Troubleshooting Linux Storage: A systems administrator guide

The can of worms, Pandora’s box, hornets nest, snake in the grass, boil the ocean. Now that we have the idioms out of the way, here is the first statement: “There are hundreds of ways to troubleshoot storage related issues and this book is not a silver bullet to solve all your problems!”. This book is also not a deep-dive into the architecture or code of every kernel piece you can find in relation to storage. That would really be like boiling the ocean. It also is no guide into designing end-to-end storage infrastructures. There is a great deal of knowledge and experience required in order to get application IO behaviour in line with storage capabilities. Every piece of hardware and software from application to spindle is an important piece of the puzzle, and having even one of them wrong may have a very severe impact not only on the data-path itself but also on other shared parts of that data-path. What this book will do is provide you a methodology into troubleshooting scenario’s that manifest themselves in Linux systems on various levels. Troubleshooting a storage environment is not something you’ll be able to take on lightly. There are many areas where issues may pop up. If you do not have a good knowledge of what storing and retrieving data entails in various infrastructures, you’ll soon experience you’ve ended up in a maze. A solid understanding of these environments and protocols will not only significantly reduce the chances of design and architecture issues, but also expedite resolution time in case things go wrong.