Damien,

Single LUN multi-actuator hard-disks are cappable to seek and execute
multiple commands in parallel. This capability is exposed to the host
using the Concurrent Positioning Ranges VPD page (SCSI) and Log (ATA).
Each positioning range describes the contiguous set of LBAs that an
actuator serves.

I have to say that I prefer the multi-LUN model.

The first patch adds the block layer plumbing to expose concurrent
sector ranges of the device through sysfs as a sub-directory of the
device sysfs queue directory.

So how do you envision this range reporting should work when putting
DM/MD on top of a multi-actuator disk?

And even without multi-actuator drives, how would you express concurrent
ranges on a DM/MD device sitting on top of a several single-actuator
devices?

While I appreciate that it is easy to just export what the hardware
reports in sysfs, I also think we should consider how filesystems would
use that information. And how things would work outside of the simple
fs-on-top-of-multi-actuator-drive case.

-- 
Martin K. Petersen	Oracle Linux Engineering