Mirror Write Consistency policy for a logical volume
When Mirror Write Consistency (MWC) is turned ON, logical partitions that might be inconsistent if the system or the volume group is not shut down properly are identified. When the volume group is varied back online, this information is used to make logical partitions consistent. This is referred to as active MWC.
When a logical volume is using active MWC, then requests for this logical volume are held within the scheduling layer until the MWC cache blocks can be updated on the target physical volumes. When the MWC cache blocks have been updated, the request proceeds with the physical data Write operations. Only the disks where the data actually resides must have these MWC cache blocks written to it before the Write can proceed.
It is necessary to guarantee data consistency between mirrors only if the system or volume group crashes before the Write to all mirrors has been completed. All logical volumes in a volume group share the MWC log. The MWC log is maintained on the outer edge of each disk. Locate the logical volumes that use Active MWC at the outer edge of the disk so that the logical volume is in close proximity to the MWC log on disk.
When MWC is set to passive, the volume group logs that the logical volume has been opened. After a crash when the volume group is varied on, an automatic force sync of the logical volume is started. Consistency is maintained while the force sync is in progress by using a copy of the read recovery policy that propagates the blocks being read to the other mirrors in the logical volume. This policy is only supported on the BIG volume group type.
When MWC is turned OFF, the mirrors of a mirrored logical volume can be left in an inconsistent state in the event of a system or volume group crash. There is no automatic protection of mirror consistency. Writes outstanding at the time of the crash can leave mirrors with inconsistent data the next time the volume group is varied on. After a crash, any mirrored logical volume that has MWC turned OFF should perform a forced sync before the data within the logical volume is used. For example,
syncvg -f -l LTVnameAn exception to forced sync is logical volumes whose content is only valid while the logical volume is open, such as paging spaces.
A mirrored logical volume is the same as a nonmirrored logical volume with respect to a Write. When LVM completely finishes with a Write request, the data has been written to all the drive(s) below LVM. The outcome of the Write is unknown until LVM issues an iodone on the Write. After this is complete, no recovery after a crash is necessary. Any blocks being written that have not been completed (iodone) when a machine crashes should be checked and rewritten, regardless of the MWC setting or whether they are mirrored.
Because a mirrored logical volume is the same as a nonmirrored logical volume, there is no such thing as latest data. All applications that care about data validity need to determine the validity of the data of outstanding or in-flight writes that did not complete before the volume group or system crashed, whether or not the logical volume was mirrored.
Active and passive MWC make mirrors consistent only when the volume group is varied back online after a crash by picking one mirror and propagating that data to the other mirrors. These MWC policies do not keep track of the latest data. Active MWC only keeps track of LTGs currently being written, therefore MWC does not guarantee that the latest data will be propagated to all the mirrors. Passive MWC makes mirrors consistent by going into a propagate-on-read mode after a crash. It is the application above LVM that has to determine the validity of the data after a crash. From the LVM perspective, if the application always reissues all outstanding Writes from the time of the crash, the possibly inconsistent mirrors will be consistent when these Writes finish, (as long as the same blocks are written after the crash as were outstanding at the time of the crash).