Red Hat Gluster Storage: Compatible Physical, Virtual Server and Client OS Platforms

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Red Hat Gluster Storage Compatibility

Red Hat has established the following generic and use-case specific criteria for Red Hat Gluster Storage compatibility of specific servers. Red Hat strongly recommends that all customers source their hardware platforms for running Red Hat Gluster Storage for On-premise based on the criteria specified below to ensure supportability of production deployments.

Generic Requirements for a server to be Red Hat Gluster Storage (RHGS) Compatible

  • Must be in the Red Hat Hardware Compatibility List for Storage for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 and newer.
  • 2-socket (with 4-core, 6-core, or 8-core) servers are recommended.
  • Minimum RAM requirements are use case specific. See below.
  • Reliable backplane RAID controller shipped by server vendors or from OEM manufacturers.
  • RAID 6 and RAID 1+0 Support in hardware RAID controller.
  • RAID controller card must be flash-backed or battery-backed.
  • 1X 50 GB GB (SAS or SATA) disks for RHGS server installation if a separate partition is created for /var
    OR 200 GB if no separate partition is created for /var.
  • 1 X 10 GigE NIC for data traffic is recommended. It's advisable to use NIC bonding with 2 X 10 GigE for increasing throughput and resiliency. 1 GigE NIC may also be used.
  • Redundant power supply
  • Out of band management card to manage and monitor RHGS nodes even when the server is down.(optional)

Note:

  • The same interface may be used for data and management traffic, but it's recommended to have separate networks for data and management.

High Performance Computing use-case

  • 2u/24 (JBODs may be attached)
  • 15000 RPM 900GB drives(2.5" inch SAS) OR Solid state disks.
  • Minimum RAM 48 GB

General Purpose File Serving use-case

  • 2u/12 (JBODs may be attached)
  • 7200 or 10000 RPM, up to 8 TB drives (3.5" SAS or SATA)
  • 7200 or 10000 RPM, up to 14 TB drives (3.5" SAS or SATA) with RHGS-3.4 and above version
  • Minimum RAM 32 GB

Archival use-case

  • 4u/60 (JBODs may be attached)
  • 7200 or 10000 RPM, up to 8 TB drives (3.5" SAS or SATA)
  • 7200 or 10000 RPM, up to 14 TB drives (3.5" SAS or SATA) with RHGS-3.4 and above version
  • Minimum RAM 16 GB

Cloud Deployment

For Production deployment, minimum recommended image types are:

  • AWS: t2.xlarge (16GiB, 4vCPU)
  • GCP: n1-highmem-4 (26GiB, 4vCPUs)
  • Azure: Standard_DC4s (16GiB, 4vCPUs)

or equivalent image types.

Note:

  • The number of disks supported per server in the JBOD configuration is limited to 36 with 3-way replication and erasure coding configuration.

Node Selection Guideline For Specific use-cases

Component HPC General Purpose Archival
Chassis (specifically applicable for Supermicro)

2u 24x2.5" Hotswap with redundant power

2u 12x3.5" Hotswap with redundant power

4u 60x3.5" Hotswap with redundant power
Processor Intel Xeon Nehalem-Ex and beyond, AMD equivalent Intel Xeon Nehalem-Ex and beyond, AMD equivalent Intel Xeon Nehalem-Ex and beyond, AMD equivalent
Disk 24x 2.5" 15000 RPM SAS OR SSD's along with 1.5K RPM SAS 12x 3.5" 7200 or 10000 RPM SAS/SATA OR SSD's along with 7.2K/10K RPM SAS/SATA 60x 3.5" 7200 or 10000 RPM SAS/SATA
minimum RAM 48GB 32GB 16GB
Networking 2x10GigE 2x10GigE (preferred) or 2x1GigE 2x10GigE (preferred) or 2x1GigE

Notes:

  • All data disks configured in groups of 12 drives in RAID6 configuration

Trusted Storage Pool Size Limits

Limit Minimum Maximum Notes
Trusted Server Pool Size 2 + 1 with arbitrated replicated volumes 128

Arbitrated replicated volumes with 2 storage nodes and 1 node hosting just the meta-data information in a local data-center using sync replication is supported. Please contact your Red Hat representative if you plan a deployment than needs a higher number of nodes in a storage pool.

Usable Capacity for most common configuration

 No minimum

51.2 Petabytes with no replication. 25.6 Petabytes with 2+1 replication or 17 Petabytes with 3-way replication in a single cluster of 128 node. Assuming a fully populated storage server with 60 drives per controller and 8 TB SATA drives. For distributed-dispersed and dispersed volumes 36 disks per controller is supported.

Please contact your Red Hat representative if you plan a deployment of higher scale than the maximum described here

Supported Virtual Platforms

Red Hat Gluster Storage nodes can be VMs running on listed virtual environments

Virtual Platforms Red Hat Gluster Storage supported releases
Red Hat Virtualization 4.3 Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.4.z, 3.5.z (RHEL 7 based only)
Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.3.x
Red Hat Virtualization 4.1 Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.2, 3.3.x
Red Hat Virtualization 4.0 Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.1
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.6 Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.1
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.5 Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.1
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.4 Red Hat Gluster Storage, Red Hat Storage 2.1/U1/U2(Compatibility Mode)
VMware ESXi 6.x, 7.x Red Hat Storage Server 3.x, Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.x (Minimum 4 vCPUs, 16 GB RAM), Use VMDKs or RDMs

NOTE: Please refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Life Cycle page for full Manager and Hypervisor compatibility details.

Supported Client and Client OS Platforms

Client OS FUSE NFS SMB
RHEL 5 Unsupported Unsupported Unsupported
RHEL 6 Supported Gluster NFS - Deprecated
NFS-Ganesha - Unsupported		 Supported
RHEL 7 Supported Gluster NFS - Deprecated
NFS-Ganesha - Supported		 supported
RHEL 8 Supported Gluster NFS - Unsupported
NFS-Ganesha - Supported		 Supported
Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016 Unsupported Unsupported Supported
Windows 7, 8, 10 Unsupported Unsupported Supported
Mac OS 10.15 Unsupported Unsupported Supported

For GlusterFS FUSE client support from other Linux based client OS platforms/distributions see this:

Red Hat does not test native glusterfs clients which it does not ship. For these clients, the scope of support is limited to the server side. If such clients are based on the same upstream release of Gluster, Red Hat will support and offer to diagnose issues around Red Hat Gluster Storage Server related to their use. If the issue is determined to be specific to a client then you may be asked to reproduce on a RHEL system or, using NFS to confirm the same. In such cases, the customer would be advised to seek support from the provider of the glusterfs client and not Red Hat.

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