Aug 12, 2014 5 comments on breaking a linux software raid 1 for import using vmware converter i rarely post supergeeky stuff on here, but since i couldnt find any good instructions to do this important and critical activity on the internet, and my coworkers had to piece together a set of steps that worked for us, i wanted to share what we learned. I agree with your statement in regards to the perc controllers. Are raid disks really universally unsupported for vmware. Linux software raid provides redundancy across partitions and hard disks, but it tends to be slower and less reliable than raid provided by a hardwarebased raid disk controller. Convert physical linux server to vmware p2v vmware starwind. Software raid 5 always missing 1 disk after reboot. Its a raid 0 using my motherboard software to create the raid 0 volume asus rampage iii extreme lga 66 intel x58 sata 6gbs usb 3. You can use software raid devices for storage repositories or virtual disks. Sep 29, 2009 a customer has a noncritical hp server that they would like to p2v.
May 26, 2017 ideally with raid 1, raid 5, etc once can easily do a hot hdd swap as they support mirroring at the hardware level but to do the same on a software raid 1 becomes tricky as ideally an os shutdown is needed to avoid any application impact during the hdd swap. By default, converter standalone has a 20 minute timeout when waiting for the helper virtual machine to start up during linux p2v conversion. In our earlier articles, weve seen how to setup a raid 0 and raid 1 with minimum 2 number of disks. The p2v utility then creates a virtual machine configuration file g and creates raw virtual disk images from the disks on the computer. Rescue disk this may be necessary for the recovery of. Ive personally seen a software raid 1 beat an lsi hardware raid 1 that was using the same drives. To setup raid 10, we need at least 4 number of disks. Its fakeraid, essentially propriatery software raid. On the old system, i had a raid volume set up to hold all my media for my network, tv shows, movies, software, etc. It is used in modern gnulinux distributions in place of older software raid utilities such as raidtools2 or raidtools mdadm is free software maintained by, and ed to, neil brown of suse, and licensed under the terms of version 2 or later of the gnu general public license. How to remove linux software raid1 md raid onthefly so that.
We cover how to start, stop, or remove raid arrays, how to find information about both the raid device and the underlying storage components, and how to adjust the. It is tricky verifying as the machine is remote, and the users dont have a clue. P2v dell raid 5 servers to hyper v solutions experts. The last versions of vmware converter claim to support p2v of linux based servers. This howto describes how to use software raid under linux. Virt p2v is comprised of both virt p2v server, included in the virtv2v package, and the p2v client, available from the red hat customer portal as rhel6. Centos semimanual p2v vmware esxi software raid to non software raid, boots to kernel panic. Adding an old softwareraid array to a softwareraid installation boot problems. Where possible, information should be tagged with the minimum.
I have used disk2vhd, easeus p2v, paragon server backup p2v, so i think it is something with raid drivers but i am not sure. As for converter supporting software raid, that is a very complex problem that not a lot of conversion tools dont support. How to remove linux software raid1 md raid onthefly so that vmware converter works. Breaking a linux software raid 1 for import using vmware. Raid 0 was introduced by keeping only performance in mind. A customer has a noncritical hp server that they would like to p2v. The way that p2v work is that they read the data out from inside of the os, not by taking it offline and imaging that way. The mdadm utility can be used to create and manage storage arrays using linuxs software raid capabilities. Resolving linux boot issues after p2v with vmware converter. This is only even plausible because it is in a mirror raid 1 so in theory the partitions should be fine after the operation and the filesystem will still know where the data is.
Apr 28, 2017 how to create a software raid 5 on linux. This physical server had a dell perc raid controller with two raid1 volumes. I only have dozens of linux servers and have yet to attempt a linux p2v until now. Use the rescue media cd of acronis true image 10 or acronis true image 11 to convert the raid array to a single. So if youre using windows raid then youre basically out. I was looking at possibly using clonezilla and it doesnt support software raid in linux either. Note that when it comes to md devices manipulation, you should always remember that you are working with entire filesystems. Here we will use both raid 0 and raid 1 to perform a raid 10 setup with minimum of 4 drives. In testing both software and hardware raid performance i employed six 750gb samsung sata drives in three raid configurations 5, 6, and 10. I will explain this in more detail in the upcoming chapters. Virt p2v is comprised of both virtp2vserver, included in the virtv2v package, and the p2v client, available from the red hat customer portal as rhel6. How to p2v linux into vmware esx server esx virtualization. Linux p2v migrations using mondorescue by hewlett packard main writer. I almost got this to work on one vm by moving the one nativelymounted md partition boot onto a usb disk then doing p2v, but the lvm config for the other partitions on top of md never came out right.
Its quite easy to make p2v of windows base servers. Hardware raid configuration is usually done via the system bios when the server boots up, and once configured, it is absolutely transparent to linux. Device boot start end blocks id system devsda1 1 32 256000 fd linux raid autodetect partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. It is used in modern gnu linux distributions in place of older software raid utilities such as raidtools2 or raidtools. We will be publishing a series of posts on configuring different levels of raid with its software implementation in linux. Some disk partitions dont have a filesystem at all, such as those used for swap, lvm or software raid md. Configure raid on loop devices and lvm over top of raid. How to perform disk replacement software raid 1 in linux. This is the raid layer that is the standard in linux2. You can run the p2v utility interactively or as an automated process using a kickstart configuration file. Will a ex software raid 1 disk boot without raid software. Log in to your red hat account red hat customer portal. How to remove sw raid for vmware converter to work david. Centos semimanual p2v vmware esxi software raid to nonsoftware raid, boots to kernel panic.
However, if your volume is running on a hardware raid real raid or fake raid and youre doing an online conversion, you should be fine. Using starwind vsan, the process of deploying vms, providing faulttolerant storage, connecting it to hypervisor, and creating highly available vms becomes a piece o cake. In general, software raid offers very good performance and is relatively easy to maintain. I mentioned to my buddy alexander lash my partner in crime at teched 2008 where we presented a great session on hyperv scripting all the challenges of linux p2v migrations, and he mentioned an easy way to do it using dd and vhdtool.
This tutorial explains how to view, list, create, add, remove, delete, resize, format, mount and configure raid levels 0, 1 and 5 in linux step by step with practical examples. It addresses a specific version of the software raid layer, namely the 0. Those coming from an hpux background may liken mondorescue to hp igniteux. Lvm was not supported for boot until grub2 which has its.
How to create a software raid 5 in linux mint ubuntu. If the raid is rebuilding, or syncing the output of the command below will tell you cat procmdstat chunk size. Software raid how to optimize software raid on linux using. P2v fedora linux box with a software raid disk vmware. I have written another article with comparison and difference between various raid types using figures including pros and cons of. Mdadm is linux based software that allows you to use the operating system to create and handle raid arrays with ssds or normal hdds.
Notes from an investigation and repair of a degraded disk involving software raid on linux md. May, 2010 i mentioned to my buddy alexander lash my partner in crime at teched 2008 where we presented a great session on hyperv scripting all the challenges of linux p2v migrations, and he mentioned an easy way to do it using dd and vhdtool. Adding an old software raid array to a software raid installation boot problems. If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link. The physical to virtual p2v feature requires a red hat enterprise linux 6. This is the raid layer that is the standard in linux 2. Lvm was not supported for boot until grub2 which has its own issues. We can use full disks, or we can use same sized partitions on different sized drives. Rescue mode finds my lvm partitions just fine, but i havent quite been able to get it to work on a normal boot, even after rewriting the bootloader and tweaking the lvm config, getting rid of md references, etc.
On top of this, the mirrored disks are split into two logical partitions, c. The system is built on software raid aka fake raid. Convert physical machines running windows or linux operating systems to. A lot of software raids performance depends on the. Ideally with raid 1, raid 5, etc once can easily do a hot hdd swap as they support mirroring at the hardware level but to do the same on a software raid 1 becomes tricky as ideally an os shutdown is needed to avoid any application impact during the hdd swap. Software raid how to optimize software raid on linux. Run vmware vcenter converter standalone to convert the single. Learn basic concepts of software raid chunk, mirroring, striping and parity and essential raid device management commands in detail.
In this post we will be going through the steps to configure software raid level 0 on linux. It is installed with 2 x sata disks without a sata raid controller, runs windows server 2003 and uses software raid 1 mirror over the two disks which are set as dynamic. Feb 10, 2012 while vmware converter 5 does a good job livecloning the existing linux servers, sometimes you have to use the cold clone boot cd if the physical server uses software raid and then boot vm from the broken mirror side, or sometimes the resulting vm does not boot because of issues with bootloader. Starwind hyperconverged appliance is a turnkey, entirely softwaredefined hyperconverged platform purposebuilt for intensive virtualization. Reiserfs and xfs and partitiondisk layouts software raid, hardware raid and lvm12. To use the p2v utility, you boot from the oracle vm server iso on the physical computer you want to convert to a hardware virtualized guest. During a restore mondorescue will also resize partitions depending upon the new disk geometry. Software raid are available without using physical hardware those are called as software raid. P2v migration fails for system which uses software raid. How to remove sw raid for vmware converter to work david hrbac. While configuring raid it is always advised to add a spare partition to your raid device so that in case of any hard disk failure the spare partition can be utilized. The first four virtual disk images are created as ide disks hda, hdb, hdc, and hdd on the guest, using the original disk names. I am able to to a bare metal recovery to dissimilar hardware, but this takes a.
It also supports conversion of thirdparty virtual machines like hyperv and kvm. Detecting, querying and testing this section is about life with a software raid system, thats communicating with the arrays and tinkertoying them. Starwind virtual san for vsphere linux software raid. There is note in virtv2v guide saying red hat enterprise linux 4 and red hat enterprise linux 5 physical machines with their filesystem root on a software raid md device cannot be converted to virtual machines. Converter is a pretty well made tool for being free. It should replace many of the unmaintained and outofdate documents out there such as the software raid howto and the linux raid faq. Now in this article i will show you steps to addremove partitions from your raid partition. To view the status of software raids, you can cat procmdstat to view useful information about that status of your linux software raid. The method weve tried is by doing a fullimage restore via our acronis cloud software, which normally works great. We just need to remember that the smallest of the hdds or partitions dictates the arrays capacity. Raid 10 is a combine of raid 0 and raid 1 to form a raid 10. Dynamic disks that also have a windows raid 10 or raid5 array ontop of them.
Solved how to convert linux box with software raid5 to. Raid can be created, if there are minimum 2 number of disk connected to a raid controller and make a logical volume or more drives can be added in an array according to defined raid levels. Administrators have great flexibility in coordinating their individual storage devices and creating logical storage devices that have greater performance or redundancy characteristics. This is the p2v method that we used to convert a physical linux server to a virtual machine running on kvm. The only purpose for this raid volume was media storage. During cloning of powered on linux machines, converter standalone does not recognize source volumes that are part of a software raid configuration also referred to as multiple disk, or md, configurations. A raid 056 on the other hand spreads the data over each disk in the set in chunks, theres no undoing it without destroying everything. Vmware converter is very powerful tool to provide physical to virtual conversion. Converting physical machines to virtual machines red. You can find more information about software raid in the oracle linux. So software raid 5, as ill advised as that is, should have any affect on the process. P2v fedora linux box with a software raid disk rcrcrc apr 11, 2012 10.
If you really want it really gone, you have to destroy the md super block, so mdadm will no longer be able recognize it as a array member. What theyre talking about are raided windows volumes i. In this article i will share the steps to configure software raid 5 using three disks but you can use the same method to create software raid 5 array for more than 3 disks based on your requirement. Creating software raid0 stripe on two devices using. Centralized management console allows users to queue up and monitor multiple simultaneous remote, as well as local, conversions. A running p2v conversion job fails if you create a new conversion job for the.
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