6.7. Soft data corruption
Soft corruption in data storage implies that the data retrieved from a storage device is different from the data written to that device. The corrupted data can exist indefinitely on storage devices. You might not discover this corrupted data until you retrieve and attempt to use this data.
Depending on the type of configuration, a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) logical volume(LV) prevents data loss when a device fails. If a device consisting of a RAID array fails, the data can be recovered from other devices that are part of that RAID LV. However, a RAID configuration does not ensure the integrity of the data itself. Soft corruption, silent corruption, soft errors, and silent errors are terms that describe data that has become corrupted, even if the system design and software continues to function as expected.
Device mapper (DM) integrity is used with RAID levels 1, 4, 5, 6, and 10 to mitigate or prevent data loss due to soft corruption. The RAID layer ensures that a non-corrupted copy of the data can fix the soft corruption errors. The integrity layer sits above each RAID image while an extra sub LV stores the integrity metadata or data checksums for each RAID image. When you retrieve data from an RAID LV with integrity, the integrity data checksums analyze the data for corruption. If corruption is detected, the integrity layer returns an error message, and the RAID layer retrieves a non-corrupted copy of the data from another RAID image. The RAID layer automatically rewrites non-corrupted data over the corrupted data to repair the soft corruption.
When creating a new RAID LV with DM integrity or adding integrity to an existing RAID LV, consider the following points:
- The integrity metadata requires additional storage space. For each RAID image, every 500MB data requires 4MB of additional storage space because of the checksums that get added to the data.
- While some RAID configurations are impacted more than others, adding DM integrity impacts performance due to latency when accessing the data. A RAID1 configuration typically offers better performance than RAID5 or its variants.
- The RAID integrity block size also impacts performance. Configuring a larger RAID integrity block size offers better performance. However, a smaller RAID integrity block size offers greater backward compatibility.
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There are two integrity modes available:
bitmaporjournal. Thebitmapintegrity mode typically offers better performance thanjournalmode.
If you experience performance issues, either use RAID1 with integrity or test the performance of a particular RAID configuration to ensure that it meets your requirements.
