2 # Block device driver configuration
5 menu "Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)"
8 bool "Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)"
10 Support multiple physical spindles through a single logical device.
11 Required for RAID and logical volume management.
14 tristate "RAID support"
17 This driver lets you combine several hard disk partitions into one
18 logical block device. This can be used to simply append one
19 partition to another one or to combine several redundant hard disks
20 into a RAID1/4/5 device so as to provide protection against hard
21 disk failures. This is called "Software RAID" since the combining of
22 the partitions is done by the kernel. "Hardware RAID" means that the
23 combining is done by a dedicated controller; if you have such a
24 controller, you do not need to say Y here.
26 More information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
27 Software RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
28 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also learn
29 where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
34 tristate "Linear (append) mode"
37 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
38 use the so-called linear mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
39 partitions by simply appending one to the other.
41 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
42 will be called linear.
47 tristate "RAID-0 (striping) mode"
50 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
51 use the so-called raid0 mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
52 partitions into one logical device in such a fashion as to fill them
53 up evenly, one chunk here and one chunk there. This will increase
54 the throughput rate if the partitions reside on distinct disks.
56 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
57 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
58 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
59 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
61 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
67 tristate "RAID-1 (mirroring) mode"
70 A RAID-1 set consists of several disk drives which are exact copies
71 of each other. In the event of a mirror failure, the RAID driver
72 will continue to use the operational mirrors in the set, providing
73 an error free MD (multiple device) to the higher levels of the
74 kernel. In a set with N drives, the available space is the capacity
75 of a single drive, and the set protects against a failure of (N - 1)
78 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
79 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
80 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
81 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
83 If you want to use such a RAID-1 set, say Y. To compile this code
84 as a module, choose M here: the module will be called raid1.
89 tristate "RAID-10 (mirrored striping) mode (EXPERIMENTAL)"
90 depends on BLK_DEV_MD && EXPERIMENTAL
92 RAID-10 provides a combination of striping (RAID-0) and
93 mirroring (RAID-1) with easier configuration and more flexible
95 Unlike RAID-0, but like RAID-1, RAID-10 requires all devices to
96 be the same size (or at least, only as much as the smallest device
98 RAID-10 provides a variety of layouts that provide different levels
99 of redundancy and performance.
101 RAID-10 requires mdadm-1.7.0 or later, available at:
103 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
108 tristate "RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 mode"
109 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
111 A RAID-5 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive provides
112 the capacity of C * (N - 1) MB, and protects against a failure
113 of a single drive. For a given sector (row) number, (N - 1) drives
114 contain data sectors, and one drive contains the parity protection.
115 For a RAID-4 set, the parity blocks are present on a single drive,
116 while a RAID-5 set distributes the parity across the drives in one
117 of the available parity distribution methods.
119 A RAID-6 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive
120 provides the capacity of C * (N - 2) MB, and protects
121 against a failure of any two drives. For a given sector
122 (row) number, (N - 2) drives contain data sectors, and two
123 drives contains two independent redundancy syndromes. Like
124 RAID-5, RAID-6 distributes the syndromes across the drives
125 in one of the available parity distribution methods.
127 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
128 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
129 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
130 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
132 If you want to use such a RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 set, say Y. To
133 compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module
134 will be called raid456.
138 config MD_RAID5_RESHAPE
139 bool "Support adding drives to a raid-5 array (experimental)"
140 depends on MD_RAID456 && EXPERIMENTAL
142 A RAID-5 set can be expanded by adding extra drives. This
143 requires "restriping" the array which means (almost) every
144 block must be written to a different place.
146 This option allows such restriping to be done while the array
147 is online. However it is still EXPERIMENTAL code. It should
148 work, but please be sure that you have backups.
150 You will need mdadm version 2.4.1 or later to use this
151 feature safely. During the early stage of reshape there is
152 a critical section where live data is being over-written. A
153 crash during this time needs extra care for recovery. The
154 newer mdadm takes a copy of the data in the critical section
155 and will restore it, if necessary, after a crash.
157 The mdadm usage is e.g.
158 mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --raid-disks=6
159 to grow '/dev/md1' to having 6 disks.
161 Note: The array can only be expanded, not contracted.
162 There should be enough spares already present to make the new
166 tristate "Multipath I/O support"
167 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
169 Multipath-IO is the ability of certain devices to address the same
170 physical disk over multiple 'IO paths'. The code ensures that such
171 paths can be defined and handled at runtime, and ensures that a
172 transparent failover to the backup path(s) happens if a IO errors
173 arrives on the primary path.
178 tristate "Faulty test module for MD"
179 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
181 The "faulty" module allows for a block device that occasionally returns
182 read or write errors. It is useful for testing.
187 tristate "Device mapper support"
190 Device-mapper is a low level volume manager. It works by allowing
191 people to specify mappings for ranges of logical sectors. Various
192 mapping types are available, in addition people may write their own
193 modules containing custom mappings if they wish.
195 Higher level volume managers such as LVM2 use this driver.
197 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module will be
203 tristate "Crypt target support"
204 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
207 This device-mapper target allows you to create a device that
208 transparently encrypts the data on it. You'll need to activate
209 the ciphers you're going to use in the cryptoapi configuration.
211 Information on how to use dm-crypt can be found on
213 <http://www.saout.de/misc/dm-crypt/>
215 To compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module will
221 tristate "Snapshot target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
222 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
224 Allow volume managers to take writable snapshots of a device.
227 tristate "Mirror target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
228 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
230 Allow volume managers to mirror logical volumes, also
231 needed for live data migration tools such as 'pvmove'.
234 tristate "Zero target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
235 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
237 A target that discards writes, and returns all zeroes for
238 reads. Useful in some recovery situations.
241 tristate "Multipath target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
242 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
244 Allow volume managers to support multipath hardware.
246 config DM_MULTIPATH_EMC
247 tristate "EMC CX/AX multipath support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
248 depends on DM_MULTIPATH && BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
250 Multipath support for EMC CX/AX series hardware.