Managing Software RAID

Management of Software RAID basicaly involves adding and removing the faulty and failed drives from the array. To understand better consider following example.

MRAID-1.png (34094 bytes)

In above example, the drives /dev/xvdb1, /dev/xvdb5, /dev/xvdb6 seems to be clean and healthy. This is RAID Drive, it means even on single drive it can run.

Now we are going to mark drive  /dev/xvdb1,   /dev/xvdb6  This can be done using following command.

MRAID-2.png (7534 bytes)

After marking the drives as fail, we can check using following command.

MRAID-3.png (35758 bytes)

Now let us remove the faulty drives from array.

MRAID-5.png (8638 bytes)

And check the status. The status is still clean. It means the data is safe in the remaining drive.

MRAID-6.png (134382 bytes)

Now assume that we have got new empty disks  /dev/xvdb1, /dev/xvdb6  and we wish to add these disks to the array again. This task can be accomplished by –add option. Just check below.

MRAID-7.png (5406 bytes)

Just after running this command, you can check the status of the drive. It should be rebuiding the data.

MRAID-8.png (154807 bytes)

Now after some time you can check the status again. The array is back to normal and all disks are in sync mode. This is OK State.

MRAID-9.png (139377 bytes)

That’s All ! Youd did it !!