Asus DA2100 User Manual

PCI-DA2100

PCI-to-SCSI UltraWide RAID Controller Card

PCI-DA2200

PCI-to-SCSI Ultra2/Wide RAID Controller Card

User’s Manual

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual 1

Copyright Information

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, trans­mitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any
language or computer language, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual or otherwise, without the
prior written consent of ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

Disclaimer

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. makes no representations or warranties with res­pect to the contents hereof and specifically disclaims any implied warranties
of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Furthermore,
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. reserves the right to revise this publication and to
make changes from time to time in the content hereof without obligation to
notify any person of such revisions or changes.

Trademarks

ASUS and ASUSTeK are registered trademarks of Computer Inc.
AMD is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
DEC and Alpha are registered trademarks of DIGITAL Equipment

Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT and MS-DOS are registered trademarks

of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
Novell and NetWare are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the U.S.

and/or other countries.
OS/2 and OS/2 Warp are registered trademarks of International Business

Machines Corporation in the U.S.
Solaris is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
SCO, OpenServer, and Unix Ware are trademarks or registered trademarks

of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
All other names, brands, products or services are trademarks or registered

trademarks of their respective companies.

Copyright © 1999 ASUSTeK Computer Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Product Name: PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200
Manual Revision: 1.20
Release Date: May 1999

2

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

Contact Information

ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. (Asia-Pacific)
Marketing Address: 150 Li-Te Road, Peitou, Taipei,

Taiwan 112
Telephone: [phone] ext. 507
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Tech Support Tel (English): [phone] ext. 706

Tel (Chinese): [phone] ext. 113
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Newsgroup: news2.asus.com.tw
WWW: www.asus.com.tw
FTP: ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS

ASUS COMPUTER INTERNATIONAL (America)
Marketing Address: 6737 Mowry Avenue, Mowry Business

Center, Building 2, Newark, California

94560, USA
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Tech Support Fax: [phone]

BBS: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
WWW: www.asus.com
FTP: ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS

ASUS COMPUTER GmbH (Europe)
Marketing Address: Harkort Str. 25, 40880 Ratingen, BRD,

Germany
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Tech Support Hotline: [phone]

BBS: 49-2102-448690
Email: [e-mail]
WWW: www.asuscom.de
FTP: ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual 3

FCC & DOC Compliance

Federal Communications Commission Statement

This device complies with FCC Rules Part 15. Operation is subject to the
following two conditions:

• This device may not cause harmful interference, and

• This device must accept any interference received, including
interference that may cause undesired operation.

This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a
Class B digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits
are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in
a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses and can radiate
radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance with
manufacturer's instructions, may cause harmful interference to radio
communications. However, there is no guarantee that interference will not
occur in a particular installation. If this equipment does cause harmful
interference to radio or television reception, which can be determined by
turning the equipment off and on, the user is encouraged to try to correct the
interference by one or more of the following measures:

• Re-orient or relocate the receiving antenna.

• Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver.

• Connect the equipment to an outlet on a circuit different from that to
which the receiver is connected.

• Consult the dealer or an experienced radio/TV technician for help.

WARNING! The use of shielded cables for connection of the monitor to the

graphics card is required to assure compliance with FCC regulations.
Changes or modifications to this unit not expressly approved by the party
responsible for compliance could void the user's authority to operate this
equipment.

Canadian Department of Communications Statement

This digital apparatus does not exceed the Class B limits for radio noise
emissions from digital apparatus set out in the Radio Interference
Regulations of the Canadian Department of Communications.

This class B digital apparatus complies with Canadian ICES-003

4

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................... 7

Chapter 2 Features...................................................................... 9

Chapter 3 Functional Description............................................ 11

3.1 RAID Management............................................................ 11

3.2 Drive Failure Management ................................................ 16

3.3 Disk Array Parameters....................................................... 22

3.4 Cache Parameters ............................................................. 23

3.5 Drive-Side SCSI Parameters............................................. 24

3.6 Dynamic Logical Drive Expansion ..................................... 27

Chapter 4 Hardware Installation............................................... 41

4.1 Card Layout and Jumpers .................................................. 41

4.2 Installing DRAM SIMM....................................................... 43

4.3 Basic Operational Set-Up .................................................. 44

4.4 Configuration & Termination ............................................. 46

Chapter 5 Quick Setup.............................................................. 51

5.1 Using the BIOS RAID Manager.......................................... 51

Chapter 6 Configuring RAID..................................................... 53

6.1 Starting to Build a RAID System Drive............................... 53

6.2 How Does the RAID Controller Work? ............................... 54

Chapter 7 BIOS Configuration Utility....................................... 59

7.1 Configuration..................................................................... 60

7.2 Color/Monochrome............................................................ 64

Chapter 8 Text RAID Manager User Interface.......................... 65

8.1 The Main Menu.................................................................. 65

8.2 Viewing and Editing Logical Drives.................................... 74

8.3 Viewing and Editing SCSI ID Map...................................... 87

8.4 Viewing and Editing SCSI Drives....................................... 93

8.5 Viewing and Editing SCSI Channels .................................. 99

8.6 Viewing and Editing Configuration Parameters ................ 115

8.6 System Functions ........................................................... 127

8.8 Viewing System Information ............................................ 134

Chapter 9 Remote Administration.......................................... 135

9.1 GUI RAID Manager Using SNMP Service ........................ 135

Appendix A Driver Installation............................................... 139

1 MS-DOS® ASPI Drivers Installation........................................ 139

2 NetWare® Driver Installation .................................................. 141

2.1 Installing NetWare 3.1x .................................................... 141

2.2 Installing NetWare 4.0x/4.1/4.11 ....................................... 143

3 Windows NT® 3.1/3.51 Driver Installation............................... 151

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual 5

3.1 Installing Driver During WinNT 3.1/3.51 Installation ...........151

3.2 Installing Driver in Existing WinNT 3.1/3.51 System .......... 152

3.3 Updating Windows NT 3.1/3.51 Device Driver...................154

3.4 Installing the Driver During WinNT 4.0 Installation............. 154

3.5 Installing Driver while Installing WinNT4(DEC Alpha)........ 157

3.6 Installing the Driver in Existing WinNT4 (DEC Alpha).......158

4 Windows® 95/98 Driver Installation .........................................160

4.1 Installing Windows 95/98 and the Driver...........................160

4.2 Updating Device Driver for Windows 95/98 ...................... 162

5 OS/2® Driver Installation......................................................... 163

5.1 Installing Driver During OS/2 2.x or 3.0 Installation...........163

5.2 Installing Driver in an Existing OS/2 2.x/3.0 ......................164

5.3 Updating PCI-DA2100/2200 OS/2 Device Driver ..............164

5.4 DA2100/2200 OS/2 Driver Command-Line Options..........165

6 Driver Installation for SCO OpenServer & UnixWare.............168

6.1 Installing the SCO OpenServer Driver..............................168

7 Drivers and Utilities for Linux.................................................. 170

7.1 Making Floppy Diskettes for Red Hat 5.1 Installation........ 170

7.2 Making Floppy Diskettes for SlackWare 3.2 Installation ....171

7.3 Installing Red Hat Linux....................................................171

7.4 Installing SlackWare Linux ...............................................173

7.5 Running the ASUS Text RAID Manager for Linux.............175

8 Drivers and Utilities for Sun Solaris™......................................176

8.1 Solaris 2.5.x and 2.6 (x86 platform)..................................176

8.2 Installing x86 Driver & Text RAID Manager ...................... 177

8.3 Drivers & Utilities - Solaris 2.5.x/2.6 (SPARC)..................178

8.4 Installing SPARC Driver & Text RAID Manager................180

8.5 Configuring RAID in Solaris with Text RAID Manager.......181

Appendix B SCSI Cable Specifications.................................. 183

Appendix C Upgrading BIOS, Firmware, and Boot Record..185

Appendix D Sync. Clock Period/Frequency........................... 187

Appendix E Troubleshooting Guide .......................................189

Appendix F Specifications......................................................191

Appendix G Record the Settings............................................193

View and Edit Logical Drives......................................................193

View and Edit Host LUNs ...........................................................194

View and Edit SCSI Drives.........................................................194

View and Edit SCSI Channels .................................................... 195

View and Edit Configuration Parameters ....................................195

Index……………………………………………………………………..197

6

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

Chapter 1 Introduction

The ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 is a PCI-to-SCSI RAID controller
specifically designed to provide RAID 0, 1, 3 or 5 capability to any
host system equipped with a Little Endian PCI Local Bus interface.
All the RAID functions of ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 are
performed by an Intel486(PCI-DA2100) or AMD 5x86(PCI-DA2200)
CPU coupled with high-speed DRAMs and firmware in flash
memory. In effect, it endows the host system with the high­performance and fault-tolerant disk storage operation of RAID
technology. It is also an ideal solution for weaving several hard disks
into one contiguous volume.

The controller has comprehensive drive failure management that
allows automatic reassignment of reserved blocks when a bad sector
is encountered during a write. Hot-swapping is supported through
automatic disconnection of a failed drive and detection of a reserved
drive followed with background rebuilding of data. The controller
also supports spare drive operation. Remarkably, all of these failure
recovery procedures are transparent to the host system.

The ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 has been designed with ease of
integration and maintenance in mind. The major features are
described in the next chapter. The controller already includes all the
major operational requirements for a RAID subsystem. The overall
features of a fully-built RAID subsystem will, however, depend on
the actual components used and the creativity of the integrator.

1

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

7

1

This page is left intentionally blank.

8 ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

Chapter 2 Features

ü Five operating modes:
Non-RAID Disk Spanning
RAID-0 Disk Striping
RAID-1 Disk Mirroring and Striping (RAID 0+1)
RAID-3 Disk Striping with Dedicated Parity
RAID-5 Multiple Block Striping with Interspersed

Parity

ü Comprehensive failure management including:

§ Automatic bad sector reassignment

§ Hot-swapping

§ Spare drive operation (Supports both Global Spare and Local

Spare)

§ Background rebuilding (Rebuild priority selectable)

§ Verify-after-Write supported on normal writes, rebuild

writes and/or RAID initialization writes

ü PCI Rev. 2.1 compliant
ü PCI form factor: 6.87”(L) X 4.2”(W) (PCI-DA2100)

9.21”(L) x 4.2”(W) (PCI-DA2200)

ü Supports up to 15 SCSI drives per channel
ü Up to 8 logical drives, each with independent RAID modes
ü Up to 8 partitions per logical drive
ü Number of drives for each logical drive has no limitation
ü Dynamic mapping of LUNs to logical drives
ü Concurrent/Background logical drive initialization
ü Performance optimization for Sequential or Random I/O
ü Allows multiple drive failure and concurrent multiple drive

rebuild of a RAID (0+1) logical drive

ü Configuration of individual SCSI target parameters
ü Prior to first disk access, it allows adjustment of delay time

during controller initialization to enhance compatibility with
slow-initial drives

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ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

9

2

ü All channels are Ultra-Wide (PCI-DA2100) or Ultra2-Wide-SCSI

(PCI-DA2200) (downward compatible to SCSI-1)

ü Compatible and will automatically match any SCSI hard disks

with SCSI-1, SCSI-2 or (Ultra)-Wide-SCSI (1 or 2) specification

ü Full Ultra-Wide (PCI-DA2100) or Ultra2-Wide (PCI-DA2200)

SCSI-2 implementation including Tagged Command Queuing
and Multi-Threaded I/O

ü Uses Intel 486DX2-100 (PCI-DA2100) or AMD 5x86-133 (PCI-

DA2200) CPU with all executable firmware downloaded into
high-speed DRAM

ü EDO DRAM supported for enhanced performance
ü Up to 64MB (PCI-DA2100) or 128MB (PCI-DA2200) of intelligent

Read-Ahead/Write-Back cache

ü Firmware resides in easy-to-update Flash Memory
ü GUI RAID Manager and Text RAID Manager interfaces for RAID

management

10

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

Chapter 3 Functional Description

The advantages of RAID are: Availability, Capacity and Performance.
Choosing the right RAID level and drive failure management can
increase Availability, subsequently increasing Performance and
Capacity. The ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 RAID controller provides
complete RAID functionality and enhanced drive failure
management.

3.1 RAID Management

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives. The
advantages of using a RAID storage subsystem are:

• Provides disk spanning by weaving all connected drives into one
single volume.

• Increases disk access speed by breaking data into several blocks
when reading/writing to several drives in parallel. With RAID,
storage speed increases as more drives are added.

• Provides fault-tolerance by mirroring or parity operation.

What are the RAID levels?

3

RAID

Level

Description Minimum

Drives

Data

Availability

Performance

Sequential

Performance

Random

NRAID Non-RAID 1 Drive Drive

RAID 0 Disk Striping N ==NRAID R: Highest

W: Highest

RAID 1

(0+1)
RAID 3 Striping with Parity

RAID 5 Striping with

Mirroring Plus

Striping (if N>1)
on dedicated disk
interspersed parity

N+1 >>NRAID

==RAID 5

N+1 >>NRAID

==RAID 5

N+1 >>NRAID

==RAID 5

R: High
W: Medium
R: High
W: Medium
R: High
W: Medium

R: High
W: Highest
R: Medium
W: Low
R: Medium
W: Low
R: High
W: Low

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

11

3

2 GB Hard Drive

NRAID
Disk Spanning

Minimum
Disks required
Capacity N
Redundancy No

NRAID

1

NRAID stands for Non-RAID. The capacity of all the drives are

combined to become one logical drive (no block striping). In other
words, the capacity of the logical drive is the total capacity of the
physical drives. NRAID does not provide data redundancy.

JBOD
Single-drive Control

Minimum
Disks required
Capacity 1
Redundancy No

JBOD

1

JBOD stands for Just a Bunch of Drives. The controller treats each

drive as a stand-alone disk, therefore each drive is an independent
logical drive. JBOD does not provide data redundancy.

+

+

1 GB Hard Drive

+

2 GB Hard Drive

=

Logical

2 GB

Logical Drive

3 GB

Logical Drive

1 GB

Logical Drive

2 GB

Logical Drive

2 + 3 + 1 + 2 = 8 GB Logical Drive

Drive

= 2 GB Hard Drive

=

=

=

1 GB Hard Drive

3 GB Hard Drive

3 GB Hard Drive

2 GB Hard Drive

12

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

3

RAID 0
Disk Striping

Minimum
Disks required
Capacity N
Redundancy No

RAID 0

2

Logical Drive

Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4
Block 5
Block 6
Block 7
Block 8

.
.

Physical Disks

Block 1
Block 3
Block 5
Block 7

.
.

Striping

Block 2
Block 4
Block 6
Block 8

.
.

RAID 0 provides the highest performance but no redundancy. Data
in the logical drive is striped (distributed) across several physical
drives.

RAID 1
Disk Mirroring

Disks required 2
Capacity N/2
Redundancy Yes

RAID 1

Logical Drive

Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4
Block 5
Block 6
Block 7
Block 8

.
.

Physical Disks

Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4

.
.

Mirroring

Mirror 1
Mirror 2
Mirror 3
Mirror 4

.
.

RAID 1 mirrors the
data stored in one hard drive to another. RAID 1 can only be
performed with two hard drives. If there are more than two hard
drives, RAID (0+1) will be performed automatically.

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

13

3

RAID (0+1)
Disk Striping with

Mirroring

RAID (0+1)
Minimum
Disks required
Capacity N/2
Redundancy Yes

Logical Drive

Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4
Block 5
Block 6
Block 7

4

Block 8

.
.

Physical Disks

Block 1
Block 3
Block 5
Block 7

.
.

Mirror 1
Mirror 3
Mirror 5
Mirror 7

.
.

Striping

Mirror

Striping

Block 2
Block 4
Block 6
Block 8

.
.

Mirror 2
Mirror 4
Mirror 6
Mirror 8

.
.

RAID (0+1) combines RAID 0 and RAID 1 - Mirroring and Striping.
RAID (0+1) allows multiple drive failure because of the full
redundancy of the hard drives. If there are more than two hard
drives assigned to perform RAID 1, RAID (0+1) will be performed
automatically.

IMPORTANT:
“RAID (0+1)” will not appear in the list of RAID levels supported by the

controller. If you wish to perform RAID 1, the controller will determine
whether to perform RAID 1 or RAID (0+1). This will depend on the drive
number that has been selected for the logical drive.

RAID 3
Disk Striping with

Dedicated Parity Disk

Minimum
Disks required
Capacity N-1
Redundancy Yes

RAID 3

14

Logical Drive Physical Disks

Block 1
Block 2
Block 3

3

Block 4
Block 5
Block 6
Block 7
Block 8

.
.

Block 1
Block 3
Block 5
Block 7

.
.

Striping

Block 2
Block 4
Block 6
Block 8

.
.

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

Dedicated

Parity

Parity (1,2)
Parity (3,4)
Parity (5,6)
Parity (7,8)

.
.

RAID 3 performs Block Striping with Dedicated Parity. One drive

member is dedicated to storing the parity data. When a drive

member fails, the controller can recover or regenerate the lost data of

the failed drive from the dedicated parity drive.

Logical Drive Physical Disks

3

Block 1
Block 2
Block 3

Block 4
Block 5

Block 6
Block 7
Block 8

.
.

Striping + non-dedicated Parity

Block 1

Parity (3,4)

Block 6
Block 7

.
.

Block 2
Block 3

Parity (5,6)

Block 8

.
.

Parity (1,2)

Parity (7,8)

Block 4
Block 5

.
.

RAID 5

Striping with Interspersed Parity

Minimum
Disks required
Capacity N-1
Redundancy Yes

RAID 5

3

RAID 5 is similar to RAID 3 but the parity data is not stored in one

dedicated hard drive. Parity information is interspersed across the

drive array. In the event of a failure, the controller can

recover/regenerate the lost data of the failed drive from the other

surviving drives.

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

15

3

3.2 Drive Failure Management

3.2.1 Global and Local Spare Drive

Local Spare Drive

Local Spare Drive is a standby
drive assigned to serve one

LS

specified logical drive. When a
member drive of this specified
logical drive fails, the Local Spare
Drive becomes a member drive and
automatically starts to rebuild.

1 2

When one member
drive fails, the Local
Spare Drive joins the
logical drive and
automatically starts
to rebuild.

3

Logical Drive

Assigns one Local Spare

Drive to a logical drive

3

Local

Spare

Drive

1 2

X

LS

Logical Drive

Global Spare Drive does not only serve one specified logical drive.

When a member drive from any of the logical drive fails, the Global
Spare Drive will join that logical drive and automatically starts to
rebuild.

Global Spare Drive

GS

Global Spare Drive

GS

Global Spare Drives serve
any logical drives.

1 2

3

Logical Drive 0

1 2

Logical Drive 1

1 2

34

Logical Drive 2

16

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

3

Global Spare Drive

GS

When a member drive from any
logical drive fails, the Global Spare
Drive joins that logical drive and
automatically starts to rebuild.

1 2

3

Logical Drive 0

1 2

X

GS

Logical Drive 1

Global

Spare

Drive

1 2

34

Logical Drive 2

The ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 RAID controller provides both

Local Spare Drive and Global Spare Drive functions. On certain

occasions, applying these two functions together will better fit

various needs. Take note though that the Local Spare Drive always

has higher priority than the Global Spare Drive.

In the example shown on the next page, the member drives in Logical

Drive 0 are 9 GB drives, and the members in Logical Drives 1 and 2

are all 4 GB drives. It is not possible for the 4 GB Global Spare Drive

to join Logical Drive 0 because of its insufficient capacity. However

using a 9GB drive as the Global Spare drive for a failed drive that

comes from Logical Drive 1 or 2 will bring huge amount of excess

capacity since these logical drives require 4 GB only. In the settings

below, the 9 GB Local Spare Drive will aid Logical Drive 0 once a

drive in this logical drive failed. If the failed drive is in Logical Drive

1 or 2, the 4 GB Global Spare drive will immediately give aid to the

failed drive.

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

17

3

Local Spare Drive

LS

1 2

(9GB)(9GB)

3

(9GB)

Logical Drive 0

1 2

(4GB) (4GB)

Logical Drive 1

Global Spare Drive

GS(9GB)

(4GB)

1 2

(4GB) (4GB)

34

(4GB) (4GB)

Logical Drive 2

Local Spare Drive always
has higher priority than
Global Spare Drive.

3.2.2 Identifying Drives
Assuming there is a failed drive in the RAID 5 logical drive, make it a

point to replace the failed drive with a new drive to keep the logical
drive working.

When trying to remove a failed drive and you mistakenly removed
the wrong drive, you will no longer be able to read/write the logical
drive because the two drives may have already failed.

To prevent this from happening, the controller provides an easy way
of identifying for the failed drive. That is, the read/write LED of the
failed hard drive will light. This LED will prevent you from
removing the wrong drive, and is also helpful when locating for a
drive.

18

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

3

Flash Selected SCSI Drive

The Read/Write LED of the drive you

selected will light steadily for about one

minute.

Flash All SCSI Drives

The Read/Write LED of all connected

drives will light for about one minute. If

the LED of the defective drive did not

light on the “Flash Selected SCSI Drive”

function, use “Flash All SCSI Drives”. The

“Flash All SCSI Drives” function will light

LEDs of all the drives except the defective

one.

R/W LED

R/W LED

LED Steadily ON

R/W LED

R/W LED

LED Steadily ON

LED Steadily ON

LED Steadily ON

LED Steadily ON

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

LED Steadily ON

19

3

3.2.3 Automatic Rebuild and Manual Rebuild
Automatic Rebuild

One member drive
fails in logical drive

Waiting for spare
drive to be added
or manual rebuild

assigned to logical

assigned to logical

No

Auto-Detect Failure

Drive Swap Check Time”

Keep detecting if drive
has been swapped or

spare drive has been

Any

local spare drive

drive?

No

Any

global spare drive

drive?

No

“Periodic

enabled?

Yes

Has the

failed drive been

swapped?

No

added

Yes

Yes

Yes

Rebuild using the

local spare drive

Rebuild using the
global spare drive

Rebuild using the

swapped drive

When a member drive in the logical drive failed, the controller will

first check whether there is a Local Spare Drive assigned to this
logical drive. If yes, it will automatically start to rebuild.

If there is no Local Spare Drive available, the controller will search
for a Global Spare Drive. If there is a Global Spare Drive, it will
automatically rebuild the logical drive.

If neither a Local Spare Drive nor a Global Spare Drive is available,
and the “Periodic Auto-Detect Failure Drive Swap Check Time” is
“Disabled,” the controller will not try to rebuild unless the user
applies a forced manual rebuild.

When the “Periodic Auto-Detect Failure Drive Swap Check Time” is
enabled (i.e., a check time interval has been selected), the controller
will detect whether or not the failed drive has been swapped (by
checking the failed drive’s channel/ID). Once the failed drive has
been swapped, the rebuild will begin immediately.

If the failed drive is not swapped but a local spare drive is added to
the logical drive, rebuilding will begin with the spare drive.

20

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

Manual Rebuild

rebuild

been replaced?

When a user applies forced-manual rebuild, the controller will first

check whether there is any Local Spare Drive assigned to this logical
drive. If yes, it will automatically start to rebuild.

If there is no Local Spare Drive available, the controller will search
for a Global Spare Drive. If there is a Global Spare Drive, it will
automatically rebuild the logical drive.

3

User applies

forced-manual

Any

Local Spare Drive

assigned to this

logical drive?

No

Any

Global Spare Drive

assigned to this

logical drive?

No

Has the failed drive

No

Wait for

manual rebuild

Yes

Yes

Yes

Rebuild using the
Local Spare Drive

Rebuild using the

Global Spare Drive

Rebuild using the

replaced drive

If neither a Local Spare Drive nor a Global Spare Drive is available,

the controller will detect the SCSI channel and ID of the failed drive.
Once the failed drive has been replaced by a new drive/used drive, it
starts to rebuild using the replaced drive. If there is no available
drive for rebuilding, the controller will not try to rebuild again until
the user applies another forced-manual rebuild.

3.2.4 Concurrent Rebuild in RAID (0+1)
RAID (0+1) allows multiple drive failure and concurrent multiple

drive rebuild. Newly replaced drives must be scanned and set as
Local Spare Drives. These drives will be rebuilt at the same time (you
do not need to repeat the rebuilding process for each drive).

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

21

3

3.3 Disk Array Parameters

3.3.1 Rebuild Priority
Rebuilding time will depend on the capacity of the logical drive. The

ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 RAID controller provides background
rebuilding ability. Meaning, the controller is able to serve other I/O
requests while rebuilding the logical drives. The rebuilding process is
totally transparent to the host computer or the operating system.

The background rebuild process has four priority options:

• Low

• Normal

• Improved

• High

The default priority is “Low” which uses the controller’s minimum
resources to rebuild. Choosing “Normal” or “Improved” will
speedup the rebuilding process and choosing “High” will use the
controller’s maximum resources to complete the rebuilding process
at the shortest time.

Rebuild priority can be configured through either the Text RAID
Manager or the GUI RAID Manager.

3.3.2 Verify-after-Write
The controller has the ability to force the hard drives to verify after

data has been written to the media of the HDD. There are three
selectable methods:

• Verification on LD Initialization Writes
Performs Verify-after-Write while initializing the logical drive.

• Verification on LD Rebuild Writes
Performs Verify-after-Write during the rebuilding process.

• Verification on LD Normal Drive Writes
Performs Verify-after-Write during normal I/O requests.

Each method can be enabled or disabled individually. Hard drives

will perform Verify-after-Write according to the selected method.

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IMPORTANT:
The “Verification on LD Normal Drive Writes” method will affect “write”

performance during normal use.

3.4 Cache Parameters

3.4.1 Optimization for Sequential or Random I/O
When using RAID with applications such as video or image oriented

applications, the application reads/writes from the drive using large­block, sequential files instead of small-block, random access files. The
ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 RAID controller provides the options to
optimize for large-sequential I/O or optimize for small-random I/O
access.

“Optimization for Sequential I/O” provides a larger – 128K – stripe
size (or “block” size, also known as “chunk” size) than does
“Optimization for Random I/O” (with a size of 32K). A lot of the
controller’s internal parameters will also be changed to optimize for
sequential or random I/O. The change will take effect after the
controller reboots.

3

If the existing logical drives were built with “Optimization for
Random I/O”, these logical drives will not read/write when using
“Optimization for Sequential I/O” (shows "INVALID") and vice
versa because the stripe size is different. Change it back to the
original setting and reset the controller to make available the logical
drive data again.

IMPORTANT:
Changing the setting to “Optimization for Sequential I/O” or

“Optimization for Random I/O” should be performed only when no logical
drive exist. Otherwise, you will not be able to access the data in the logical
drive later on.

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3.5 Drive-Side SCSI Parameters

3.5.1 SCSI Motor Spin-up

When the power supply is unable to provide sufficient current for all

the hard drives and controllers that are powered-up at the same time,
spinning-up the hard drives serially is one of the best way of
consuming lower power-up current.

By default, all hard drives will spin-up when powered-on. These
hard drives can be configured so that all of them will not spin-up at
power-on. There are 3 methods of spinning-up the hard drive’s
motor: Spin-up at power-on, Spin-up serially in random sequence or
Spin-up by SCSI command. Please refer to the hard drive’s user’s
manual for instructions on configuring the hard drive using the
“Spin-up by SCSI command”. The procedure for each brand/model
of hard drive should vary.

Configure all the hard drives as above and enable “SCSI Motor Spin­Up” in Drive-Side SCSI Parameters. Power off all hard drives and
controller, and power them on again. All the hard drives will not
spin-up at this time. The controller will then spin-up the hard drives
one by one at four seconds interval.

IMPORTANT:
If the drives are configured as “Delay Motor Spin-up” or “Motor Spin-up

in Random Sequence,” some of these drives may not be ready yet for the
controller to access when the system powers up. Increase the disk access
delay time so that the controller will wait a longer time for the drive to be
ready.

3.5.2 SCSI Reset at Power Up

By default, when the controller is powered up, it will send a SCSI bus

reset command to the SCSI bus. When disabled, it will not send a
SCSI bus reset command on the next power-up.

When connecting dual host computers to the same SCSI bus, the SCSI
bus reset will interrupt all the read/write requests that are being
performed. This may cause some operating systems or host
computers to act abnormally. Disable the “SCSI Reset at Power-up”
to avoid this situation.

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3.5.3 Disk Access Delay Time
Sets the delay time before the controller tries to access the hard drives after

power-on. The default is 15 seconds.

3.5.4 SCSI I/O Timeout
The “SCSI I/O Timeout” is the time interval that the controller waits

for a drive to respond. If the controller attempts to read data from or
write data to a drive, but the drive does not respond within the SCSI
I/O timout value, the drive will be judged to be a failed drive.

When the drive itself detects a media error while reading from the
drive platter, it will retry the previous reading or recalibrate the
head. When the drive has encountered a bad block on the media, it
has to reassign the bad block to another spare block. However, all of
this takes time. The time to perform these operations can vary
between different brands and models of drives.

During SCSI bus arbitration, a device with higher priority can utilize
the bus first. A device with lower priority will sometimes get a SCSI
I/O timeout when higher priority devices keep utilizing the bus.

The default setting for “SCSI I/O Timeout” is 7 seconds. It is highly
recommended not to change this setting. Setting the timeout to a
lower value will cause the controller to judge a drive as failed a drive
is still retrying or while a drive is unable to arbitrate the SCSI bus.
Setting the timeout to a greater value will cause the controller to
keep waiting for a drive, and it may sometimes cause a host timeout.

3

3.5.5 Maximum Tag Count
The maximum number of tags that can be sent to each drive at the

same time. A drive has a built-in cache that is used to sort all of the
I/O requests (“tags”) which are sent to the drive, allowing the drive
to finish the requests faster. The cache size and maximum number of
tags varies between different brands and models of drive. Using the
default setting – “32” – is highly recommended. Changing the
maximum tag count to “Disable” will cause the internal cache of the
drive to be ignored (i.e., not used).

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3.5.6 Periodic Drive Check Time

The “Periodic Drive Check Time” is an interval for the controller to

check all of the drives that were on the SCSI bus at controller startup
(a list of all the drives that were detected can be seen under “View
and Edit SCSI Drives”). The default value is “Disabled”. “Disabled”
means that if a drive is removed from the bus, the controller will not
be able to know – so long as no host accesses that drive. Changing the
check time to any other value allows the controller to check – at the
selected interval – all of the drives that are listed under “View and
Edit SCSI Drives.” If any drive is then removed, the controller will be
able to know – even if no host accesses that drive.

3.5.7 SAF-TE Enclosure Monitoring

What is SAF-TE?
SAF-TE stands for SCSI Accessed Fault-Tolerant Enclosures. It is an

enclosure management technology that uses the SCSI bus to interact
with the controller. A SAF-TE-compliant enclosure monitors the fan
temperature, power supply, UPS and also provides drive status
LED’s.

How does it work?
The SAF-TE device, which is often a back-plane within a drive-bay

enclosure, must occupy a connector on one of the drive channels’
SCSI cables. The presence of a SAF-TE device will be detected and its
presence will be displayed in the BIOS configuration utility, Text
RAID Manager and the GUI RAID Manager programs. The RAID
controller communicates with the SAF-TE enclosure with standard
SCSI commands, polling the device in order to get SAF-TE
information.

The default value for “Periodic SAF-TE Device Check Time” is
“Disabled”. If the enclosure does have a SAF-TE device and features,
enable the controller to poll the device by selecting a time interval.
The RAID controller will then check the SAF-TE device status at that
interval.

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UPS Failure
Signal Input

Cooling Fan

Failure

Signal Input

Power Supply

Failure

Signal Input

Temperature Alert

Signal Input

Text RAID Manager

error alert

GUI RAID Manager

error alert

SAF-TE Support

PCI-to-SCSI

System with

RAID controller

installed

SAF-TE

Chipset

Drive Status

Indicators

• The SAF-TE chipset connects to the drive channel of the
controller together with the other SCSI drives.

3.5.8 Periodic Auto-Detect Failure Drive
Swap Check Time

The “Drive-Swap Check Time” is the interval at which the controller

checks to see whether a failed drive has been swapped. When a
logical drive’s member drive fails, the controller will detect the failed
drive (at the selected time interval). Once the failed drive has been
swapped with a drive that has adequate capacity to rebuild the
logical drive, the rebuild will begin automatically.

3

The default setting is “Disabled,” meaning that that the controller
will not Auto-Detect the swap of a failed drive. To enable this
feature, select a time interval.

3.6 Dynamic Logical Drive Expansion

3.6.1 What Is It and How Does It Work?

Before Dynamic Logical Drive Expansion, increasing the capacity of a

RAID system using traditional methods meant backing up, re­creating and then restoring. Dynamic Logical Drive Expansion allows

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users to add new SCSI hard disk drives and expand a RAID 0, 3 or 5
Logical Drive without powering down the system.

3.6.2 Two Modes of Dynamic Logical Drive Expansion
There are two modes of Dynamic Logical Drive Expansion: Mode 1

and Mode 2.

On-line RAID Expansion

Mode 1

Mode 2

Mode 1 Expansion involves adding more SCSI hard disk drives to a
logical drive, which may require that the user obtain an enclosure
with more drive bays. The data will be re-striped onto the original
and newly added disks.

RAID Expansion - Mode 1

2GB

2GB

RAID 5 Logical Drive - 4GB

2GB

2GB

+

Add-in New Drives

2GB

+

28

RAID
Expansion

2GB 2GB

RAID 5 Logical Drive - 8GB

2GB 2GB

ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual

2GB

In the figure above, new drives are added to increase the capacity of
a 4-Gigabyte RAID 5 logical drive. The two new drives increase the
capacity to 8 Gigabytes.

Mode 2 Expansion, on the other hand, requires the same number of
higher-capacity SCSI hard disk drives for a given logical drive.

RAID Expansion - Mode 2 (1/3)

2 GB

2 GB 2 GB

RAID 5 (4GB)

1

Copy and Replace each of the member drives. Even
if one member drives fails during the Copy and
Replace, the logical drive will still be available for
access.

The original logical drive

2 GB

2 GB 2 GB

RAID 5 (4GB)

4 GB

New
Drive

Copy and Replace

one of the member drives

In use
Unused

The figure above illustrates expansion of the same 4-Gigabyte RAID 5
logical drive using Mode 2 Expansion. Drives are copied and
replaced, one by one, onto three higher-capacity drives.

3

RAID Expansion - Mode 2 (2/3)

2

2 GB

2 GB 4 GB

RAID 5 (4GB)

Copy and Replace the other member drives one by one
until all the member drives have been replaced

Copy and Replace each member drive. After all the
member drives have been replaced, execute the
“RAID Expansion” to use the additional capacity.

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4 GB

New
Drive

In use
Unused

29

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This results in a new 4-Gigabyte, RAID 5 logical drive composed of
three physical drives. The 4 Gigabytes of increased capacity is in a
new partition.

RAID Expansion - Mode 2 (3/3)

RAID 5 (8GB)

RAID

n partitions

Partition n+1

or

RAID 5 (8GB)

In use
Unused

3

4 GB

4 GB

4 GB

Expansion

RAID 5 (4GB)

After the RAID Expansion, the additional capacity
will appear as another partition. Adding the extra
capacity into the existing partition requires OS
support.

IMPORTANT:

• The increased capacity from Mode 1 and Mode 2 Expansion of a logical
drive will be a new partition.

• Adding the extra capacity to the existing partition could crash the file
system in most current operating systems, so this is not supported.
Technically, the controller could easily combine the two partitions
together. But, as this may compromise protection of the existing
partition’s data (due to the questions regarding OS capabilities), this
function is not offered as a choice at this time.

• At the time of this printing, the firmware does not support the “Copy
and Replace” function that is required for Mode 2 Expansion. Third­party hard disk utilities may be used for Mode 2 Expansion of logical
drives. Future versions of the firmware will support “Copy and
Replace.”

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