A Gluster Terminology

WARNING:

Gluster on Oracle Linux 8 is no longer supported. See Oracle Linux: Product Life Cycle Information for more information.

Oracle Linux 7 is now in Extended Support. See Oracle Linux Extended Support and Oracle Open Source Support Policies for more information. Gluster on Oracle Linux 7 is excluded from extended support.

Brick

A basic unit of storage in the Gluster file system. A brick is disk storage made available using an exported directory on a server in a trusted storage pool.

Distributed file system

File system that grants several clients to concurrently access data spread across bricks in a trusted storage pool.

Extended attributes (xattr)

File system feature that enables users or programs to associate files and directories with metadata. Gluster stores metadata in xattrs.

Gluster client

System that runs the glusterfs-client software to mount gluster storage either locally or remotely by using the Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) software interface.

Gluster server

System that runs the glusterd service daemon to become a node in the trusted storage pool.

Gluster volume

Logical collection of bricks. Volumes can be distributed, replicated, distributed replicated, dispersed, or distributed dispersed.

Heketi

Service that exposes an API for scripts to manage trusted storage pools and volumes automatically.

Heketi cluster

Gluster trusted storage pool.

Node

Host system that's a member of a trusted storage pool.

Split-brain

Situation where data on two or more bricks in a replicated volume diverge. Either the content or the metadata differs.

Trusted storage pool

Collection of nodes that form a cluster.