Using RAID in Linux - page 6

The Mysteries of RAID

The easiest way to create a RAID array is to do it during the installation of any new Linux distribution from the graphical installer. In Red Hat the utility named Disk Druid suits our needs. You can create RAID partitions as easy as simple partitions; then you can combine them into one array and set its level. That's all!

However, sometimes Disk Druid is too "clever" and it suggests partitions placement on disks, which goes absolutely against what any system administrator would want.

If this has happened to you, you can easily divide partitions with the command fdisk (don't forget about assigning for Linux partitions RAID value with partition type 0xfd). In the future, you can combined them into larger arrays with Disk Druid.

If you don't want to reinstall a distro, this may be the best way to start working with RAID anyway. Though, as with everything else in Linux -- the best of RAID can be achieved by editing its configuration file.

So, with your favorite text editor, create file /etc/raidtab and typing something like this for RAID Linear-mode:

raiddev               /dev/md0       # raid device name
raid-level            linear         # linear mode
nr-raid-disks         2              # number of used disks
chunk-size            32             # in this case it doesn't affect at all
persistent-superblock 1              
# list of partitions below and their placement
device                /dev/sdb6      # partition name
raid-disk             0              # disk number in array
device                /dev/sdc5      # ...  and so on
raid-disk             1
# ... 

For creating such array we just need to execute:

mkraid /dev/md0 

After that, while viewing /proc/mdstat, we can make sure of the workability of our array. This device can be run with next command:

raidstart /dev/md0

and stopped with this command:

raidstop /dev/md0

Easy, isn't it?

Once the array is created, the device /dev/md0 can be used for placement of system files as usual--like with any other disk of the system. After reboot, this device will be auto-connected, without any raidstart (or raidstop) needed. You don't need to fix initialization scripts, you don't need to touch absolutely anything!

For RAID 0, the file /etc/raidtab can looks like:

raiddev               /dev/md0               # as above
raid-level            0
nr-raid-disks         2
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size            4                      # here, size makes sense. look commons below.
# everything is the same, like in example above
device                /dev/sdb6
raid-disk             0
device                /dev/sdc5
raid-disk             1

The chunk-size argument in this case means stripe size in kilobytes. For best productivity, (at least in this configuration) the size of the partitions should average out to be the same. The default value is 4KB, however a higher value--about 32KB--will give more productiviy. It should be like the size of disk cylinders. The calculation of disk caches in modern hard drives can sometimes vary, sometimes becoming more like cache size. Creating, starting, and stopping RAID uses identical methods as those describe above.

/etc/raidtab for RAID 1 will read:

raiddev               /dev/md
raid-level            1     .
nr-raid-disks         2
nr-spare-disks        1             
chunk-size            4     # doesn't matter
persistent-superblock 1
# as usual
device                /dev/sdb6
raid-disk             0
device                /dev/sdc5
raid-disk             1
# description of drives of "hot reserve"
device                /dev/sdd5
spare-disk            0 

When we have "hot reserve" disks and if one of the "mirror" disks fails, a process of reconstruction of disk information from the proper disk in the array will start in the background. After that, the "hot reserve" disk will be exchanged with the broken disk.

Finally, for RAID 5, the /etc/raidtab file will read:

raiddev /dev/md0
raid-level            5
nr-raid-disks         3    
nr-spare-disks        1   
persistent-superblock 1
parity-algorithm      left-symmetric  # it should be this way
chunk-size            128             # "good" value for the beginning
#
device                /dev/sda3
raid-disk             0
device                /dev/sdb1
raid-disk             1
device                /dev/sdc1
raid-disk             2
device                /dev/sdd5  # reserve disk
spare-disk            0

This situation is like what we find in RAID 1. Array productiviy depends on chunk-size, so in this case you should increase that value, more than what it is in RAID 0. 128-256KB usually gives good results.

It is important to remember that while formatting the file system with mke2fs command, you have special argument stride, which affects records placement on disks. Usually, the best value of this argument is chunk size/inode size, i.e., with chunk-size = 256 and block-size = 4096 bytes, stride = 32.

You point it this way:

mke2fs -b 4096 -R stride=32

Only run this command for RAID levels 0, 4, or 5. For Linear-mode and RAID 1, it doesn't make any sense.