“Horrifically deformed” turkeys have been discovered at a factory farm named as a supplier to some of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains. Secretly taken video footage shows crippled birds unable to walk, with missing feathers and exposed skin, and appearing unhealthy or suffering. Sick birds were also recorded being attacked by others. The turkeys would have lived in the shed for between eight and 26 weeks before being slaughtered. — Read on www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/turkeys-christmas-asda-sainsbury-supermarkets-factory-farming-animal-welfare-video-footage-a8664131.html
Stunning job, @Apple. #ios12 now locks up apps, and randomly crashes the #iphone. You utterly useless twits.
Also on:
I am in absolutely disbelief that, in 2018, #webdevs can still ask me to enable plain old #FTP, esp as they’re too lazy to learn #SSH / #SFTP! #mindblown#facepalm
The title of this article could have been, “How to shrink a mdadm Linux RAID containing LVM Logical Volumes and replace physical disks with lower-capacity alternatives – AND keep your data safe!”.
That’s just clunky, of course, but I hope you get the point.
Preliminaries
I recently ran into the situation where I needed to reduce the size of my physical volumes on a server to allow an easier backup strategy. The data is stored across four drives, making up two separate RAID1 arrays, which are then utilised by Logical Volume Manager in Linux.
If all of this sounds overly complex, well … it perhaps is a litle. I could just store my data on two RAID1 arrays with Ext4 file systems, and not worry about LVM. However, I have long been a convert of the superior disk space management of LVM, so sitting that atop of a mdadm RAID just adds a few more steps to the process, but a lot more flexibility.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
First things, first: Do a backup.
LTO 1 and 4 drives connected via good old SCSI/PCIe on the Microserver
Using RAID for storage is one thing, but it is no substitute for a proper backup. The golden rule is:
RAID provides availability; backups provide recovery.
If everyting goes south in this process, having a current backup will save the day. (I won’t divulge how many times LTO backups have saved my posterior…). In short, I fully trust LTO backups, and a tape backup strategy generally (here’s why).
The disk sizes of my two RAID arrays are 2x400GB and 2x2TB. However, the storage used on each is only 100GiB and 500GiB, respectively. Sitting on a shelf, I have:
2 x 250GB Seagate 7200.12 ST3250312AS drives (PDF)
2 x 1000GB Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0011 drives (PDF)
On this server, I don’t envisage my data growth exceeding about 20GB & 40GB per year, respective to the arrays, so I can safely downgrade my storage capacity and make best use of this hardware for some years to come.
Connected to my server are two LTO tape drives: an old Ultrium 232 (100GB/200GB) drive, and a slightly younger Ultrium 1760 (800GB/1600GB) drive. The beauty of my set-up is that nearly everything is parallelised:
4 x SATA drive interfaces running 2 x RAID 1 arrays
2 x PCIe-to-SCSI host bus adapters
2 x SCSI tape drives, one connected to each HBA
All of this is configured within a tiny HP Microserver (PDF), excluding one of the tape drives which is an external unit. And the beauty of this parallelisation is that I can run backups from each RAID array to each tape drive at full speed, without the CPU even breaking a sweat!
For each mounted volume, I simply used the GNU dump command to back everything up on each drive:
root@stargate:/mnt/company# dump -b 64 -0u -f /dev/st0 /mnt/company/DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu Aug 16 15:57:06 2018DUMP: Dumping /dev/mapper/md0--vg-lv--company (/mnt/company) to /dev/st0DUMP: Label: companyDUMP: Writing 64 Kilobyte recordsDUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]DUMP: estimated 94061522 blocks.DUMP: Volume 1 started with block 1 at: Thu Aug 16 15:57:19 2018DUMP: dumping (Pass III) [directories]DUMP: dumping (Pass IV) [regular files]DUMP: 6.27% done at 19662 kB/s, finished in 1:14DUMP: 13.30% done at 20855 kB/s, finished in 1:05
[ ... ]
DUMP: 91.52% done at 19117 kB/s, finished in 0:06DUMP: 96.59% done at 18915 kB/s, finished in 0:02DUMP: Closing /dev/st0DUMP: Volume 1 completed at: Thu Aug 16 17:21:06 2018DUMP: Volume 1 94060544 blocks (91856.00MB)DUMP: Volume 1 took 1:23:47DUMP: Volume 1 transfer rate: 18711 kB/sDUMP: 94060544 blocks (91856.00MB) on 1 volume(s)DUMP: finished in 4974 seconds, throughput 18910 kBytes/secDUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu Aug 16 15:57:06 2018DUMP: Date this dump completed:Thu Aug 16 17:21:06 2018DUMP: Average transfer rate: 18711 kB/sDUMP: DUMP IS DONE
root@stargate:~# dump -b 512 -0u -f /dev/st1 /mnt/archive/DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu Aug 16 15:59:53 2018DUMP: Dumping /dev/mapper/md1--vg-lv--archive (/mnt/archive) to /dev/st1
[ ... ]
DUMP: 3.48% done at 59490 kB/s, finished in 2:18DUMP: 7.98% done at 68256 kB/s, finished in 1:55
[ ... ]
DUMP: 512711168 blocks (500694.50MB) on 1 volume(s)DUMP: finished in 6143 seconds, throughput 83462 kBytes/secDUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu Aug 16 15:59:53 2018DUMP: Date this dump completed:Thu Aug 16 17:44:01 2018DUMP: Average transfer rate: 82455 kB/sDUMP: DUMP IS DONE
The keen reader may notice that I change the block size of dump for each drive. I have found doing so reduced the disk I/O operations for each backup, which improved throughput. I had trouble using a block size of 1024KiB though, so 512KiB sufficed on the faster drive.
While 20MiB/s and 80MiB/s may be laughed at these days (and yes, it doesn’t compare with modern USB3.1 RAIDs, for example), this speed does at least allow backups to be completed within a reasonable time. And the reason I am an LTO stalwart is that media is cheaper (per GiB), and more resilient when kept in cold storage.
I should mention at this point, for anyone interested in using GNU dump/restore to manage their backups, that the software isn’t limited to addressing locally-connected tape drives. You can also backup to a local file, a file shared on a NAS server, or a remote tape drive too. The GNU dump/restore documentation if well worth investigating.
Resizing storage in Logical Volume Manager
With backups available, you could ask why I didn’t just whip out the old drives and install the new ones, create new arrays and then restore data from backup. My reason for not doing so is twofold:
I want to keep the backup tapes pristine in case of a real, last-resort need. I am confident they store the data because of LTO’s verify-as-written approach.
Replacing the drives one-by-one allows them to be fully exercised when the RAID arrays are rebuilt. This will test that each drive is performing reliably; any problem can be easily rectified at this stage.
The next step is to resize the logical volumes that sit on those RAID arrays. In LVM you have to work outwards, starting from the innermost point: the logical volume. Then we’ll look at the volume group, and finally the physcal volume.
Resize the logical volumes:
root@stargate:~# lvresize -L 200G -r /dev/md0-vg/lv-company fsck from util-linux 2.25.2company: 619459/24412160 files (0.2% non-contiguous), 24895191/97644544 blocksresize2fs 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)Resizing the filesystem on /dev/mapper/md0--vg-lv--company to 52428800 (4k) blocks.The filesystem on /dev/mapper/md0--vg-lv--company is now 52428800 (4k) blocks long.Size of logical volume md0-vg/lv-company changed from 372.48 GiB (95356 extents) to 200.00 GiB (51200 extents).Logical volume lv-company successfully resized
root@stargate:~# lvresize -L 800G -r /dev/md1-vg/lv-archivefsck from util-linux 2.25.2archive: 2097049/108986368 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 134664369/435915776 blocksresize2fs 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)Resizing the filesystem on /dev/mapper/md1--vg-lv--archive to 209715200 (4k) blocks.The filesystem on /dev/mapper/md1--vg-lv--archive is now 209715200 (4k) blocks long.Size of logical volume md1-vg/lv-archive changed from 1.62 TiB (425699 extents) to 800.00 GiB (204800 extents).Logical volume lv-archive successfully resized
Now that we’ve resized the logical volumes, let’s check the size of the volume groups:
This looks good, and broadly corresponds to what we’ve done so far:
I resized the LV on md0-vg to 200GiB, which leaves around 172.5GiB free
I resized the LV on md1-vg to 800GB, which leaves around 1TiB free
So far, so good.
Next, we want to reduce the size of those Volume Groups to fit within the new mdadm RAID sizes. In LVM, sometimes multi-level operations are combined. One example of this is resizing a Volume Group. As there isn’t a vgresize command in lvm, we have to look at the next level out – the physical volume. For this, we use pvresize.
root@stargate:~# pvresize -v --setphysicalvolumesize 210G /dev/md0DEGRADED MODE. Incomplete RAID LVs will be processed.Using physical volume(s) on command lineArchiving volume group "md0-vg" metadata (seqno 5)./dev/md0: Pretending size is 440401920 not 781156528 sectors.Resizing volume "/dev/md0" to 781156528 sectors.Resizing physical volume /dev/md0 from 0 to 53759 extents.Updating physical volume "/dev/md0"Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/md0-vg" (seqno 6).Physical volume "/dev/md0" changed1 physical volume(s) resized / 0 physical volume(s) not resized
root@stargate:~# pvresize -v --setphysicalvolumesize 810G /dev/md1DEGRADED MODE. Incomplete RAID LVs will be processed.Using physical volume(s) on command lineArchiving volume group "md1-vg" metadata (seqno 14)./dev/md1: Pretending size is 1698693120 not 3906762895 sectors.Resizing volume "/dev/md1" to 3906762895 sectors.Resizing physical volume /dev/md1 from 0 to 207359 extents.Updating physical volume "/dev/md1"Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/md1-vg" (seqno 15).Physical volume "/dev/md1" changed1 physical volume(s) resized / 0 physical volume(s) not resized
Again, the astute reader will see that my resized capacities are slightly higher (by 10GiB) than the LVs contained within. I do this (mainly out of habit) to allow a little “wiggle room” for data, i.e. to allow safe boundaries between filesystem, LV, VG and PV. Subsequently resizing every compoment to its fullest capacity is easily done.
Checking the physical storage of data
Before we go ahead with a drive removal and replacement, we should test that the PVs (Physical Volumes) in LVM are storing data at the beginning of the allocatable region – i.e. at the beginning of the “disk”. This is accomplished quite easily:
root@stargate:~# pvdisplay --maps--- Physical volume ---PV Name /dev/md1VG Name md1-vgPV Size 810.00 GiB / not usable 3.00 MiBAllocatable yes PE Size 4.00 MiBTotal PE207359Free PE 2559Allocated PE204800PV UUID luUdnY-3416-wh3O-8fpC-JK6B-0oM7-fbYvo4--- Physical Segments ---Physical extent 0 to 204799:Logical volume /dev/md1-vg/lv-archiveLogical extents 0 to 204799Physical extent 204800 to 207358:FREE--- Physical volume ---PV Name /dev/md0VG Name md0-vgPV Size 210.00 GiB / not usable 3.00 MiBAllocatable yes PE Size 4.00 MiBTotal PE53759Free PE 2559Allocated PE51200PV UUID Xzj831-tu43-G6cA-05LB-cccU-Tcae-dy2LqP--- Physical Segments ---Physical extent 0 to 51199:Logical volume /dev/md0-vg/lv-companyLogical extents 0 to 51199Physical extent 51200 to 53758:FREE
This looks good: In LVM, each PV is allocating all of its Volume Group data at the beginning of the space.
But what about mdadm? How do we know that mdadm is storing its data at the beginning of the disks?
As it turns out, this doesn’t matter. The main thing is that need to shrink mdadm’s RAID to be the right size for the physical disks that the RAID inhabits. This is where things could get a little funky, as mdadm has no idea where LVM data is stored. Hence, the reason for a backup.
Safely shrinking the mdadm RAID
To quickly re-cap, we have:
in md0:
shrunk the LV and its ext4 filesystem to 200GiB
shrunk the PV/VG to 210GiB
in md1:
shrunk the LV and its ext4 filesystem to 800GiB
shrunk the PV/VG to 810GiB
According to the mdadm manual (my underlines):
Forcreate,build,orgrow:
-z, –size=
Amount(inKibibytes)of space to use from each drive in RAID levels 1/4/5/6.This must be amultiple of the chunk size, and must leave about 128Kb of space at the end of the drive fortheRAID superblock.If this is not specified (as it normally is not) the smallest drive (or partition) sets the size, though if there is a variance among the drives of greater than 1%, awarning is issued.
A suffix of ‘M’ or ‘G’ can be given to indicate Megabytes or Gigabytes respectively.
Sometimesareplacementdrivecanbea little smaller than the original drives though this should be minimised by IDEMA standards.Such a replacement drive will be rejectedbymd. To guardagainstthisit can be useful to set the initial size slightly smaller than the smaller device with the aim that it will still be larger than any replacement.
This value can be set with —grow for RAID level 1/4/5/6 though CONTAINER based arrayssuchas thosewith IMSM metadata may not be able to support this.If the array was created with a size smaller than the currently active drives, the extra space can beaccessedusing—grow. The size can be given as max which means to choose the largest size that fits on all current drives.
Beforereducingthesizeofthe array (with —grow–size=) you should make sure that space isn’t needed.If the device holds a filesystem, you would need to resize the filesystem touse less space.
Afterreducingthearraysizeyoushould check that the data stored in the device is still available.If the device holds a filesystem, then an ‘fsck’ ofthefilesystemisaminimum requirement.If there are problems the array can be made bigger again with no loss with another
—grow–size= command.
Before we start the mdadm resize operation, we’ll do a little filesystem check to ensure our data is ok:
All good. To ensure no data gets written to our VGs while the mdadm “grow” (shrink) process proceeds, we should now disable the VGs:
root@stargate:~# vgchange -an md0-vg0 logical volume(s) in volume group "md0-vg" now activeroot@stargate:~# vgchange -an md1-vg0 logical volume(s) in volume group "md1-vg" now active
As an interesting exercise in maximising data protection, I also decided to “fail” one drive on each array before attempting the resize. This means that should the resize not work, and fsck reports file system errors, I can recover the RAID and re-think my options.
For md0 the drives are /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1. Let’s go ahead and “fail” one:
root@stargate:~# mdadm /dev/md0 -f /dev/sdb1mdadm: set /dev/sdb1 faulty in /dev/md0
Nothing more to do now but “byte the bullet” (sorry about that). Let’s try the resize:
root@stargate:~# mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --size=220Gmdadm: component size of /dev/md0 has been set to 230686720Kunfreeze
Now let’s now check that filesystem:
root@stargate:~# vgchange -ay md0-vg1 logical volume(s) in volume group "md0-vg" now activeroot@stargate:~# fsck.ext4 -f /dev/md0-vg/lv-companye2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizesPass 2: Checking directory structurePass 3: Checking directory connectivityPass 4: Checking reference countsPass 5: Checking group summary informationcompany: 619459/13107200 files (0.3% non-contiguous), 24184088/52428800 blocks
This looks encouraging. Let’s try this process on the second array:
root@stargate:~# mdadm /dev/md1 -f /dev/sdd1mdadm: set /dev/sdd1 faulty in /dev/md1root@stargate:~# mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --size=820Gmdadm: component size of /dev/md1 has been set to 859832320Kunfreezeroot@stargate:~# vgchange -ay md1-vg1 logical volume(s) in volume group "md1-vg" now activeroot@stargate:~# fsck.ext4 -f /dev/md1-vg/lv-archive e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizesPass 2: Checking directory structurePass 3: Checking directory connectivityPass 4: Checking reference countsPass 5: Checking group summary informationarchive: 2097049/52428800 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 131114698/209715200 blocks
Fantastic! fsck reports identical figures after our mdadm resizing.
The next step is to remove the physical drives and replace them with smaller versions.
Physical drive removal & replacement
Before physically removing two drives from the server, we need to tell mdadm that the drives are to be removed:
root@stargate:~# mdadm /dev/md0 -r /dev/sdb1mdadm: hot removed /dev/sdb1 from /dev/md0root@stargate:~# mdadm /dev/md1 -r /dev/sdd1mdadm: hot removed /dev/sdd1 from /dev/md1
Replacing the first of two RAID drives (one for each pair of RAID arrays)
Now we shutdown the server and physically remove the drives (my server doesn’t support actual, physical hot-swapping of drives). Be careful how you handle hot-swapping on your machine if it purpotedly does support this – do read the system documentation.
And this is where my first problem occurred. On reboot, the mdadm arrays didn’t assemble and start. I think this may have been due to a rogue entry in /etc/fstab which dumped me into the maintenance terminal at start-up. Luckily, all this was easily resolved, and issuing this:
root@stargate:~# mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sdc1mdadm: /dev/md0 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
brought the mdadm RAID back to life.
Now that the drives are replaced, and the RAID is running, we quickly need to partition the new drives, which will then be ready for syncing into the RAID arrays. I used fdisk to create a GPT partitioning scheme, created a partition, then set the partition type to Linux RAID.
Now that’s done, I could add the new partition to the array and let the syncing commence, and check its progress with cat:
Now let’s get to work. First, increase the size of the mdadm RAIDs:
root@stargate:~# mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --size=maxmdadm: component size of /dev/md0 has been set to 244066471Kunfreezeroot@stargate:~# mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --size=maxmdadm: component size of /dev/md1 has been set to 976630471Kunfreeze
The main worry is loss of data, so this short section is dedicated to restoring backups from tape. If you have run into trouble and need to restore from backup, restore is the command you need! Bear in mind that when using it, if you (like me, above) used a non-standard block size when dumping, you need to specify that again when restoring.
The -i option in this example would invoke an interactive session in restore, allowing you to select which directories and files to restore. Instead, by omitting that option, you would just restore the entire backup.
root@stargate:~# restore -i -b 64 -f /dev/st0
Closing thoughts
The GNU/Linux operating system provides some amazing storage management tools. LVM is a real joy to use; it makes hard stuff very simple to achieve. Sure, there’s a learning curve, but it’s one I’m forever glad I embraced.
I would genuinely be interested what equivalents to this power and flexibility exist in the Windows world. Not saying for a moment that none do; I’m sure they do. But the use-case for shrinking storage might be questionned, and rightly so. It’s uncommon, to say the least.
But this is where free, open source software shines – in “scratching that itch” that isn’t commonplace, or easy to achieve. And for my efforts, at least, I have gained 2 x 400GB drives, and 2 x 2TB drives, for my next project…
If you have had similar fun on your set up, or run into pitfalls with this type of approach, do leave a comment.
What kind of storage challenges have you experienced, that were (or weren’t) solved in Linux? Leave a link to your story, or a comment, below!
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