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 flexable
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 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 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
120 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
121 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
122 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
124 If you want to use such a RAID-4/RAID-5 set, say Y. To
125 compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module
126 will be called raid5.
131 tristate "RAID-6 mode"
132 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
134 A RAID-6 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive
135 provides the capacity of C * (N - 2) MB, and protects
136 against a failure of any two drives. For a given sector
137 (row) number, (N - 2) drives contain data sectors, and two
138 drives contains two independent redundancy syndromes. Like
139 RAID-5, RAID-6 distributes the syndromes across the drives
140 in one of the available parity distribution methods.
142 RAID-6 requires mdadm-1.5.0 or later, available at:
144 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
146 If you want to use such a RAID-6 set, say Y. To compile
147 this code as a module, choose M here: the module will be
153 tristate "Multipath I/O support"
154 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
156 Multipath-IO is the ability of certain devices to address the same
157 physical disk over multiple 'IO paths'. The code ensures that such
158 paths can be defined and handled at runtime, and ensures that a
159 transparent failover to the backup path(s) happens if a IO errors
160 arrives on the primary path.
165 tristate "Faulty test module for MD"
166 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
168 The "faulty" module allows for a block device that occasionally returns
169 read or write errors. It is useful for testing.
174 tristate "Device mapper support"
177 Device-mapper is a low level volume manager. It works by allowing
178 people to specify mappings for ranges of logical sectors. Various
179 mapping types are available, in addition people may write their own
180 modules containing custom mappings if they wish.
182 Higher level volume managers such as LVM2 use this driver.
184 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module will be
190 tristate "Crypt target support"
191 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
194 This device-mapper target allows you to create a device that
195 transparently encrypts the data on it. You'll need to activate
196 the ciphers you're going to use in the cryptoapi configuration.
198 Information on how to use dm-crypt can be found on
200 <http://www.saout.de/misc/dm-crypt/>
202 To compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module will
208 tristate "Snapshot target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
209 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
211 Allow volume managers to take writeable snapshots of a device.
214 tristate "Mirror target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
215 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
217 Allow volume managers to mirror logical volumes, also
218 needed for live data migration tools such as 'pvmove'.
221 tristate "Zero target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
222 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
224 A target that discards writes, and returns all zeroes for
225 reads. Useful in some recovery situations.
228 tristate "Multipath target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
229 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
231 Allow volume managers to support multipath hardware.
233 config DM_MULTIPATH_EMC
234 tristate "EMC CX/AX multipath support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
235 depends on DM_MULTIPATH && BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
237 Multipath support for EMC CX/AX series hardware.