gluster

gluster [GLOBAL_OPTIONS] <SUBCOMMAND> [<SUBCOMMAND_OPTIONS>]

--debug[=LEVEL]
    Enable debug logging at specified level (0-9)

--help
    Display help message and exit

--log-file=FILE
    Specify path for log file

--log-level=LEVEL
    Set logging verbosity (ERROR, WARNING, INFO, DEBUG)

--print-logdir
    Print default log directory

--version
    Display Gluster version information

-L LOCALE
    Set locale for output

-t TIMEOUT
    Set timeout for operations in seconds

volume
    Create, start, stop, status, and manage volumes

peer
    Probe, detach, and manage peer nodes

pool
    Manage trusted storage pool (list, status)

system
    Get UUID, ::getwd, and system info

snapshot
    Create, restore, delete snapshots

set
    Set volume or global options

get
    Get volume or global options

quota
    Configure and monitor quotas

mount
    Mount GlusterFS volumes

Gluster is the command-line interface for GlusterFS, an open-source, software-defined, scale-out network filesystem capable of handling petabytes of data across commodity hardware. It enables administrators to configure, monitor, and maintain GlusterFS clusters through a variety of subcommands.

Key capabilities include creating and managing storage volumes with policies like replication, distribution, erasure coding (dispersed), and striping; probing and managing trusted peer nodes to form storage pools; monitoring cluster health, brick status, and performance metrics; and configuring advanced features such as quotas, snapshots, geo-replication for DR, bitrot detection, and tiering.

Gluster integrates seamlessly with Linux clients via FUSE, NFSv3/4, SMB, and Hadoop/Swift APIs, making it ideal for cloud-native, virtualization, and media workloads. The tool requires the glusterd daemon running on nodes and often needs root privileges for volume operations. Its output is structured for scripting, with options for JSON formatting in recent versions.

Requires glusterd service running on nodes; many operations need root privileges; incompatible with SELinux in enforcing mode without proper labeling; network disruptions can affect consistency.

gluster peer probe host.example.com
gluster volume create myvol replica 3 host1:/data/brick host2:/data/brick host3:/data/brick
gluster volume start myvol

Use --mode=script or --xml (older) / JSON in recent versions for parseable output.

Developed as part of GlusterFS project starting 2005 by Gluster Inc.; major CLI overhaul in Gluster 3.0 (2010); Red Hat acquisition in 2011 integrated it into RHGS; snapshots added in 3.6 (2014), erasure coding in 3.10 (2016), ongoing enhancements in upstream Gluster 10+.

glusterd(8), glusterfs(8), mount.glusterfs(8)