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| author |   Heinz Mauelshagen <heinzm@redhat.com> | 2015-08-25 17:15:41 +0200 |
|---|---|---|
| committer |   Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com> | 2015-08-31 15:05:31 -0400 |
| commit | f15f4d720088c140cdf1fee6aeab3549dbdddc41 (patch) | |
| tree | 8b1cb75fa45305f5e22f94cb476d48a9b2016576 /Documentation | |
| parent | dm stats: report precise_timestamps and histogram in @stats_list output (diff) | |
| download | linux-dev-f15f4d720088c140cdf1fee6aeab3549dbdddc41.tar.xz linux-dev-f15f4d720088c140cdf1fee6aeab3549dbdddc41.zip | |
dm raid: document RAID 4/5/6 discard support
For RAID 4/5/6 data integrity reasons 'discard_zeroes_data' must work
properly.
Signed-off-by: Heinz Mauelshagen <heinzm@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt | 31 |
1 files changed, 31 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt b/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt index cb12af3b51c2..df2d636b6088 100644 --- a/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt +++ b/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt @@ -209,6 +209,37 @@ include: "repair" - Initiate a repair of the array. "reshape"- Currently unsupported (-EINVAL). + +Discard Support +--------------- +The implementation of discard support among hardware vendors varies. +When a block is discarded, some storage devices will return zeroes when +the block is read. These devices set the 'discard_zeroes_data' +attribute. Other devices will return random data. Confusingly, some +devices that advertise 'discard_zeroes_data' will not reliably return +zeroes when discarded blocks are read! Since RAID 4/5/6 uses blocks +from a number of devices to calculate parity blocks and (for performance +reasons) relies on 'discard_zeroes_data' being reliable, it is important +that the devices be consistent. Blocks may be discarded in the middle +of a RAID 4/5/6 stripe and if subsequent read results are not +consistent, the parity blocks may be calculated differently at any time; +making the parity blocks useless for redundancy. It is important to +understand how your hardware behaves with discards if you are going to +enable discards with RAID 4/5/6. + +Since the behavior of storage devices is unreliable in this respect, +even when reporting 'discard_zeroes_data', by default RAID 4/5/6 +discard support is disabled -- this ensures data integrity at the +expense of losing some performance. + +Storage devices that properly support 'discard_zeroes_data' are +increasingly whitelisted in the kernel and can thus be trusted. + +For trusted devices, the following dm-raid module parameter can be set +to safely enable discard support for RAID 4/5/6: + 'devices_handle_discards_safely' + + Version History --------------- 1.0.0 Initial version. Support for RAID 4/5/6 |