format the partition

    mkfs.xfs -i size=512 -n size=8192 /dev/sdb1

Mount the partition as a Gluster "brick"

    mkdir -p /export/sdb1 && mount /dev/sdb1 /export/sdb1 && mkdir -p /export/sdb1/brick

Add an entry to /etc/fstab

    echo "/dev/sdb1 /export/sdb1 xfs defaults 0 0"  >> /etc/fstab

Install Gluster packages on both nodes

    rpm -Uvh  http://download.gluster.com/pub/gluster/glusterfs/LATEST/Fedora/glusterfs{,-server,-fuse,-geo-replication}-3.3.1-1.fc16.x86_64.rpm

Note: This example assumes Fedora 16

Run the gluster peer probe command

Note: From one node to the other nodes (do not peer probe the first node itself, repeat this command for all nodes that should be in the trusted pool)

    gluster peer probe <ip or hostname of another host>

Configure your Gluster volume

    gluster volume create testvol replica 2 transport tcp node01:/export/sdb1/brick node02:/export/sdb1/brick

Test using the volume

    mkdir /mnt/gluster; mount -t glusterfs node01:/testvol; cp -r /var/log /mnt/gluster