NetBSD/share/man/man4/raid.4

.\"     $NetBSD: raid.4,v 1.25 2003/04/13 01:45:06 wiz Exp $
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.\" Copyright (c) 1995 Carnegie-Mellon University.
.\" All rights reserved.
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.\" Author: Mark Holland
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.\" its documentation is hereby granted, provided that both the copyright
.\" notice and this permission notice appear in all copies of the
.\" software, derivative works or modified versions, and any portions
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.\" CONDITION.  CARNEGIE MELLON DISCLAIMS ANY LIABILITY OF ANY KIND
.\" FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
.\"
.\" Carnegie Mellon requests users of this software to return to
.\"
.\"  Software Distribution Coordinator  or  Software.Distribution@CS.CMU.EDU
.\"  School of Computer Science
.\"  Carnegie Mellon University
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.\" any improvements or extensions that they make and grant Carnegie the
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.Dd April 9, 2003
.Dt RAID 4
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm raid
.Nd RAIDframe disk driver
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Cd options RAID_AUTOCONFIG
.Cd options RAID_DIAGNOSTIC
.Cd options RF_INCLUDE_EVENODD=n
.Cd options RF_INCLUDE_RAID5_RS=n
.Cd options RF_INCLUDE_PARITYLOGGING=n
.Cd options RF_INCLUDE_CHAINDECLUSTER=n
.Cd options RF_INCLUDE_INTERDECLUSTER=n
.Cd options RF_INCLUDE_PARITY_DECLUSTERING=n
.Cd options RF_INCLUDE_PARITY_DECLUSTERING_DS=n
.Pp
.Cd "pseudo-device raid" Op Ar count
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
driver provides RAID 0, 1, 4, and 5 (and more!) capabilities to
.Nx .
This
document assumes that the reader has at least some familiarity with RAID
and RAID concepts.  The reader is also assumed to know how to configure
disks and pseudo-devices into kernels, how to generate kernels, and how
to partition disks.
.Pp
RAIDframe provides a number of different RAID levels including:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It RAID 0
provides simple data striping across the components.
.It RAID 1
provides mirroring.
.It RAID 4
provides data striping across the components, with parity
stored on a dedicated drive (in this case, the last component).
.It RAID 5
provides data striping across the components, with parity
distributed across all the components.
.El
.Pp
There are a wide variety of other RAID levels supported by RAIDframe.
The configuration file options to enable them are briefly outlined
at the end of this section.
.Pp
Depending on the parity level configured, the device driver can
support the failure of component drives.  The number of failures
allowed depends on the parity level selected.  If the driver is able
to handle drive failures, and a drive does fail, then the system is
operating in "degraded mode".  In this mode, all missing data must be
reconstructed from the data and parity present on the other
components.  This results in much slower data accesses, but
does mean that a failure need not bring the system to a complete halt.
.Pp
The RAID driver supports and enforces the use of
.Sq component labels .
A
.Sq component label
contains important information about the component, including a
user-specified serial number, the row and column of that component in
the RAID set, and whether the data (and parity) on the component is
.Sq clean .
If the driver determines that the labels are very inconsistent with
respect to each other (e.g. two or more serial numbers do not match)
or that the component label is not consistent with its assigned place
in the set (e.g. the component label claims the component should be
the 3rd one a 6-disk set, but the RAID set has it as the 3rd component
in a 5-disk set) then the device will fail to configure.  If the
driver determines that exactly one component label seems to be
incorrect, and the RAID set is being configured as a set that supports
a single failure, then the RAID set will be allowed to configure, but
the incorrectly labeled component will be marked as
.Sq failed ,
and the RAID set will begin operation in degraded mode.
If all of the components are consistent among themselves, the RAID set
will configure normally.
.Pp
Component labels are also used to support the auto-detection and
auto-configuration of RAID sets.  A RAID set can be flagged as
auto-configurable, in which case it will be configured automatically
during the kernel boot process.  RAID file systems which are
automatically configured are also eligible to be the root file system.
There is currently only limited support (alpha and pmax architectures)
for booting a kernel directly from a RAID 1 set, and no support for
booting from any other RAID sets.  To use a RAID set as the root
file system, a kernel is usually obtained from a small non-RAID
partition, after which any auto-configuring RAID set can be used for the
root file system.  See
.Xr raidctl 8
for more information on auto-configuration of RAID sets.
Note that with auto-configuration of RAID sets, it is no longer
necessary to hard-code SCSI IDs of drives.
The auto-configuration code will
correctly configure a device even after any number of the components
have had their device IDs changed or device names changed.
.Pp
The driver supports
.Sq hot spares ,
disks which are on-line, but are not
actively used in an existing file system.  Should a disk fail, the
driver is capable of reconstructing the failed disk onto a hot spare
or back onto a replacement drive.
If the components are hot swappable, the failed disk can then be
removed, a new disk put in its place, and a copyback operation
performed.  The copyback operation, as its name indicates, will copy
the reconstructed data from the hot spare to the previously failed
(and now replaced) disk.  Hot spares can also be hot-added using
.Xr raidctl 8 .
.Pp
If a component cannot be detected when the RAID device is configured,
that component will be simply marked as 'failed'.
.Pp
The user-land utility for doing all
.Nm
configuration and other operations
is
.Xr raidctl 8 .
Most importantly,
.Xr raidctl 8
must be used with the
.Fl i
option to initialize all RAID sets.  In particular, this
initialization includes re-building the parity data.  This rebuilding
of parity data is also required when either a) a new RAID device is
brought up for the first time or b) after an un-clean shutdown of a
RAID device.  By using the
.Fl P
option to
.Xr raidctl 8 ,
and performing this on-demand recomputation of all parity
before doing a
.Xr fsck 8
or a
.Xr newfs 8 ,
file system integrity and parity integrity can be ensured.  It bears
repeating again that parity recomputation is
.Ar required
before any file systems are created or used on the RAID device.  If the
parity is not correct, then missing data cannot be correctly recovered.
.Pp
RAID levels may be combined in a hierarchical fashion.  For example, a RAID 0
device can be constructed out of a number of RAID 5 devices (which, in turn,
may be constructed out of the physical disks, or of other RAID devices).
.Pp
The first step to using the
.Nm
driver is to ensure that it is suitably configured in the kernel.  This is
done by adding a line similar to:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
pseudo-device   raid   4       # RAIDframe disk device
.Ed
.Pp
to the kernel configuration file.  The
.Sq count
argument (
.Sq 4 ,
in this case), specifies the number of RAIDframe drivers to configure.
To turn on component auto-detection and auto-configuration of RAID
sets, simply add:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options    RAID_AUTOCONFIG
.Ed
.Pp
to the kernel configuration file.
.Pp
All component partitions must be of the type
.Dv FS_BSDFFS
(e.g. 4.2BSD) or
.Dv FS_RAID .
The use of the latter is strongly encouraged, and is required if
auto-configuration of the RAID set is desired.  Since RAIDframe leaves
room for disklabels, RAID components can be simply raw disks, or
partitions which use an entire disk.
.Pp
A more detailed treatment of actually using a
.Nm
device is found in
.Xr raidctl 8 .
It is highly recommended that the steps to reconstruct, copyback, and
re-compute parity are well understood by the system administrator(s)
.Ar before
a component failure.  Doing the wrong thing when a component fails may
result in data loss.
.Pp
Additional internal consistency checking can be enabled by specifying:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options    RAID_DIAGNOSTIC
.Ed
.Pp
These assertions are disabled by default in order to improve
performance.
.Pp
There are a number of less commonly used RAID levels supported by
RAIDframe.
These additional RAID types should be considered experimental, and
may not be ready for production use.
The various types and the options to enable them are shown here:
.Pp
For Even-Odd parity:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options RF_INCLUDE_EVENODD=1
.Ed
.Pp
For RAID level 5 with rotated sparing:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options RF_INCLUDE_RAID5_RS=1
.Ed
.Pp
For Parity Logging (highly experimental):
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options RF_INCLUDE_PARITYLOGGING=1
.Ed
.Pp
For Chain Declustering:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options RF_INCLUDE_CHAINDECLUSTER=1
.Ed
.Pp
For Interleaved Declustering:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options RF_INCLUDE_INTERDECLUSTER=1
.Ed
.Pp
For Parity Declustering:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options RF_INCLUDE_PARITY_DECLUSTERING=1
.Ed
.Pp
For Parity Declustering with Distributed Spares:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
options RF_INCLUDE_PARITY_DECLUSTERING_DS=1
.Ed
.Pp
The reader is referred to the RAIDframe documentation mentioned in the
.Sx HISTORY
section for more detail on these various RAID configurations.
.Sh WARNINGS
Certain RAID levels (1, 4, 5, 6, and others) can protect against some
data loss due to component failure.  However the loss of two
components of a RAID 4 or 5 system, or the loss of a single component
of a RAID 0 system, will result in the entire file systems on that RAID
device being lost.
RAID is
.Ar NOT
a substitute for good backup practices.
.Pp
Recomputation of parity
.Ar MUST
be performed whenever there is a chance that it may have been
compromised.  This includes after system crashes, or before a RAID
device has been used for the first time.  Failure to keep parity
correct will be catastrophic should a component ever fail -- it is
better to use RAID 0 and get the additional space and speed, than it
is to use parity, but not keep the parity correct.  At least with RAID
0 there is no perception of increased data security.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /dev/XXrXraidX -compact
.It Pa /dev/{,r}raid*
.Nm
device special files.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr sd 4 ,
.Xr MAKEDEV 8 ,
.Xr config 8 ,
.Xr fsck 8 ,
.Xr mount 8 ,
.Xr newfs 8 ,
.Xr raidctl 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
driver in
.Nx
is a port of RAIDframe, a framework for rapid prototyping of RAID
structures developed by the folks at the Parallel Data Laboratory at
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).  RAIDframe, as originally distributed
by CMU, provides a RAID simulator for a number of different
architectures, and a user-level device driver and a kernel device
driver for Digital Unix.  The
.Nm
driver is a kernelized version of RAIDframe v1.1.
.Pp
A more complete description of the internals and functionality of
RAIDframe is found in the paper "RAIDframe: A Rapid Prototyping Tool
for RAID Systems", by William V. Courtright II, Garth Gibson, Mark
Holland, LeAnn Neal Reilly, and Jim Zelenka, and published by the
Parallel Data Laboratory of Carnegie Mellon University.
The
.Nm
driver first appeared in
.Nx 1.4 .
.Sh COPYRIGHT
.Bd -unfilled
The RAIDframe Copyright is as follows:
.Pp
Copyright (c) 1994-1996 Carnegie-Mellon University.
All rights reserved.
.Pp
Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and
its documentation is hereby granted, provided that both the copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in all copies of the
software, derivative works or modified versions, and any portions
thereof, and that both notices appear in supporting documentation.
.Pp
CARNEGIE MELLON ALLOWS FREE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE IN ITS "AS IS"
CONDITION.  CARNEGIE MELLON DISCLAIMS ANY LIABILITY OF ANY KIND
FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
.Pp
Carnegie Mellon requests users of this software to return to
.Pp
 Software Distribution Coordinator  or  Software.Distribution@CS.CMU.EDU
 School of Computer Science
 Carnegie Mellon University
 Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
.Pp
any improvements or extensions that they make and grant Carnegie the
rights to redistribute these changes.
.Ed