1.4. Removing a Storage Device
Before removing access to the storage device itself, it is advisable to back up data from the device first. Afterwards, flush I/O and remove all operating system references to the device (as described below). If the device uses multipathing, then do this for the multipath "pseudo device" (Section 1.3.1, “WWID”) and each of the identifiers that represent a path to the device. If you are only removing a path to a multipath device, and other paths will remain, then the procedure is simpler, as described in Section 1.6, “Adding a Storage Device or Path”.
Removal of a storage device is not recommended when the system is under memory pressure, since the I/O flush will add to the load. To determine the level of memory pressure, run the command
vmstat 1 100
; device removal is not recommended if:
- Free memory is less than 5% of the total memory in more than 10 samples per 100 (the command
free
can also be used to display the total memory). - Swapping is active (non-zero
si
andso
columns in thevmstat
output).
The general procedure for removing all access to a device is as follows:
Procedure 1.1. Ensuring a Clean Device Removal
- Close all users of the device and backup device data as needed.
- Use
umount
to unmount any file systems that mounted the device. - Remove the device from any
md
and LVM volume using it. If the device is a member of an LVM Volume group, then it may be necessary to move data off the device using thepvmove
command, then use thevgreduce
command to remove the physical volume, and (optionally)pvremove
to remove the LVM metadata from the disk. - If the device uses multipathing, run
multipath -l
and note all the paths to the device. Afterwards, remove the multipathed device usingmultipath -f device
. - Run
blockdev –flushbufs device
to flush any outstanding I/O to all paths to the device. This is particularly important for raw devices, where there is noumount
orvgreduce
operation to cause an I/O flush. - Remove any reference to the device's path-based name, like
/dev/sd
,/dev/disk/by-path
or themajor:minor
number, in applications, scripts, or utilities on the system. This is important in ensuring that different devices added in the future will not be mistaken for the current device. - Finally, remove each path to the device from the SCSI subsystem. To do so, use the command
echo 1 > /sys/block/device-name/device/delete
wheredevice-name
may besde
, for example.Another variation of this operation isecho 1 > /sys/class/scsi_device/h:c:t:l/device/delete
, whereh
is the HBA number,c
is the channel on the HBA,t
is the SCSI target ID, andl
is the LUN.Note
The older form of these commands,echo "scsi remove-single-device 0 0 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi
, is deprecated.
You can determine the
device-name
, HBA number, HBA channel, SCSI target ID and LUN for a device from various commands, such as lsscsi
, scsi_id
, multipath -l
, and ls -l /dev/disk/by-*
.
After performing Procedure 1.1, “Ensuring a Clean Device Removal”, a device can be physically removed safely from a running system. It is not necessary to stop I/O to other devices while doing so.
Other procedures, such as the physical removal of the device, followed by a rescan of the SCSI bus (as described in Section 1.8, “Scanning Storage Interconnects”) to cause the operating system state to be updated to reflect the change, are not recommended. This will cause delays due to I/O timeouts, and devices may be removed unexpectedly. If it is necessary to perform a rescan of an interconnect, it must be done while I/O is paused, as described in Section 1.8, “Scanning Storage Interconnects”.