Month: June 2006

As Jeff mentioned previously, Ricardo Correia has been working on porting ZFS to FUSE/Linux as part of Google SoC. Last week, Ricardo got libzpool and ztest running on Linux, which is a major first step of the project.

The interesting part is the set of changes that he had to make in order to get it working. libzpool was designed to be run from userland and the kernel from the start, so we’ve already done most of the work of separating out the OS-dependent interfaces. The most prolific changes were to satisfy GCC warnings. We do compile ON with gcc, but not using the default options. I’ve since updated the ZFS porting page with info about gcc use in ON, which should make future ports easier. The second most common change was header files that are available in both userland and kernel on Solaris, but nevertheless should be placed in zfs_context.h, concentrating platform-specific knowledge in this one file. Finally, there were some simple changes we could make (such as using pthread_create() instead of thr_create()) to make ports of the tools easier. It would also be helpful to have ports of libnvpair and libavl, much like some have done for libumem, so that developers don’t have to continually port the same libraries over and over.

The next step (getting zfs(1M) and zpool(1M) working) is going to require significantly more changes to our source code. Unlike libzpool, these tools (libzfs in particular) were not designed to be portable. They include a number of Solaris specific interfaces (such as zones and NFS shares) that will be totally different on other platforms. I look forward to seeing Ricardo’s progress to know how this will work out.

It’s been a long time since the last time I wrote a blog entry. I’ve been working heads-down on a new project and haven’t had the time to keep up my regular blogging. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep something going from now on.

Last week the ZFS team put the following back to ON:

PSARC 2006/223 ZFS Hot Spares
PSARC 2006/303 ZFS Clone Promotion
6276916 support for "clone swap"
6288488 du reports misleading size on RAID-Z
6393490 libzfs should be a real library
6397148 fbufs debug code should be removed from buf_hash_insert()
6405966 Hot Spare support in ZFS
6409302 passing a non-root vdev via zpool_create() panics system
6415739 assertion failed: !(zio->io_flags & 0x00040)
6416759 ::dbufs does not find bonus buffers anymore
6417978 double parity RAID-Z a.k.a. RAID6
6424554 full block re-writes need not read data in
6425111 detaching an offline device can result in import confusion

There are a couple of cool features mixed in here. Most importantly, hot spares, clone swap, and double-parity RAID-Z. I’ll focus this entry on hot spares, since I wrote the code for that feature. If you want to see the original ARC case and some of the discussion behind the feature, you should check out the original zfs-discuss thread.

The following features make up hot spare support:

Associating hot spares with pools

Hot spares can be specified when creating a pool or adding devices by using the spare vdev type. For example, you could create a mirrored pool with a single hot spare by doing:

# zpool create test mirror c0t0d0 c0t1d0 spare c0t2d0
# zpool status test
pool: test
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:
NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
test        ONLINE       0     0     0
mirror    ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t0d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t1d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
spares
c0t2d0    AVAIL
errors: No known data errors

Notice that there is one spare, and it currently available for use. Spares can be shared between multiple pools, allowing for a single set of global spares on systems with multiple spares.

Replacing a device with a hot spare

There is now an FMA agent, zfs-retire, which subscribes to vdev failure faults and automatically initiates replacements if there are any hot spares available. But if you want to play around with this yourself (without forcibly faulting drives), you can just use ‘zpool replace’. For example:

# zpool offline test c0t0d0
Bringing device c0t0d0 offline
# zpool replace test c0t0d0 c0t2d0
# zpool status test
pool: test
state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices has been taken offline by the adminstrator.
Sufficient replicas exist for the pool to continue functioning in a
degraded state.
action: Online the device using 'zpool online' or replace the device with
'zpool replace'.
scrub: resilver completed with 0 errors on Tue Jun  6 08:48:41 2006
config:
NAME          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
test          DEGRADED     0     0     0
mirror      DEGRADED     0     0     0
spare     DEGRADED     0     0     0
c0t0d0  OFFLINE      0     0     0
c0t2d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t1d0    ONLINE       0     0     0
spares
c0t2d0      INUSE     currently in use
errors: No known data errors

Note that the offline is optional, but it helps visualize what the pool would look like should and actual device fail. Note that even though the resilver is completed, the ‘spare’ vdev stays in-place (unlike a ‘replacing’ vdev). This is because the replacement is only temporary. Once the original device is replaced, then the spare will be returned to the pool.

Relieving a hot spare

A hot spare can be returned to its previous state by replacing the original faulted drive. For example:

# zpool replace test c0t0d0 c0t3d0
# zpool status test
pool: test
state: DEGRADED
scrub: resilver completed with 0 errors on Tue Jun  6 08:51:49 2006
config:
NAME             STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
test             DEGRADED     0     0     0
mirror         DEGRADED     0     0     0
spare        DEGRADED     0     0     0
replacing  DEGRADED     0     0     0
c0t0d0   OFFLINE      0     0     0
c0t3d0   ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t2d0     ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t1d0       ONLINE       0     0     0
spares
c0t2d0         INUSE     currently in use
errors: No known data errors
# zpool status test
pool: test
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed with 0 errors on Tue Jun  6 08:51:49 2006
config:
NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
test        ONLINE       0     0     0
mirror    ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t3d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t1d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
spares
c0t2d0    AVAIL
errors: No known data errors

The drive is actively being replaced for a short period of time. Once the replacement is completed, the old device is removed, and the hot spare is returned to the list of available spares. If you want a hot spare replacement to become permanent, you can zpool detach the original device, at which point the spare will be removed from the hot spare list of any active pools. You can also zpool detach the spare itself to cancel the hot spare operation.

Removing a spare from a pool

To remove a hot spare from a pool, simply use the zpool remove command. For example:

# zpool remove test c0t2d0
# zpool status
pool: test
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed with 0 errors on Tue Jun  6 08:51:49 2006
config:
NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
test        ONLINE       0     0     0
mirror    ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t3d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c0t1d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
errors: No known data errors

Unfortunately, we don’t yet support removing anything other than hot spares (it’s on our list, we swear). But you can see how hot spares naturally fit into the existing ZFS scheme. Keep in mind that to use hot spares, you will need to upgrade your pools (via ‘zpool upgrade’) to version 3 or later.

Next Steps

Despite the obvious usefulness of this feature, there is one more step that needs to be done for it to be truly useful. This involves phase two of the ZFS/FMA integration. Currently, a drive is only considered faulted if it ‘goes away’ completely (i.e. ldi_open() fails). This covers only subset of known drive failure modes. It’s possible for a drive to continually return errors, and yet be openable. The next phase of ZFS and FMA will introduce a more intelligent diagnosis engine to watch I/O and checksum errors as well as the SMART predictive failure bit in order to proactively offline devices when they are experiencing an abnormal amount of errors, or appear like they are going to fail. With this functionality, ZFS will be able to better respond to failing drives, thereby making hot spare replacement much more valuable.