Is it reasonable for a raid1 mirror to be momentarily active on two servers at 
the same time?

This question has come about from Xen virtual host live migrations.


Consider the case with shared storage between two servers:

Server A: /dev/md0 is raid1 to devices /dev/mapper/wwidX and /dev/mapper/wwidY
Server B: /dev/md0 is raid1 to devices /dev/mapper/wwidX and /dev/mapper/wwidY

/dev/md0 is assigned to the Xen virtual host (ie it becomes /dev/sda within the 
virtual host)


When live migrating the virtual host from Server A to Server B, /dev/md0 must 
be active on both server A and B at the same time, at least momentarily.

Is md going to cope with this kind of setup?  Under what conditions will it 
fail dismally?

To me it would seem as though the migration can only occur when:
1. the mirrors are in sync
2. Server A and B use their own/separate external bitmap file for /dev/md0

Even if the time duration that both /dev/md0's are active is minimized to less 
than a second, what possible data corruption could occur?


Feedback much appreciated.  I hope the linux-raid group finds this situation 
least a little interesting.

Thank you

Clayton

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