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volwatch(8)
NAME
volwatch - Monitors the Logical Storage Manager (LSM) for failure events
and performs hot sparing
SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/volwatch [-m] [-s] [-o] [mail-addresses...]
OPTIONS
-m Runs volwatch with the mail notification support to notify root (by
default) or other specified users when a failure occurs. This option is
started by default.
-s Runs volwatch with hot spare support.
-o volrecover_arg
Specifies an argument to pass directly to volrecover if it is running
and hot spare support is enabled.
DESCRIPTION
The volwatch command monitors LSM waiting for exception events to occur.
When an exception event occurs, the volwatch command uses mailx(1) to send
mail to:
· The root account.
· The user accounts specified when you use the rcmgr command to set the
VOLWATCH_USERS variable in the /etc/rc.config.common file.
· The user account that you specify on the command line with the
volwatch command.
The volwatch command uses the volnotify command to wait for events to
occur. When an event occurs, there is a 15 second delay before the failure
is analyzed and the message is sent. This delay allows a group of related
events to be collected and reported in a single mail message. By default,
the volwatch command automatically starts when the system boots.
You can enter the volwatch -s command to start the volwatch command with
hot-spare support. Hot-spare support:
· Detects LSM events resulting from the failure of a disk, plex, or
RAID5 subdisk.
· Sends mail to the root account (and other specified accounts) with
notification about the failure and identifies the affected LSM
objects.
· Determines which subdisks to relocate, finds space for those subdisks
in the disk group, relocates the subdisks, and notifies the root
account (and other specified accounts) of these actions and their
success or failure.
When a partial disk failure occurs (that is, a failure affecting only
some subdisks on a disk), redundant data on the failed portion of the
disk is relocated and the existing volumes comprised of the unaffected
portions of the disk remain accessible.
Note
Hot-sparing is only performed for redundant (mirrored or RAID5)
subdisks on a failed disk. Non-redundant subdisks on a failed disk are
not relocated, but you are notified of the failure.
Only one volwatch daemon can be running on a system or cluster node at
any time.
Hot-sparing does not guarantee the same layout of data or the same
performance after relocation. You may want to make some configuration
changes after hot-sparing occurs.
Mail Notification Support
The following is a sample mail notification when a failure is detected:
Failures have been detected by the Logical Storage Manager:
failed disks:
medianame
...
failed plexes:
plexname
...
failed log plexes:
plexname
...
failing disks:
medianame
...
failed subdisks:
subdiskname
...
The Logical Storage Manager will attempt to find spare disks,
relocate failed subdisks and then recover the data in the failed plexes.
The following describes the sections of the mail message:
· The medianame list under failed disks specifies disks that appear to
have completely failed;
· The medianame list under failing disks indicates a partial disk
failure or a disk that is in the process of failing. When a disk has
failed completely, the same medianame list appears under both failed
disks: and failing disks.
· The plexname list under failed plexes shows plexes that have been
detached due to I/O failures experienced while attempting to do I/O to
subdisks they contain.
· The plexname list under failed log plexes indicates RAID5 or dirty
region log (DRL) plexes that have experienced failures. The
subdiskname list specifies subdisks in RAID5 volumes that have been
detached due to I/O errors.
Enabling Hot-Sparing
By default, hot-sparing is disabled. To enable hot-sparing, enter the
volwatch command with the -s option, for example:
# volwatch -s
To use hot-spare support you should configure a disk as a spare, which
identifies the disk as an available site for relocating failed subdisks.
Disks that are identified as spares are not used for normal allocations
unless you explicitly specify otherwise. This ensures that there is a pool
of spare disk space available for relocating failed subdisks and that this
disk space is not consumed by normal operations.
Spare disk space is the first space used to relocate failed subdisks.
However, if no spare disk space is available or if the available spare disk
space is not suitable or sufficient, free disk space is used.
You must initialize a spare disk and place it in a disk group as a spare
before it can be used for replacement purposes. If no disks are designated
as spares when a failure occurs, LSM automatically uses any available free
disk space in the disk group in which the failure occurs. If there is not
enough spare disk space, a combination of spare disk space and free disk
space is used.
When hot-sparing selects a disk for relocation, it preserves the redundancy
characteristics of the LSM object to which the relocated subdisk belongs.
For example, hot-sparing ensures that subdisks from a failed plex are not
relocated to a disk containing a mirror of the failed plex. If redundancy
cannot be preserved using available spare disks and/or free disk space,
hot-sparing does not take place. If relocation is not possible, mail is
sent indicating that no action was taken.
When hot-sparing takes place, the failed subdisk is removed from the
configuration database and LSM takes precautions to ensure that the disk
space used by the failed subdisk is not recycled as free disk space.
Initializing and Removing Hot-Spare Disks
Although hot-sparing does not require you to designate disks as spares, HP
recommends that you initialize at least one disk as a spare within each
disk group; this gives you control over which disks are used for
relocation. If no spare disks exist, LSM uses available free disk space
within the disk group. When free disk space is used for relocation
purposes, it is likely that there may be performance degradation after the
relocation.
Follow these guidelines when choosing a disk to configuring as a spare:
· The hot-spare feature works best if you specify at least one spare
disk in each disk group containing mirrored or RAID5 volumes.
· If a given disk group spans multiple controllers and has more than one
spare disk, set up the spare disks on different controllers (in case
one of the controllers fails).
· For a mirrored volume, the disk group must have at least one disk that
does not already contain one of the volume's mirrors. This disk should
either be a spare disk with some available space or a regular disk
with some free space.
· For a mirrored and striped volume, the disk group must have at least
one disk that does not already contain one of the volume's mirrors or
another subdisk in the striped plex. This disk should either be a
spare disk with some available space or a regular disk with some free
space.
· For a RAID5 volume, the disk group must have at least one disk that
does not already contain the volume's RAID5 plex or one of its log
plexes. This disk should either be a spare disk with some available
space or a regular disk with some free space.
· If a mirrored volume has a DRL log subdisk as part of its data plex
(for example, volprint does not list the plex length as LOGONLY),
that plex cannot be relocated. Therefore, place log subdisks in plexes
that contain no data (log plexes). By default, the volassist command
creates log plexes.
· For mirroring the root disk, the rootdg disk group should contain an
empty spare disk that satisfies the restrictions for mirroring the
root disk.
· Although it is possible to build LSM objects on spare disks, it is
preferable to use spare disks for hot-spare only.
· When relocating subdisks off a failed disk, LSM attempts to use a
spare disk large enough to hold all data from the failed disk.
To initialize a disk as a spare that has no associated subdisks, use the
voldiskadd command and enter y at the following prompt:
Add disk as a spare disk for newdg? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y
To initialize an existing LSM disk as a spare disk, enter:
# voledit set spare=on medianame
For example, to initialize a disk called test03 as a spare disk, enter:
# voledit set spare=on test03
To remove a disk as a spare, enter:
# voledit set spare=off medianame
For example, to make a disk called test03 available for normal use, enter:
# voledit set spare=off test03
Replacement Procedure
In the event of a disk failure, mail is sent, and if volwatch was
configured to run with hot sparing support with the -s option, volwatch
attempts to relocate any subdisks that appear to have failed. This involves
finding appropriate spare disk or free disk space in the same disk group as
the failed subdisk.
To determine which disk from among the eligible spare disks to use,
volwatch tries to use the disk that is closest to the failed disk. The
value of closeness depends on the controller, target, and disk number of
the failed disk. For example, a disk on the same controller as the failed
disk is closer than a disk on a different controller; a disk under the same
target as the failed disk is closer than one under a different target.
If no spare or free disk space is found, the following mail message is sent
explaining the disposition of volumes on the failed disk:
Relocation was not successful for subdisks on disk dm_name
in volume v_name in disk group dg_name.
No replacement was made and the disk is still unusable.
The following volumes have storage on medianame:
volumename
...
These volumes are still usable, but the redundancy of
those volumes is reduced. Any RAID-5 volumes with storage
on the failed disk may become unusable in the face of further
failures.
If non-RAID5 volumes are made unusable due to the failure of the disk, the
following is included in the mail message:
The following volumes:
volumename
...
have data on medianame but have no other usable
mirrors on other disks. These volumes are now unusable
and the data on them is unavailable. These volumes must
have their data restored.
If RAID5 volumes are made unavailable due to the disk failure, the
following message is included in the mail message:
The following RAID-5 volumes:
volumename
...
have storage on medianame and have experienced
other failures. These RAID-5 volumes are now unusable
and data on them is unavailable. These RAID-5 volumes must
have their data restored.
If spare disk space is found, LSM attemps to set up a subdisk on the spare
disk and use it to replace the failed subdisk. If this is successful, the
volrecover command runs in the background to recover the contents of data
in volumes on the failed disk.
If the relocation fails, the following mail message is sent:
Relocation was not successful for subdisks on disk dm_name in
volume v_name in disk group dg_name. No replacement was made
and the disk is still unusable.
error message
If any volumes (RAID5 or otherwise) are rendered unusable due to the
failure, the following is included in the mail message:
The following volumes:
volumename
...
have data on dm_name but have no other usable mirrors on other
disks. These volumes are now unusable and the data on them is
unavailable. These volumes must have their data restored.
If the relocation procedure completes successfully and recovery is under
way, the following mail message is sent:
Volume v_name Subdisk sd_name relocated to newsd_name,
but not yet recovered.
Once recovery has completed, a message is sent relaying the outcome of the
recovery procedure. If the recovery was successful, the following is
included in the mail message:
Recovery complete for volume v_name in disk group dg_name.
If the recovery was not successful, the following is included in the mail
message:
Failure recovering v_name in disk group dg_name.
SEE ALSO
mailx(1), rcmgr(8), voldiskadm(8), voledit(8), volintro(8), volrecover(8),
volrootmir(8)
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Index for
Section 8 |
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Alphabetical
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Top of
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