Red Hat Storage Server Technical Overview (VIDEO)

In this video, Sayan Saha, senior manager, Red Hat Storage product management, provides a brief technical overview of Red Hat® Storage Server (RHSS) and a glimpse into how it actually works under the hood, with an emphasis on its composition, key concepts, file placement logic, dynamic scaling, and access. Below is a summary of the various points Saha cover. For a more in-depth view, please watch the webinar.

Composition: RHSS integrates Gluster, an open source distributed file system, with XFS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This provides a pre-integrated and pre-verified storage server.

Key Concepts: The most granular unit in RHSS is a ‘Brick.’ The bricks are consolidated to create a ‘Volume’. This is a single, common mount point. The volume can either be distributed or replicated, depending on whether one or more file copies are needed. Each node is clustered together to create a complete storage pool.

File Placement and Retrieval: RHSS does not have a metadata server. Instead, it places files on a Brick based on a hashing algorithm. The same calculation is used to retrieve the same file from the Brick.

Dynamic Scaling: Inevitably, businesses will need to add more storage, and RHSS makes this easier. By simply probing a server into the Red Hat Storage cluster and adding a brick, you have increased the space provided by the volume. A rebalance command will evenly distribute data across all bricks. Bricks can also be drained of data and detached if less storage is desired.

Asynchronous Geo Replication: RHSS provides[we just need to say that it does it, we can’t suggest that we’re guaranteeing performance] data safety by generating a copy of your files in another storage site, hundreds of miles away. RHSS scans a log that records changes you made to your files, and replicates those changes on the disaster recovery site.

Access: RHSS offers a variety of points of access, from the standard protocols NFS and SMB, to a fuse-based client, or a file system in the user space. Lastly, it also offers programmatic access to files in the RHS cluster.

To learn more about the composition and concepts of the Red Hat Storage Server, visit http://www.redhat.com/storage