Difference between the dev/sda2 and dev/md2

[Jafar_Hussain]

Dear Team,

When we run the command > show system disk-space.

1 - Then some times firewall show dev/sda2 and dev/md2  what is the difference between these two files. I have gone through some documents but couldn't find any answer.

2 - I have checked this document for clear space (How and When To Clear Disk Space on a Palo Alto Networks Device)

https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA10g000000ClaJCAS

can we clear disk space in a running environment or we need any downtime for this?

[SutareMayur]

Hello @Jafar_Hussain ,

When you hit command 'show system disk-space', you will find type of content stored on the respective partitions.

e.g.

> show system disk-space

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2             7.6G  1.2G 6.1G  16% /
/dev/sda5              23G  480M 21G   3% /opt/pancfg
/dev/sda6              16G  909M 14G   7% /opt/panrepo
tmpfs                 7.9G     0 7.9G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda8              56G   17G 37G  31% /opt/panlogs
/dev/loop0             16G  173M 15G   2% /opt/logbuffer
/dev/md1              917G  200M 8G   1% /opt/panlogs/ld1
/dev/md2              917G  200M 8G   1% /opt/panlogs/ld2
/dev/md3              917G  200M 8G   1% /opt/panlogs/ld3
/dev/md4              917G  200M 8G   1% /opt/panlogs/ld4

In above example, md1, md2 etc are alloted by panlogs. It means all logs will'be stored here.

other files like pancfg are used when we download dynamic updates, also when on Panorama we saved config snapshot etc. In the past, i have faced issue while downloding dynamic updates. Post troubleshooting, we found space allocated by 'pancfg' was 96%. Post clearing it, everything was normal.

These file can be clear safely.  Sometimes, TAC asks for such file for troubleshooting issues. If there is no ongoing case with PA TAC, then it is safe to clear space. Else take files backup then clear disk.

Hope it helps!

Mayur

[Jafar_Hussain]

@SutareMayur  thanks for your reply.

my question was some time command show md2 md5 and some time sda2 and sda5 why it's like this any difference is in both files.

and another thing can we clear disk space in running operation or we need any downtime for this.

[SutareMayur · Accepted solution]

@Jafar_HussainSda and Md are the types of memory partitions which gets created locally. These are nothing but types of disk drives, sd for scsi disk and md for RAID.

Also for clearing files, we do not need any kind of downtime as it will not create any impact on data plane traffic.

Hope it helps!

Mayur

[Jafar_Hussain · Accepted solution]

@SutareMayur 

Thanks for your reply.

Got it.