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I am trying to configure a failover multipath between 2 GNBD devices. I have a 4 nodes Redhat Cluster Suite (RCS) cluster. 3 of them are used for running services, 1 of them for central storage. In the future I am going to introduce another machine for central storage. The 2 storage machine are going to share/export the same disk. The idea is not to have a single point of failure on the machine exporting the storage. For concept testing testing I am using one machine on which I have configured 2 GNBD exports, which are exporting exactly the same disk. These are configured with: # /sbin/gnbd_export -d /dev/sdb1 -e gnbd0 -u gnbd # /sbin/gnbd_export -d /dev/sdb1 -e gnbd1 -u gnbd They are exporting with the same id, so the multipath driver will automatically configure them as alternative paths to the same storage. Now on one of the cluster nodes used for running services I am importing these GNBD devices with: # /sbin/gnbd_import -i gnbd1 where gnbd1 is the hostname of the machine exporting the GNBD devices. And I have these imported ok: # gnbd_import -l Device name : gnbd1 ---------------------- Minor # : 0 sysfs name : /block/gnbd0 Server : gnbd11 Port : 14567 State : Open Connected Clear Readonly : No Sectors : 41941688 Device name : gnbd0 ---------------------- Minor # : 1 sysfs name : /block/gnbd1 Server : gnbd1 Port : 14567 State : Open Connected Clear Readonly : No Sectors : 41941688 # After, I have configured the device-mapper multipath by commenting the "blacklist" section in /etc/multipath.conf and adding this "defaults" section: defaults { user_friendly_names yes polling_interval 5 #path_grouping_policy failover path_grouping_policy multibus rr_min_io 1 failback immediate #failback manual no_path_retry fail #no_path_retry queue } Now I have the mpath device configured correctly (IMHO): # multipath -ll mpath0 (gnbd) dm-2 GNBD,GNBD [size=20G][features=0][hwhandler=0] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=2][enabled] \_ #:#:#:# gnbd0 252:0 [active][ready] \_ #:#:#:# gnbd1 252:1 [active][ready] # # dmsetup ls mpath0 (253, 2) VolGroup00-LogVol01 (253, 1) VolGroup00-LogVol00 (253, 0) # Now I mkfs.ext3 over the mpath0 device to create a filesystem, then mount. After I start to copy a file (with scp to have a progress bar) and during the copy process I shutdown one of the exported GNBD device on the disk exporting machine with: # gnbd_export -r gnbd1 -O After a while in the maillog: gnbd_recvd[3357]: client lost connection with gnbd11 : Broken pipe gnbd_recvd[3357]: reconnecting kernel: gnbd1: Receive control failed (result -32) kernel: gnbd1: shutting down socket kernel: exiting GNBD_DO_IT ioctl kernel: gnbd1: Attempted send on closed socket gnbd_recvd[3357]: ERROR [gnbd_recvd.c:292] login refused by the server : No such device gnbd_recvd[3357]: reconnecting kernel: device-mapper: multipath: Failing path 252:1. multipathd: gnbd1: directio checker reports path is down multipathd: checker failed path 252:1 in map mpath0 multipathd: mpath0: remaining active paths: 1 gnbd_recvd[3357]: ERROR [gnbd_recvd.c:292] login refused by the server : No such device gnbd_recvd[3357]: reconnecting Now the copy process is freezed. It stays that way until the GNBD device is exported again. I try some commands on the multipath machine: # multipath -ll gnbd1: checker msg is "directio checker reports path is down" mpath0 (gnbd) dm-2 GNBD,GNBD [size=20G][features=0][hwhandler=0] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=1][active] \_ #:#:#:# gnbd0 252:0 [active][ready] \_ #:#:#:# gnbd1 252:1 [failed][faulty] <freezed, the prompt is not returning back> This prompt get back after the GNBD device is exported again. My expectations were that in such a scenario the multipath driver is going to switch the requests to the other path and everything should continue to work. Am I wrong? I have upgraded to the last version of all the RPMs. I have tried different multipath settings (which are commented out in the multipath.conf "defaults" section I pasted previously), but nothing happens. This may be useful. When starting the machine in the log: multipathd: gnbd0: add path (uevent) kernel: device-mapper: multipath round-robin: version 1.0.0 loaded multipathd: mpath0: load table [0 41941688 multipath 0 0 1 1 round-robin 0 1 1 252:0 1000] multipathd: mpath0: event checker started multipathd: dm-2: add map (uevent) multipathd: dm-2: devmap already registered gnbd_recvd[3357]: gnbd_recvd started kernel: resending requests multipathd: gnbd1: add path (uevent) multipathd: mpath0: load table [0 41941688 multipath 0 0 1 1 round-robin 0 2 1 252:0 1000 252:1 1000] multipathd: dm-2: add map (uevent) multipathd: dm-2: devmap already registered Maybe this is a bug of GNBD not the multipath? If it is so, please excuse the wrong category I assigned the issue.
Anyone ?
Sorry about the delay What's happening here is that GNBD is not as smart as it should be (or as smart as I thought it was). In the normal case, where you have gnbd exports from various servers, when you lose connection to a gnbd export on one node for longer than the allowed timeout, gnbd will fail the IOs back, so that if you are using multipath, you can retry them on a different node. However, before gnbd can fail the IOs back, in needs to make absolutely sure that the IO requests that it sent to the failed node will never reach the disk after gnbd fails over. Otherwise, you could have the case where you: 1. lose connection to a gnbd_server node with outstanding IO requests 2. fail the IO requests over to a new gnbd_server node 3. write new IO requests to the same blocks on the new gnbd_server node 4. have the old gnbd_server node overwrite those blocks stale data from the original IO requests. which results in data corruption. Here's were GNBD isn't smart enough. It always makes sure that the IOs won't make it to disk by fencing the old gnbd_server node. The reason why it's not fencing the node in your case is because it realizes that there aren't any other nodes to fail over too, so fencing your last node is pointless. If gnbd was smarter, it could just query the gnbd_server, and find out that the device has been unexported cleanly. Then it would know that it can safely fail the IOs. But GNBD doesn't do this. So while this means that your tests won't work correctly, once you have the gnbd servers on different nodes, you should failover correctly. And as long as you don't forcibly unexport gnbd devices with the override option, you shouldn't be unnecessarily fencing your gnbd servers.
I've been testing this too. The configuration was 2 hosts exporting the same partition over GNBD. The partitions were synchronized with DRBD 0.8 (both primaries mode). On the multipath machine I have 2 GNBD devices imported from 2 different hosts. All the hosts are part of the cluster with manual fencing configured. When I bring down the network interface of one of the GNBD exporting machines, the same hang happens (I am using virtual machines for all these, if this matters). Do you think that the cause of all this is the manual fencing method - so GNBD is waiting for the failing device to be fenced, and after it will continue and trigger the path change?
The manual fencing turns out to be the issue. It just waits to manually fencing the failing node. After this the path is switched.