<html><body><div style="font-family: garamond,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div>Hi,<br></div><div><br></div><div>When we designed and wrote sharding feature in GlusterFS, our focus had been</div><div>single-writer-to-large-files use cases, chief among these being the virtual machine image store use-case.</div><div>Sharding, for the uninitiated, is a feature that was introduced in glusterfs-3.7.0 release with 'experimental' status.<br></div><div>Here is some documentation that explains what it does at a high level:<br></div><div><a href="http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/sharding-xlator" target="_blank" data-mce-href="http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/sharding-xlator">http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/sharding-xlator</a><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><a href="https://gluster.readthedocs.org/en/release-3.7.0/Features/shard/" target="_blank" data-mce-href="https://gluster.readthedocs.org/en/release-3.7.0/Features/shard/">https://gluster.readthedocs.org/en/release-3.7.0/Features/shard/</a><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><br></div><div>We have now reached that stage where the feature is considered stable for the VM store use case</div><div>after several rounds of testing (thanks to Lindsay Mathieson, Paul Cuzner and Satheesaran Sundaramoorthi),</div><div>bug fixing and reviews (thanks to Pranith Karampuri). Also in this regard, patches have been sent to make</div><div>sharding work with geo-replication, thanks to Kotresh's efforts (testing still in progress).<br></div><div><br></div><div>We would love to hear from you on what you think of the feature and where it could be improved.<span style="color: #000000; font-family: nimbus-sans; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff;" data-mce-style="color: #000000; font-family: nimbus-sans; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff;"></span><br></div><div>Specifically, the following are the questions we are seeking feedback on:<br></div><div>a) your experience testing sharding with VM store use-case - any bugs you ran into, any performance issues, etc<br></div><div>b) what are the other large-file use-cases (apart from the VM store workload) you know of or use,</div><div> where you think having sharding capability will be useful.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Based on your feedback we will start work on making sharding work in other workloads and/or with other existing GlusterFS features.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Thanks,<br></div><div>Krutika<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>