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On Wednesday 04 May 2011 10:07:58 Evgeny Bushkov wrote: |
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> On 04.05.2011 01:49, Florian Philipp wrote: |
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> > Am 03.05.2011 19:54, schrieb Evgeny Bushkov: |
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> >> Hi. |
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> >> How can I find out which is the parity disk in a RAID-4 soft array? I |
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> >> couldn't find that in the mdadm manual. I know that RAID-4 features a |
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> >> dedicated parity disk that is usually the bottleneck of the array, so |
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> >> that disk must be as fast as possible. It seems useful to employ a few |
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> >> slow disks with a relatively fast disk in such a RAID-4 array. |
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> >> |
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> >> Best regards, |
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> >> Bushkov E. |
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> > |
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> > You are seriously considering a RAID4? You know, there is a reason why |
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> > it was superseded by RAID5. Given the way RAID4 operates, a first guess |
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> > for finding the parity disk in a running array would be the one with the |
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> > worst SMART data. It is the parity disk that dies the soonest. |
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> > |
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> > From looking at the source code it seems like the last specified disk is |
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> > parity. Disclaimer: I'm no kernel hacker and I have only inspected the |
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> > code, not tried to understand the whole MD subsystem. |
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> > |
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> > Regards, |
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> > Florian Philipp |
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> |
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> Thank you for answering... The reason I consider RAID-4 is a few |
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> sata/150 drives and a pair of sata II drives I've got. Let's look at |
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> the problem from the other side: I can create RAID-0(from sata II |
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> drives) and then add it to RAID-4 as the parity disk. It doesn't bother |
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> me if any disk from the RAID-0 fails, that wouldn't disrupt my RAID-4 |
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> array. For example: |
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> |
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> mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=4 -n 3 -c 128 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 missing |
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> mdadm --create /dev/md2 --level=0 -n 2 -c 128 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdd1 |
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> mdadm /dev/md1 --add /dev/md2 |
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> |
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> livecd ~ # cat /proc/mdstat |
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> Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] |
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> md2 : active raid0 sdd1[1] sda1[0] |
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> 20969472 blocks super 1.2 128k chunks |
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> |
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> md1 : active raid4 md2[3] sdc1[1] sdb1[0] |
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> 20969216 blocks super 1.2 level 4, 128k chunk, algorithm 0 [3/2] [UU_] |
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> [========>............] recovery = 43.7% (4590464/10484608) finish=1.4min |
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> speed=69615K/sec |
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> |
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> That configuration works well, but I'm not sure if md1 is the parity |
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> disk here, that's why I asked. May be I'm wrong and RAID-5 is the only |
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> worth array, I'm just trying to consider all pros and cons here. |
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> |
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> Best regards, |
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> Bushkov E. |
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|
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I only use RAID-0 (when I want performance and don't care about the data), |
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RAID-1 (for data I can't afford to loose) and RAID-5 (data I would like to |
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keep). I have never bothered with RAID-4. |
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|
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What do you see in the "dmesg" after the mdadm commands? |
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It might actually mention which is the parity disk in there. |
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|
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-- |
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Joost |