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Supported Kdump Targets
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This document try to list all supported kdump targets, and those supported
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or unknown/tech-preview targets, this can help users to decide whether a dump
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solution is available.
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Dump Target support status
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==========================
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This section tries to come up with some kind of guidelines in terms of
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what dump targets are supported/not supported. Whatever is listed here
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is not binding in any manner. It is just sharing of current understanding
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and if something is not right, this section needs to be edited.
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Following are 3 lists. First one contains supported targets. These are
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generic configurations which should work and some configuration most
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likely has worked in testing. Second list is known unsupported targets.
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These targets we know either don't work or we don't support. And third
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list is unknown/tech-preview. We either don't yet know the status of kdump
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on these targets or these are under tech-preview.
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Note, these lists are not set in stone and can be changed at any point of
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time. Also these lists might not be complete. We will add/remove items to
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it as we get more testing information. Also, there are many corner cases
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which can't possibly be listed. For example in general we might be
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supporting software iscsi but there might be some configurations of it
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which don't work.
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So if any target is listed in supported section, it does not mean it works
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in all possible configurations. It just means that in common configurations
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it should work but there can be issues with particular configurations which
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are not supported. As we come to know of particular issues, we will keep on
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updating lists accordingly.
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Supported Dump targets
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----------------------
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storage:
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        LVM volume (no thinp)
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        FC disks (qla2xxx, lpfc, bnx2fc, bfa)
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        software initiator based iSCSI
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        software RAID (mdraid)
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        hardware RAID (cciss, hpsa, megaraid_sas, mpt2sas, aacraid)
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        SCSI/SATA disks
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        iSCSI HBA (all offload)
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        hardware FCoE (qla2xxx, lpfc)
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        software FCoE (bnx2fc) (Extra configuration required,
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            please read "Note on FCoE" section below)
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network:
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        Hardware using kernel modules: (tg3, igb, ixgbe, sfc, e1000e, bna,
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              cnic, netxen_nic, qlge, bnx2x, bnx, qlcnic, be2net, enic,
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              virtio-net, ixgbevf, igbvf)
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        protocol: ipv4
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        bonding
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        vlan
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        bridge
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        team
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        vlan tagged bonding
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        bridge over bond/team/vlan
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hypervisor:
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        kvm
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        xen (Supported in select configurations only)
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filesystem:
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        ext[234]
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        xfs
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        nfs
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firmware:
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        BIOS
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        UEFI
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hypervisor:
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        VMWare ESXi 4.1 and 5.1
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        Hyper-V 2012 R2 (RHEL Gen1 UP Guest only)
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Unsupported Dump targets
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------------------------
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storage:
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        BIOS RAID
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        Thin provisioning volume
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        Software iSCSI with iBFT (bnx2i, cxgb3i, cxgb4i)
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        Software iSCSI with hybrid (be2iscsi)
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        FCoE
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        legacy IDE
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        glusterfs
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        gfs2/clvm/halvm
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network:
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        hardware using kernel modules: (sfc SRIOV, cxgb4vf, pch_gbe)
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        protocol: ipv6
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        wireless
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        Infiniband (IB)
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        vlan over bridge/team
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filesystem:
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        btrfs
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Unknown/tech-preview
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--------------------
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storage:
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        PCI Express based SSDs
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hypervisor:
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        Hyper-V 2008
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        Hyper-V 2012
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Note on FCoE
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=====================
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If you are trying to dump to a software FCoE target, you may encounter OOM
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issue, because some software FCoE requires more memory to work. In such case,
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you may need to increase the kdump reserved memory size in "crashkernel="
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kernel parameter.
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By default, RHEL systems have "crashkernel=auto" in kernel boot arguments.
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The auto reserved memory size is designed to balance the coverage of use cases
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and an acceptable memory overhead, so not every use case could fit in, software
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FCoE is one of the case.
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For hardware FCoE, kdump should work naturally as firmware will do the
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initialization job. The capture kernel and kdump tools will run just fine.
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Useful Links
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============
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[1] RHEL6: Enabling kdump for full-virt (HVM) Xen DomU
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    (https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/solutions/92943)