Archive for 'Linux Storage'

Installing ZFS on a CentOS 6 Linux server

As most of my long term readers know I am a huge Solaris fan. How can’t you love an Operating System that comes with ZFS, DTrace, Zones, FMA and Network Virtualization amongst other things? I use Linux during my day job, and I’ve been hoping for quite some time that Oracle would port one or [...]

Another interesting finding about gluster replicas

In a previous post I talked about my problems getting gluster to expand the number of replicas in a volume. While experimenting with the gluster utilities “add-brick” option I wanted to see if adding two more bricks would replicate the existing data across four bricks (two old, two new), or if the two new bricks [...]

Removing a gluster volume doesn’t remove the volume’s contents

I made another interesting discovery this weekend while playing around with the gluster volume deletion option. Prior to creating a volume with a new layout, I went through the documented process to remove my volume: $ gluster volume stop glustervol01 Stopping volume will make its data inaccessible. Do you want to continue? (y/n) y Stopping [...]

Some interesting insights on the gluster replicated volume replica value

While playing around with gluster, I had an interesting finding about the way gluster handles replicated volumes. The gluster volume I am using for testing is a replicated volume with a replica factor of 2 (the replica factor determines how many copies of your data will be made). I wanted to add a third replica [...]

Centos 6 Linux VMs running inside vSphere 4.1 appear to dynamically discover new LUNs

I came across an interesting discovery yesterday while working on a CentOS 6 gluster node. The node was virtualized inside vSphere 4.1 and needed some additional storage added to it. I went into the VI client and added a new disk while the server was running, expecting to have to reboot or

Defragmenting EXT4 file systems with e4defrag (coming soon to a distribution near you)

If you have been around the systems engineering field you have probably read about file system fragmentation at some point. This typically occurs when files are randomly updated over time, and the blocks that comprise the file get scattered over different areas of the disk. This causes the drives to perform more work since the [...]

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