Hi, If I am writing entire stripe then whether RAID6 md driver need to read any of the blocks from underlying device? I have created RAID6 device with default (512K) chunk size with total 6 RAID devices. cat /sys/block/md127/queue/optimal_io_size = 2097152 I believe this is full stripe (512K * 4 data disks). If I write 2MB data, I am expected to dirty entire stripe hence what I believe I need not require to read either any of the data block or parity blocks. Thus avoiding RAID6 penalties. Whether md/raid driver supports full stripe writes by avoiding RAID 6 penalties? I also expected 6 disks will receive 512K writes each. (4 data disk + 2 parity disks). If I do IO directly on block device /dev/md127, I do observe reads happening on md device and underlying raid devices as well. #mdstat o/p: md127 : active raid6 sdah1[5] sdai1[4] sdaj1[3] sdcg1[2] sdch1[1] sdci1[0] 41926656 blocks super 1.2 level 6, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/6] [UUUUUU] # time (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/md127 bs=2M count=1 && sync) # iostat:: Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sdaj1 19.80 1.60 205.20 8 1026 sdai1 18.20 0.00 205.20 0 1026 sdah1 33.60 11.20 344.40 56 1722 sdcg1 20.20 0.00 205.20 0 1026 sdci1 31.00 3.20 344.40 16 1722 sdch1 34.00 120.00 205.20 600 1026 md127 119.20 134.40 819.20 672 4096 So to avoid cache effect, if any (?) I am using raw device to perform IO. Then for one stripe write I do observe no reads happening. At the same time I also see few disks getting more writes than expected. Did not get why? # raw -qa /dev/raw/raw1: bound to major 9, minor 127 #time (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/raw/raw1 bs=2M count=1 && sync) # iostat shows: Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sdaj1 7.00 0.00 205.20 0 1026 sdai1 6.20 0.00 205.20 0 1026 sdah1 9.80 0.00 246.80 0 1234 sdcg1 6.80 0.00 205.20 0 1026 sdci1 9.60 0.00 246.80 0 1234 sdch1 6.80 0.00 205.20 0 1026 md127 0.80 0.00 819.20 0 4096 I assume if I perform writes in multiples of ?optimal_io_size? I would be doing full stripe writes thus avoiding reads. But unfortunately with two 2M writes, I do see reads happening for some these drives. Same case for count=4 or 6 (equal to data disks or total disks). # time (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/raw/raw1 bs=2M count=2 && sync) Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sdaj1 13.40 204.80 410.00 1024 2050 sdai1 11.20 0.00 410.00 0 2050 sdah1 15.80 0.00 464.40 0 2322 sdcg1 13.20 204.80 410.00 1024 2050 sdci1 16.60 0.00 464.40 0 2322 sdch1 12.40 192.00 410.00 960 2050 md127 1.60 0.00 1638.40 0 8192 I read about ?/sys/block/md127/md/md/preread_bypass_threshold?. I tried setting this to 0 as well as suggested somewhere. But no help. I believe RAID6 penalties will exist if it?s a random write, but in case of seq. write, whether they will still exist in some other form in Linux md/raid driver? My aim is to maximize RAID6 Write IO rate with sequential Writes without RAID6 penalties. Rectify me wherever my assumptions are wrong. Let me know if any other configuration param (for block device or md device) is required to achieve the same. -- Mandar Joshi ÿôèº{.nÇ+?·?®??+%?Ëÿ±éݶ¥?wÿº{.nÇ+?·¥?{±þ¶¢wø§¶?¡Ü¨}©?²Æ zÚ&j:+v?¨þø¯ù®w¥þ?à2?Þ?¨èÚ&¢)ß¡«a¶Úÿÿûàz¿äz¹Þ?ú+?ù???Ý¢jÿ?wèþf