NAME
softraid
—
software RAID
SYNOPSIS
softraid0 at root
DESCRIPTION
The softraid
device emulates a Host Bus
Adapter (HBA) that provides RAID and other I/O related services. The
softraid
device provides a scaffold to implement
more complex I/O transformation disciplines. For example, one can tie chunks
together into a mirroring discipline. There really is no limit on what type
of discipline one can write as long as it fits the SCSI model.
softraid
supports a
number of
disciplines.
A discipline is a collection of functions that provides specific I/O
functionality. This includes I/O path, bring-up, failure recovery, and
statistical information gathering. Essentially a discipline is a lower level
driver that provides the I/O transformation for the softraid device.
A volume is a virtual disk device that is made up of a collection of chunks.
A chunk is a partition or storage area of fstype “RAID”. disklabel(8) is used to alter the fstype.
Currently softraid
supports the following
disciplines:
- RAID 0
- A striping discipline. It segments data over a number of chunks to increase performance. RAID 0 does not provide for data loss (redundancy).
- RAID 1
- A mirroring discipline. It copies data across more than
one chunk to provide for data loss. Read performance is increased, though
at the cost of write speed. Unlike traditional RAID 1,
softraid
supports the use of more than two chunks in a RAID 1 setup. - RAID 5
- A striping discipline with floating parity across all chunks. It stripes data across chunks and provides parity to prevent data loss of a single chunk failure. Read performance is increased; write performance does incur additional overhead.
- CRYPTO
- An encrypting discipline. It encrypts data on a single chunk to provide for data confidentiality. CRYPTO does not provide redundancy.
- CONCAT
- A concatenating discipline. It writes data to each chunk in sequence to provide increased capacity. CONCAT does not provide redundancy.
- RAID 1C
- A mirroring and encrypting discipline.
It encrypts data to provide for data confidentiality and copies the
encrypted data across more than one chunk to prevent data loss in case of
a chunk failure. Unlike traditional RAID 1,
softraid
supports the use of more than two chunks in a RAID 1C setup.
installboot(8) may be used to install
boot(8) in the boot storage area of the
softraid
volume. Boot support is currently limited
to the CRYPTO, RAID 1 disciplines on the amd64, arm64, i386, riscv64 and
sparc64 platforms. amd64, arm64, riscv64 and sparc64 also have boot support
for the RAID 1C discipline. On sparc64, bootable chunks must be RAID
partitions using the letter ‘a’. At the
boot(8) prompt, softraid volumes have names beginning with
‘sr’ and can be booted from like a normal disk device. CRYPTO
and 1C volumes will require a decryption passphrase or keydisk at boot
time.
The status of softraid
volumes is reported
via sysctl(8) such that it can be monitored by
sensorsd(8). Each volume has one fourth level node named
hw.sensors.softraid0.driveN,
where N is a small integer indexing the volume. The
format of the volume status is:
The device identifies the
softraid
volume. The following combinations of
value and status can occur:
- online, OK
- The volume is operating normally.
- degraded, WARNING
- The volume as a whole is operational, but not all of its chunks are. In
many cases, using
bioctl(8)
-R
to rebuild the failed chunk is advisable. - rebuilding, WARNING
- A rebuild operation was recently started and has not yet completed.
- failed, CRITICAL
- The device is currently unable to process I/O.
- unknown, UNKNOWN
- The status is unknown to the system.
EXAMPLES
An example to create a 3 chunk RAID 1 from scratch is as follows:
Initialize the partition tables of all disks:
# fdisk -iy wd1 # fdisk -iy wd2 # fdisk -iy wd3
Now create RAID partitions on all disks:
# echo 'RAID *' | disklabel -wAT- wd1 # echo 'RAID *' | disklabel -wAT- wd2 # echo 'RAID *' | disklabel -wAT- wd3
Assemble the RAID volume:
# bioctl -c 1 -l /dev/wd1a,/dev/wd2a,/dev/wd3a softraid0
The console will show what device was added to the system:
scsibus0 at softraid0: 1 targets sd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <OPENBSD, SR RAID 1, 001> SCSI2 sd0: 1MB, 0 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sec, 3714 sec total
It is good practice to wipe the front of the disk before using it:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd0c bs=1m count=1
Initialize the partition table and create a filesystem on the new RAID volume:
# fdisk -iy sd0 # echo '/ *' | disklabel -wAT- sd0 # newfs /dev/rsd0a
The RAID volume is now ready to be used as a normal disk device. See bioctl(8) for more information on configuration of RAID sets.
Install boot(8) on the RAID volume:
# installboot sd0
At the boot(8) prompt, load the /bsd kernel from the RAID volume:
boot> boot sr0a:/bsd
SEE ALSO
bio(4), bioctl(8), boot_sparc64(8), disklabel(8), fdisk(8), installboot(8), newfs(8)
HISTORY
The softraid
driver first appeared in
OpenBSD 4.2.
AUTHORS
Marco Peereboom.
CAVEATS
The driver relies on underlying hardware to properly fail chunks.
The RAID 1 discipline does not initialize the mirror upon creation. This is by design because all sectors that are read are written first. There is no point in wasting a lot of time syncing random data.
The RAID 5 discipline does not initialize parity upon creation, instead parity is only updated upon write.
Stacking disciplines (CRYPTO on top of RAID 1, for example) is not supported at this time.
Currently there is no automated mechanism to recover from failed disks.
Certain RAID levels can protect against some data loss due to component failure. RAID is not a substitute for good backup practices.