LINUX STORAGE ENGINEERING

Storage engineering reference

Deep technical guides for Linux volume management, filesystems, network storage, backup, performance, and enterprise storage protocols. Each page is researched against kernel documentation, man pages, and vendor references.

Linux storage is layered: block devices sit at the bottom, partition tables and volume managers sit on top, and filesystems or network protocols sit above those. The guides below cover each layer in depth, from LVM and mdadm RAID at the block layer, through Btrfs and OpenZFS at the filesystem layer, up to NFS/SMB and iSCSI/NVMe-oF for network-attached storage.

The guides are organized into six clusters. Volume management & redundancy covers LVM and software RAID. Advanced filesystems deals with Btrfs and OpenZFS, including snapshots, compression, and self-healing. Backup & recovery walks through the 3-2-1 rule, Borg/Restic/rsync, and filesystem repair. Network storage spans NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and NVMe over Fabrics. Performance & monitoring pairs SMART disk health prediction with disk benchmarking using fio. SSD & caching covers TRIM/discard configuration and block-level caching with bcache, lvmcache, and dm-writecache. A final cluster rounds out the section with OverlayFS for containers, DM-Multipath for SAN path redundancy, and filesystem quotas.

Each guide includes command references, configuration examples, decision matrices for choosing between tools, and best-practice recommendations grounded in kernel documentation and production experience. The content targets systems administrators, SREs, and infrastructure engineers who need to make informed storage decisions on Linux.

Volume management & redundancy

Physical volumes, volume groups, logical volumes, snapshots, thin provisioning, LVM RAID, caching, and metadata recovery.
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RAID 0/1/5/6/10, array creation, monitoring, disk replacement, growing arrays, write hole, bitmaps, and superblock versions.
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Advanced filesystems

CoW architecture, subvolumes, snapshots, send/receive, compression, scrub self-healing, RAID profiles, balance, and qgroups.
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Pool creation, RAIDZ, datasets, zvols, snapshots, send/receive, scrub, compression, dedup, ARC/L2ARC/SLOG, encryption.
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Backup & recovery

The 3-2-1 rule, RPO/RTO, rsync, BorgBackup, Restic, database backups, snapshot-based backups, encryption, and DR planning.
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e2fsck for ext4, xfs_repair for XFS, btrfs check, superblock recovery, journal replay, bad blocks, and prevention.
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Network storage

NFS v3/v4/v4.1/v4.2, Samba/SMB, exports, security (Kerberos, WireGuard), performance tuning, and Active Directory.
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Block-level network storage: iSCSI targets with targetcli, NVMe over Fabrics (TCP/RDMA/FC), initiators, and CHAP.
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Performance & monitoring

smartctl commands, key attributes, smartd configuration, NVMe SMART, Backblaze failure statistics, and proactive replacement.
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fio, dd, iostat, iotop, hdparm, biolatency, ioping. IOPS, bandwidth, latency, queue depth, and thermal throttling.
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SSD & caching

fstrim, discard mount option, blkdiscard, NVMe format, RAID TRIM, dm-crypt, LVM thin pools, and Btrfs async discard.
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bcache, lvmcache, dm-cache, and dm-writecache. Writethrough vs writeback, setup, performance tuning, and choosing the right tool.
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Containers & enterprise storage

OverlayFS layers, whiteouts, copy-up, Docker/Podman storage drivers, volumes, bind mounts, and Kubernetes PV/PVC.
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Redundant paths to SAN storage, multipathd, /etc/multipath.conf, path grouping, failover, and LVM integration.
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User, group, and project quotas on ext4, XFS, Btrfs, and ZFS. Soft vs hard limits, grace periods, and NFS quotas.
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