Creating a RAID disk array on PowerLinux

By: Breno Leitão.

 

This tutorial explains how to create a RAID device on PowerLinux machines using an array of disks. This step by step tutorial includes identifying the disks, formatting them, combining them in a RAID array, creating a partition and, finally, creating a file system on this partition.

Introduction

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• RAID 0: On this configuration, a block of data is striped in different disks on the array, so, the read/write operations on the disks could happen in parallel on the disks in the array.  On this configuration, there is no fault tolerance  i.e., if a disk fail, the whole data is lost. This level usually improves the data throughput.
  • Requires at least 1 disk. In a single disk RAID 0 configuration, no striping occurs.
     
• RAID 1: On this level, the data is written at the same time on 2 disks. As both disks have the same data, a read operation will occur on the disks that has the smaller latency. On this case, if one disk fails, the whole data will continue be preserved on the other disk. Once the other disk is replaced, the RAID would be reconstructed. As expected, this level improves the data redundancy.
  • Requires at least 2 disks. Note: The PowerLinux RAID adapters refer to this RAID level as RAID 10.

• RAID 5: On this level, the data and parity bits are spread all across the disks. If one disk fails, then all the data is still available, once the original data could be reconstructed using parity data from the other disks. If more than one disk fails, then the data will be corrupted. (If a  disks fail happen, the operations may happen in a slower fashion, since the data being accessed is on the lost disk, then the data will need to be reconstructed.). One disk's worth of capacity is consumed for redundancy information for the array.
  • Requires at least 3 disks.

• RAID 6: The same as RAID 5, but up to 2 disk can fail, and the data will still be preserved. Two disk's worth of capacity is consumed for redundancy information for the array.
  • Requires at least 4 disks. 

• RAID 10: This level combines the best concepts of RAID 1 and RAID 0.  On RAID 10, the data is striped on a set of hard disks, and these hard disks are mirror to another set of hard disks. So, you have a very good throughput and also a data redundancy.
  • Requires at least 2 disks for mirroring and striping. In a two disk RAID 10 configuration, no striping occurs.

Installing iprutils

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If you used IBM Installation Toolkit for Linux on Power to install the PowerLinux machine, you already have the last iprutils version on the PowerLinux machine. Otherwise, you can download the latest iprutil package at Service and Productivity tools for Power Linux.

 

The iprutils package provides the iprconfig application. The iprconfig is the tool responsible for configuring the RAID devices on your machine, and will be the tool that will be covered below.

 

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The device driver

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 The device driver for the PowerLinux RAID controller is named ipr.ko. It's currently part of the Linux kernel and comes with all the supported Linux Distros for PowerLinux. So, it's recommended to always use the last supported kernel version from the distro in order to take the best from you PowerLinux machine.

 

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Using iprconfig tool

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The iprconfig tool is a very easy application to use. It's a text-based (TUI) application that helps you to list and configure the RAID controller and the disks on your system. iprconfig also allows you to check the controller log, and upgrade the card firmware.  An example of the iprconfig screen could be seen at Figure 1.

 

Now on, a step-by-step tutorial will show how to format a set of disks, combine them together in a RAID mode, create a partition over this array and, then, create a file system over this partition. This is an easy process that might take less than 30 minutes to be accomplished. For this tutorial, we are going to create a RAID 5 device, meaning that the array will have the data mirrored and striped over the disks arrays.

 

You can use iprconfig just as a command line option, in this case, you need to pass the parameters you want in the command line. For example, in order to see what are the RAID levels supported on a controller (sg5), the following command should be used:

# iprconfig  -c query-supported-raid-levels sg5
0 5 10 6

 

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In order to use a disk as part of a disk array, it needs to be formatted specifically for being part of RAID, also known as, advanced function mode. If the disks is not formatted properly, you can not add it to a RAID array. In order to format a disk in advanced function mode, the following steps should be followed:

1. Launch the iprconfig tool on a console.
2. Select the menu Work with disk array (as shown in Figure 1)
   1. In order to do it, press 2 and then enter.
3. Select Format device for RAID function
   1. In order to do it, press 5 and then enter.
4. Then select the disks you want to format (all of those that are going to take part of the disk array) and continue. (As shown in figure 2)
   1. In order to select the disks, you must use the up/down arrows, and press 1 to select the devices you want to select.
5. Wait until the disks are formatted as shown in Figure 3.  (It takes some minutes until the disks are formatted.)

 

 

 Figure 3: Disks being formatted

 

 Creating an RAID disk array

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As explained above, in order to add a disk into the RAID array, the disk need to be formatted in RAID mode. Once the disks are formatted in RAID mode, they can be available to be added to a disk array, and the RAID device could be created. You might want to create as many RAID devices you want, and give them a set of disks.  Let' s go through the process of creating an array device. It is recommended when creating a RAID array to format the devices for RAID as described in the previous step, then create the disk array following the steps below without exiting the iprconfig tool. Exiting the tool will result in the loss of knowledge that the disks have just been zeroed and it will take longer for the array to initialize.

1. Launch the iprconfig tool.
2. Select Work with disk arrays, as shown in Figure 1.
3. Select Create a disk array.
4. Select the controller you want (You might have just one controller), as shown in Figure 4.
5. Select the disk that will be part of the array, as shown in Figure 5
   1. Press '1' over the disks you want to select.
6. Select the RAID type, as shown in Figure 6.
   1. Go into the Protect Level and press 'c' to change the RAID level.
7. Select the disks that will take part of that disk array
   1. It may take a while to have the array created.

 

 Figure 4: Selecting the RAID controller

 

 

Figure 6: Select the RAID type 

 

 

 

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Start using the RAID array

 Figure 8: Creating a EXT4 file system on the partition over the RAID device

 

Once the file system is created in the partition, you can use this partition as a traditional file system, i.e, mount it on a directory and start using it. All the RAID operation, as managing, striping, checksumming or mirroring the data will be offloaded to the RAID card, and happen transparently.