Description of problem: Creating / extending a volume is certainly possible with glusterfs through the "gluster volume create / add-brick" commands. However, these commands needs to be called with details about the resource that will be included in the volume. We need a high-level interface that requires one to specify only what she wants, not how to assemble the thing wanted. Possible syntax could be (showed here only for demonstrational purposes, other syntax / semantics is fine too): gluster volume instantiate <volume-name> <size> gluster volume resize <volume-name> <size> The original idea (and the use case behind it) is only about describing the desired volume in terms of size; however, it could be considered to allow the requestor to provide further constraints / preferences.
Prabably, these new enhancements have to be discussed in gluster-devel regarding their feasibility and use-cases.
Migrated to github: https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/563 Please follow the github issue for further updates on this bug.