Installation - SoftwareRAID - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Installation/SoftwareRAID - Community Ubuntu Documentation
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InstallationSoftwareRAID
Note: This page is about Ubuntu 9.10. It may not apply to newer versions anymore.
How to create RAID using Ubuntu Software RAID. Including RAID 0, 1, 5 and 6.
Since 9.10, Ubuntu provides a very easy way to build RAID. You can build a RAID system using the graphical Ubuntu user
interface. It does not require using the command-line anymore.
Note: Be aware of the fragile state of RAID support in Ubuntu and what it takes to get a reliable raid setup
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReliableRaid). However most of the bugs has been fixed since Ubuntu 8.10.
Introduction
RAID is a method of using multiple hard drives to act as one. There are
two purposes of RAID:
Expand drive capacity: RAID 0. If you have 2 x 500 GB HDD then
total space become 1 TB
Prevent data loss in case of drive failure: RAID 1, RAID 5, and
RAID 6. You can combine RAID 0 to other RAID, e.g RAID 0 + 1
become RAID 10.
There are three ways to create RAID:
1. Software-RAID: Where the RAID is created by software.
2. Hardware-RAID: A special controller used to build RAID.
Hardware RAID is generally faster, and does not place load on the
CPU, and hardware RAID can be used with any OS
3. FakeRAID: Since RAID hardware is very expensive, many
motherboard manufacturers use multi-channel controllers with
special BIOS features to perform RAID. This is a form of software
RAID using special drivers, and it is not necessarily faster than true
software RAID. Read FakeRaidHowto for details.
Tabla de Contenidos
1.
1. Introduction
2. Requirements
3. Installing
1. Partitioning the disk
2. Configuring the RAID
3. Formatting
4. Boot Loader
5. Boot from Degraded Disk
4. Test your RAID now!
5. Troubleshooting
1. Swap space doesn't come up,
error message in dmesg
2. Using mdadm
1. Intro
2. Important initial facts
1. Checking the status of your
RAID
2. Disk Array Operation
3. Resources
The RAID software included with current versions of Linux (and Ubuntu) is based on the 'mdadm' driver and works very well.
Requirements
If you're building a server, the server install CD includes the necessary options.
If you're building a desktop then you need the "Alternate" install CD for Ubuntu. Read Getting Ubuntu Alternate Install
disk and How to do a Ubuntu Alternate Install
How to Burn an ISO
At least 2 hard drives, preferably same size
After a successful install, you should also manually fix 2 shortcomings in the default configuration:
Install GRUB boot-loader on second drive (this step is not necessary if you use Ubuntu 9.10 or a newer one, which uses
Grub2)
Update the startup script to detect a failed drive
Installing
Install Ubuntu until you get to partitioning the disks
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Partitioning the disk

Warning: the /boot filesystem cannot use any softRAID level other than 1 with the stock Ubuntu bootloader. If you want to
use some other RAID level for most things, you'll need to create separate partitions and make a RAID1 device for /boot.
Warning: this will remove all data on hard drives.
1. Select "Manual" as your partition method
2. Select your hard drive, and agree to "Create a new empty partition table on this device ?"
3. Select the "FREE SPACE" on the 1st drive then select "automatically partition the free space
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4. Ubuntu will create 2 partitions: / and swap, as shown below:
5. On / partition select "bootable flag" and set it to "on"
6. Repeat steps 2 to 5 for the other hard drive

As you see Ubuntu 9.10 makes RAID creation very easy. No need to define partition manually anymore! Ubuntu 9.10 also uses
ext4, the latest Linux file system type.
Configuring the RAID

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Once you have completed your partitioning in the main "Partition Disks" page select "Configure Software RAID"
Select "Yes"
Select "Create new MD drive"
Select RAID type: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 or RAID 6
Number of devices. RAID 0 and 1 need 2 drives. 3 for RAID 5 and 4 for RAID 6.
Number of spare devices. Enter 0 if you have no spare drive.
select which partitions to use. Generally they will be sda1 and sdb1 or hda1 or hdb1. Generally the numbers will match
and the different letters are for different hard drives.
8. At this point the installation may become unresponsive; this is because the hard drives have already started the
synchronization process. Repeat steps 3 to 7 with each pair of partitions you have created.
9. Once done, select finish.
Formatting
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Ubuntu 9.10 will automatically format your partitions.
Boot Loader
There are several problems reported by previous version of Ubuntu. But Ubuntu 9.10 already fixes them. In case your next HDD
won't boot then simply install Grub to another drive. Examples ...
grub-install /dev/sdb
grub-install /dev/sdc
Boot from Degraded Disk

If the default HDD fails then RAID will ask you to boot from degraded disk. If your server is located in a remote area, the best
practice may be to configure this to occur automatically. Since Ubuntu 8.10 there is a new feature to boot automatically if
default RAID disk fail. Simply:
1. edit /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/mdadm
2. change "BOOT_DEGRADED=false" to "BOOT_DEGRADED=true"
NB:
Additionally, this can be specified on the kernel boot line with the bootdegraded=[true|false]
You also can use #dpkg-reconfigure mdadm rather than CLI!
Test your RAID now!

It should go without saying that TESTING if your RAID configuration is necessary! Simply follow these step to test your
RAID:
1.
2.
3.
4.
shut-down your server

remove the power and cable data of your first drive
start your server and see if your server can boot from degraded disk!
???? What's the command to switch back from degraded mode once you do this (very necessary) test? {edit} perhaps this?
change "BOOT_DEGRADED=true" to "BOOT_DEGRADED=false"
Troubleshooting
Swap space doesn't come up, error message in dmesg
Provided the RAID is working fine this can be fixed with
sudo update-initramfs -k all -u
Using mdadm
Intro
For those that want full control over the RAID configuration, mdadm may be a better way than using the menus.
Important initial facts

Before starting, be aware of the different metadata formats available. The default (at least on Lucid) is 0.90, which allows
compatibility with most grub versions, but won't accept > 28 drives, nor drives >2TB.
Checking the status of your RAID

Two useful commands to check the status are:
cat /proc/mdstat
This 'should' show output something similar to
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Personalities : [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]

md5 : active raid1 sda7[0] sdb7[1]
62685504 blocks [2/2] [UU]
md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
256896 blocks [2/2] [UU]
md6 : active raid5 sdc1[0] sde1[2] sdd1[1]
976767872 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/3] [UUU]
From this information you can see that the available personalities on this machine are "raid1, raid6, raid4, and raid5" which
means this machine is set-up to use raid devices configured in a raid1, raid6, raid4 and raid5 configuration.
You can also see in the three example meta devices that there are two raid 1 mirrored meta devices. These are md0 and md5.
You can see that md5 is a raid1 array and made up of disk /dev/sda partition 7, and /dev/sdb partition 7, containing 62685504
blocks, with 2 out of 2 disks available and both in sync.
The same can be said of md0 only it is smaller (you can see from the blocks parameter) and is made up of /dev/sda1 and
/dev/sdb1.
md6 is different in that we can see it is a raid 5 array, striped across 3 disks. These are /dev/sdc1, /dev/sde1 and /dev/sdd1, with a
64k "chunk" size which is basically a "write" size. Algorithm 2 shows it is a write algorithm patern 2 which is "left disk to right
disk" writing across the array. You can see that all 3 disks are present and in sync.
sudo mdadm --query --detail /dev/md*
but replace the * with the partition number.
Disk Array Operation

Note: You can add, remove disks or set them as faulty without stopping an array.
1. To stop an array, type:
sudo mdadm --stop /dev/md0
Where /dev/md0 is the array device.

2. To remove a Disk from an Array
sudo mdadm --remove /dev/md0 /dev/sda1
Where /dev/md0 is the array device and /dev/sda is the faulty disk.
3. Add a Disk to an Array
sudo mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sda1
Where /dev/md0 is the array device and /dev/sda is the new disk. Note: This is not the same as "growing" the array!
4. Start an Array, to reassemble (start) an array that was previously created:
mdadm --assemble --scan
Mdadm will scan for defined arrays and start assembling it.
5. To track the status of the array as it gets started
cat /proc/mdstat
Resources
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=408461
http://man-wiki.net/index.php/8:mdadm
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HotplugRaid Keeping your data synced and mirrored on external drives.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mdadm
Installation/SoftwareRAID (ltima edicin 2011-12-21 13:15:14 efectuada por albertpool @ dsl-083-247-076-047.solcon.nl[83.247.76.47]:albertpool)
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