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authorAmar Tumballi <amarts@redhat.com>2018-02-06 19:23:28 +0530
committerShyamsundar Ranganathan <srangana@redhat.com>2018-02-11 14:34:00 +0000
commit7786f61ccd1ebeb842aca26456b6fdeda40bf97c (patch)
tree5292e84a7100223f2137fc6c23e8d9b20ad4ea42
parent0806421ff2be104ed757610dc38c3b8e1d969cea (diff)
doc: updated the release-notes
Change-Id: I481a0041393acf556f4c6ab15ee74e4c8e3dea50 Signed-off-by: Amar Tumballi <amarts@redhat.com>
-rw-r--r--doc/release-notes/4.0.0.md133
1 files changed, 90 insertions, 43 deletions
diff --git a/doc/release-notes/4.0.0.md b/doc/release-notes/4.0.0.md
index c7757f0ed02..8dbfd95624e 100644
--- a/doc/release-notes/4.0.0.md
+++ b/doc/release-notes/4.0.0.md
@@ -44,30 +44,47 @@ Features are categorized into the following sections,
**Known Issues:**
### Monitoring
-#### 1. More metrics on fops at every translate layer
-**Notes for users:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/137
-- Release notes needs:
- - Needs appropriate documentation
- - Also, need some developer documentation to aid in debugging using this information
-**Limitations:**
+The lack of live monitoring support on top of GlusterFS till date was a
+limiting factor for many users (and in many cases for developers too).
+[Statedump](docs.gluster.org/en/latest/Troubleshooting/statedump/) did some work of helping during debugging, but was heavy for
+live monitoring.
+Further, the existence of `debug/io-stats` translator was not known to many and
+`gluster volume profile` was not recommended as it took a hit on performance.
-**Known Issues:**
+With this release, glusterfs's core infrastructure itself gets some mechanisms
+to provide internal information, that avoids the heavy weight nature of prior
+monitoring mechanisms.
-#### 2. Monitoring support
+#### 1. Metrics collection across every FOP in every xlator
**Notes for users:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/168
-- Usage needs documentation
-- Release notes:
- - Need documentation to point to and some terse statement for the release notes
+Gluster, with this release, has in-built latency measures in the xlator
+abstraction, thus enabling capture of metrics and usage patterns across
+workloads.
+
+These measures are currently enabled by default.
**Limitations:**
+This feature is auto-enabled and cannot be disabled.
+Providing means to disable the same in future releases also may not be made
+available, as the data generated is deemed critical to understand and
+troubleshoot gluster usage patterns.
-**Known Issues:**
+#### 2. Monitoring support
+**Notes for users:**
+Currently, only project which consumes the metrics and provides basic
+monitoring is [glustermetrics](https://github.com/amarts/glustermetrics), which provides a good idea on how to
+utilize the metrics dumped from the processes.
+Users can send SIGUSR2 signal to the process to dump the metrics, in
+`/var/run/gluster/metrics/` directory.
+
+**Limitations:**
+Currently core gluster stack and memory management systems dump metrics. For
+other translators and other core components, framework to provide more metrics
+exists, but additional metrics are not added in this release.
### Performance
#### 1. EC: Make metadata [F]STAT/[F]GETXATTR operations faster
@@ -220,25 +237,35 @@ Features are categorized into the following sections,
#### 3. Dentry fop serializer xlator on brick stack
**Notes for users:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/397
-- Release notes:
- - Needs option documentation and when to use the same comments
+This feature strengthens consistency of the file system, trading it for some
+performance and is strongly suggested for workloads where consistency is
+required.
-**Limitations:**
+For use-cases that involve a large number of renames or frequent creations and
+deletions, the meta-data about the files and directories shared across the
+clients were not always consistent. They do eventually become consistent, but
+a large proportion of applications are not built to handle eventual consistency.
+This feature can be enabled as follows,
+```
+# gluster volume set <volname> features.sdfs enable
+```
-**Known Issues:**
+**Limitations:**
+This feature is released as a preview, as performance implications are not known
+completely.
#### 4. Add option to disable nftw() based deletes when purging the landfill directory
**Notes for users:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/371
-- Release notes:
- - Document option to use and when to use the same
-
-**Limitations:**
+The gluster brick processes use an optimized manner of deleting entire sub-trees
+using the nftw call. With this release, an option is being added to toggle this
+behavior in cases where this optimization is not desired.
+This is not an exposed option, and needs to be controlled using the volume
+graph. Adding the disable-landfill-purge option to the storage/posix translator
+helps toggle this feature.
-**Known Issues:**
+The default is always enabled, as in the older releases.
#### 5. Add option in POSIX to limit hardlinks per inode
**Notes for users:**
@@ -266,10 +293,18 @@ Features are categorized into the following sections,
### Developer related
#### 1. xlators should not provide init(), fini() and others directly, but have class_methods
**Notes for developers:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/164
-- Some developer documentation needs to be updated for this change
-- Release notes:
- - Can be handled by the release team
+This release brings in a new unified manner of defining xlator methods. Which
+avoids certain unwanted side-effects of the older method (like having to have
+certain symbols being defined always), and helps a cleaner single point
+registration mechanism for all xlator methods.
+
+The new method, needs just a single symbol in the translator code to be exposed,
+which is named xlator_api.
+
+The elements of this structure is defined [here](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/blob/release-4.0/libglusterfs/src/xlator.h#L1055) and an example usage of the
+same can be seen [here](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/commit/5b4b25c697f93d3dfe352013a442f2ec73fd3b8b).
+
+The older mechanism is still supported, but not preferred.
#### 2. Framework for distributed testing
**Notes for developers:**
@@ -287,10 +322,21 @@ Features are categorized into the following sections,
#### 4. New on-wire protocol (XDR) needed to support iattx and cleaner dictionary structure
**Notes for developers:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/384
-- Requires some developer writeup, to explain out the changes
-- Release notes:
- - Can point to developer notes, if made available
+With changes in the code to adapt to a newer iatt structure, and stricter data
+format enforcement within dictionaries passed across the wire, and also as a
+part of reducing technical debt around the RPC layer, this release introduces a
+new RPC Gluster protocol version (4.0.0).
+
+Typically this does not impact any development, other than to ensure that newer
+RPCs that are added would need to be on the 4.0.0 version of the protocol and
+dictionaries on the wire need to be better encoded.
+
+The newer iatt structure can be viewed [here](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/blob/release-4.0/libglusterfs/src/iatt.h#L47).
+
+An example of better encoding dictionary values for wire transfers can be seen
+[here](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/blob/release-4.0/libglusterfs/src/dict.c#L2454).
+
+[Here](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/blob/master/doc/developer-guide/rpc-for-glusterfs.new-versions.md) is some additional information on Gluster RPC programs for the inquisitive.
#### 5. Leases support on GlusterFS
**Notes for developers:**
@@ -303,19 +349,20 @@ Features are categorized into the following sections,
**Notes for developers:**
- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/203
- Release notes:
- - Pont to developer documentation if any
+ - Point to developer documentation if any
#### 7. Translator to handle 'global' options
**Notes for developers:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/303
-- Release notes:
- - Needs developer documentation for future improvements in this area
+GlusterFS process has around 50 command line arguments to itself. While many of
+the options are initial settings, many others can change its value in volume
+lifetime. Prior to this release there was no way to change a setting, other than
+restarting the process for many of these options.
-#### 8. Information on RPC programs
-**Notes for developers:**
-- https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/140
-- Release notes:
- - Point to the provided documentation
+With the introduction of global option translator, it is now possible to handle
+these options without restarts.
+
+If contributing code that adds to the process options, strongly consider adding
+the same to the global option translator. An example is provided [here](https://review.gluster.org/18316).
## Major issues
@@ -325,4 +372,4 @@ Features are categorized into the following sections,
Bugs addressed since release-3.13.0 are listed below.
-**TBD** \ No newline at end of file
+**TBD**