From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Sep 18 18:57: 7 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from thelab.hub.org (nat203.199.mpoweredpc.net [142.177.203.199]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E9EF71521A for ; Sat, 18 Sep 1999 18:57:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from scrappy@hub.org) Received: from localhost (scrappy@localhost) by thelab.hub.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA62734; Sat, 18 Sep 1999 22:57:13 -0300 (ADT) (envelope-from scrappy@hub.org) X-Authentication-Warning: thelab.hub.org: scrappy owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 22:57:12 -0300 (ADT) From: The Hermit Hacker To: Greg Lehey Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: mirroring one drive to another...vinum? In-Reply-To: <19990919110524.U55065@freebie.lemis.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 19 Sep 1999, Greg Lehey wrote: > > what I want to do is mirror da0s1a->da1s1a, da0s1?->da0s1?, > > etc...which, to my understanding, isn't even RAID-5, but RAID-1... > > Precisely. What kind of plex do you want in the mirror? Normally you > wouldn't use RAID-5. You lose me here...if I try to equate this to what I know, is a 'plex' the sam as what Solaris/Disksuite calls a 'metadevice'? Basically, under solaris/Disksuite, if I mirror /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1 with /dev/dsk/c1t1d0s1, I get /dev/md/dsk/d0...and its /dev/md/dsk/d0 that I mount. Under vinum, if I mirror /dev/da0s1a to /dev/da1s1a, I would get a 'plex'? > > Basically, I want to mirror my system disk to a second drive on > > the same size/make, so that if one dies, my whole system doesn't go > > poof... > > Sounds like you need concatenated plexes. Huh? Again, its your terminology that is probably what is throwing me, but if I concatenate /dev/da0s1a to /dev/da1s1a, the end result is the sum of the two drives, where /dev/da0s1a would fill up first, then da1s1a ... concatenating is what I'd use with hard drives of a different size to combine them (ie. ccd). If I stripe, then I do the same, but both drives have to be the same size (or, rather, both partitions have to be) and I get a performance increase since it writes alittle to each drive to spread the load... Again, my knowledge is based on how Disksuite talks about things.. > Then gain, I just checked 'man 4 vinum', and it also states it > requires a minimum of 3... > > I don't see anything like that in vinum(4). o RAID-5 plexes require at least three equal-sized subdisks. > > Please note that my use of RAID=1 is from the Solaris/DiskSuite > > environment...I'm new to it with FreeBSD/Vinum :( > > You've been talking about RAID-5, which is not the same as RAID-1. To > quote the web page, which is correct: > > Vinum imposes an additional, trivial restriction: a striped plex > must have at least two subdisks, since otherwise it is > indistinguishable from a concatenated plex. > > Vinum enforces a minimum of three subdisks for a RAID-5 plex, > since any smaller number would not make any sense. > > There is no such restriction for concatenated plexes. Okay, we've got to be talking the same thing in two different languges :( How does this work? If I'm understanding you correctly...if I want to do this, I have to "convert" /dev/da0s1a and /dev/da1s1a to "concatenated plexes" consisting of one subdisk each, and then I RAID-1 the two plexes together? Or, in Disksuite-speak...convert the two subdisks to a metadevice considering of one device and then link'ng the two together as RAID-1... If this is correct...is there instructions/examples on how to do thsi with the system disk? ie. /? Thanks... Marc G. Fournier ICQ#7615664 IRC Nick: Scrappy Systems Administrator @ hub.org primary: scrappy@hub.org secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message