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Catalogue / Infrastructure & systems

Enterprise Storage: RAID, Advanced LVM, ZFS, NFS and iSCSI

Design, run and troubleshoot the storage of a Linux server fleet, from the GPT disk to the Kerberos-secured NFS share, through mdadm RAID, thin LVM, ZFS and multipath iSCSI.

  • Intermediate to advanced
  • 12 lessons
  • 11 h 5 min
  • Versions Rocky 9, Debian 12, Ubuntu 24.04, Rocky 9 (dépôt OpenZFS)

A MasterLinux course · Original text

What you will learn

  • Read and repair a GPT table, choose the right partition types and align disks
  • Build an mdadm software RAID at the right level and calculate its real capacity
  • Hot-swap a disk and follow a rebuild without losing the array
  • Drive advanced LVM - thin provisioning, thin snapshots, SSD cache, pvmove migration
  • Choose between ext4, XFS and Btrfs, and repair each one without making things worse
  • Create ZFS pools, datasets, snapshots and send/receive replications
  • Set up a Kerberos-secured NFS v4 share and understand "stale file handle"
  • Export and consume iSCSI LUNs with targetcli, iscsiadm and multipath
  • Take consistent backups and prove that they restore
  • Monitor disks with SMART and diagnose the major storage incidents

Course content

12 lessons · 11 h 5 min
Section 1 — Disks and RAID3 lessons · 2 h 20 min
  1. GPT disks and partitions in the enterprise 45 min
  2. mdadm software RAID: choosing the level and creating the array 45 min
  3. mdadm RAID: failure, hot replacement and rebuild 50 min
Section 2 — Volumes and file systems3 lessons · 2 h 50 min
  1. Advanced LVM: thin provisioning, thin snapshots, SSD cache and pvmove migration 55 min
  2. ext4, XFS and Btrfs: choosing, tuning and repairing 55 min
  3. ZFS: pools, vdevs, datasets, snapshots, send/receive and scrub 1 h
Section 3 — Network storage2 lessons · 1 h 50 min
  1. NFS v4 in the enterprise: server, client, ID mapping and Kerberos 55 min
  2. iSCSI: targetcli target, iscsiadm initiator and multipath 55 min
Section 4 — Operations and incidents4 lessons · 4 h 5 min
  1. Consistent backups: snapshots, dumps, incrementals and restore tests 50 min
  2. Storage monitoring: SMART, smartd, NVMe and alerts 45 min
  3. Real incidents: RAID 5 failing during rebuild, exhausted inodes, NFS "stale file handle", degraded ZFS pool 1 h
  4. Final project: the file server of the MasterLinux branch in Marrakech 1 h 30 min

Requirements

  • A MasterLinux Red Hat, Debian or Ubuntu course, or equivalent hands-on Linux administration experience
  • Know the basics - partitions, /etc/fstab, creating a simple LVM volume
  • A virtual machine with several virtual disks to practise outside the labs

Who is this course for?

  • System administrators who manage file, database or virtualisation servers
  • Operations engineers at IT service companies who work on customers' storage arrays and servers
  • RHCE, LPIC-2 or LFCE candidates who want to master the storage part