According to my understanding, this configuration is used in the GlusterVolume initialization phase to create a path for MR control files. This should be finished in the GlusterFS server side. But here, GlusterFS works as the Tachyon under file system. It only requires some client configurations. If there is some MR job running on top of  Tachyon, those control files should be created over the Tachyon. and Tachyon will create a checkpoint file (named as fid) under the data folder on glusterfs. If anything misunderstanding, please correct me.