Description of problem: when file is being written, especially appended to, then file ping-pongs between cold and hot tier Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. create file BIGDEMO-1 on cold tier at mount point: /mnt/twoXtwo 2. attach hot tier bricks 3. start appending to file using the following shell command: while true; do dd if=/dev/urandom of=/mnt/twoXtwo/BIGDEMO-1 ibs=1024 obs=2014 \ conv=notrunc oflag=append count=100; ls -l /mnt/twoXtwo; sleep 1; done
This seems to an issue with XFS as the brick file-system over-allocating blocks for performance reasons. Tests with EXT4 did not manifest this issue.
Patch https://review.gluster.org/#/c/glusterfs/+/21331/ removes tier functionality from GlusterFS. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1642807 is used as the tracking bug for this. Recommendation is to convert your tier volume to regular volume (either replicate, ec, or plain distribute) with "tier detach" command before upgrade, and use backend features like dm-cache etc to utilize the caching from backend to provide better performance and functionality.