[linux-lvm] Mirror between different SAN fabrics

[Matt P]

That's exactly the steps I used to test it out. The failure I encountered
was at the point of adding the StripeLVs to the MirrorVG. I don't recall the
error I got but I seem to recall it being the same error as if the PV hadn't
been pvcreated. Although when I went through the process again just now,
without any errors... It's quite likely I mistyped or skipped a step during
my first attempt...

I've gone through the whole process 4 times now from raw disk to a mirrored
LV without getting the error again.

It looks as though this could work and isn't nearly as crazy as my initial
configuration. I wonder now if anything wonky will happen if we were to lose
a disk or in the original post if we lost one of the fabrics...

On 12/28/06, Ty! Boyack <ty at nrel.colostate.edu> wrote:
>
> Actually, I'm quite surprised that this approach mangles the lvm data.
> It seems that when you do a pvcreate on a block device, LVM should (and
> I think, does) write the lvm metadata in a region of that device, and
> then never let anything touch that metadata.  This way, if you do a 'dd
> if=/dev/zeros of=<PV-DEVICE>' it blanks out the device, but the metadata
> is intact.
>
> So, if you do a 'pvcreate' on an LV, it should contain a second copy of
> the metadata, unique and independent from the first copy on the original
> block device.  My tests on this has worked fine (although my tests have
> been for building two VGs that have striped volumes across the member
> disks, and then a VG that creates a mirrored LV of the striped volumes,
> so no multipathing is involved).  I'm wondering if we can compare notes
> to see if I'm doing something that makes it look like it's working -- I
> don't want to be quietly destroying my lvm data and not knowing it!!!
>
> I'm doing (roughly, block devices are a bit made-up):
>
> # prepare the physical volumes
> pvcreate /dev/sda
> pvcreate /dev/sdb
> pvcreate /dev/sdc
> pvcreate /dev/sdd
> pvcreate /dev/sde
>
> # Create volume groups to contain uniquely striped volumes
> vgcreate Stripe1VG /dev/sda /dev/sdb
> vgcreate Stripe2VG /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
>
> # Create the striped volumes
> lvcreate -i 2 -n Stripe1LV -L 1G Stripe1VG
> lvcreate -i 2 -n Stripe2LV -L 1G Stripe2VG
>
> # Make the striped volumes into PVs
> pvcreate /dev/Stripe1VG/Stripe1LV
> pvcreate /dev/Stripe2VG/Stripe2LV
>
> # Create the volume group for mirrored volumes
> vgcreate MirrorVG /dev/Stripe1VG/Stripe1LV /dev/Stripe2VG/Stripe2LV
> /dev/sde
> # (Had to use three PVs to have the mirror log in place)
>
> # Create the mirrored volume
> lvcreate -m 1 -n Mirror1LV -L 500M MirrorVG
>
> # Filesystem, test, etc.  this will be GFS eventually, but testing with
> ext3 for now.
> mke2fs -j -i16384 -v /dev/MirrorVG/Mirror1LV
> mkdir /mnt/mirror1lv
> mount /dev/MirrorVG/Mirror1LV /mnt/mirror1
>
>
>
> Is that about your procedure as well?  When does the lvm data get mangled?
>
> (Sorry if this is going off topic - but if this is solvable it might
> actually answer the original question...)
>
> -Ty!
>
>
>
>
> Matt P wrote:
> > This is basically the "messy" way I mentioned in my reply above. I
> > found if you pvcreate the  LV device, you end up mangling the lvm data
> > (this probably comes as little surprise) and it breaks down after
> > that. So, I ended up using losetup and an "image file", one for/on
> > each fabric. Then did pvcreate on each loop device, and made a new VG
> > containing both PVs and created the LV with mirroring.... It
> > worked.... I did no performance, stability, or failure testing...
>
>
> --
> -===========================-
>   Ty! Boyack
>   NREL Unix Network Manager
>   ty at nrel.colostate.edu
>   (970) 491-1186
> -===========================-
>
> _______________________________________________
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> read the LVM HOW-TO at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
>
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