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* 3-way mirrors
@ 2010-09-07 14:19 George Spelvin
  2010-09-07 16:07 ` Iordan Iordanov
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: George Spelvin @ 2010-09-07 14:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-raid; +Cc: linux

After some frustration with RAID-5 finding mismatches and not being
able to figure out which drive has the problem, I'm setting up a rather
intricate 5-way mirrored (x 2-way striped) system.

The intention is that 3 copies will be on line at any time (dropping to
2 in case of disk failure), while copies 4 and 5 will be kept off-site.
Occasionally one will come in, be re-synced, and then removed again.
(The file system can be quiesced briefly to permit a clean split.)

Anyway, one nice property of a 2-drive redundancy (3+-way mirror or
RAID-6) is error detection: in case of a mismatch, it's possible to
finger the offending drive.

My understanding of the current code is that it just copies one mirror
(the first readable?) to the others.  Does someone have a patch to vote
on the data?  If not, can someone point me at the relevant bit of code
and orient me enough that I can create it?

(The other thing I'd love is a more advanced sync_action that can accept a
block number found by "check" as a parameter to "repair" so I don't have
to wait while the array is re-scanned.  Um... I suppose this depends on
a local patch I have that logs the sector numbers of mismatches.)


Another thing I'm a bit worried about is the kernel's tendency to
add drives in the lowest-numbered open slot in a RAID.  When used in
multiply-mirrored RAID-10, this tends to fill up the first stripe hallf
before starting on the second.

I'm worried that someone not paying attention will --add rather than
--re-add the off-site backup drives and create mirrors 4 and 5 of
the first stripe half, thus producing an incomplete backup.

Any suggestions on how to mitigate this risk?  And if it happens,
how do I recover?  Is there a way to force a drive to be added
as 9/10, even if 5/10 is currently empty?


Thank you very much!

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2010-09-28 16:42 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2010-09-07 14:19 3-way mirrors George Spelvin
2010-09-07 16:07 ` Iordan Iordanov
2010-09-07 18:49   ` George Spelvin
2010-09-07 19:55     ` Keld Jørn Simonsen
2010-09-07 18:31 ` Aryeh Gregor
2010-09-07 19:02   ` George Spelvin
2010-09-08 22:28     ` Bill Davidsen
2010-09-07 22:01 ` Neil Brown
2010-09-08  1:33   ` Neil Brown
2010-09-08 14:52   ` George Spelvin
2010-09-08 23:04     ` Neil Brown
2010-09-08  9:40 ` RAID mismatches (and reporting thereof) Tim Small
2010-09-08 12:35   ` George Spelvin
2010-09-28 16:42 ` 3-way mirrors Tim Small

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