Dell PowerEdge VRTX, Shared PowerEdge RAID Controller 8, Shared PERC 8 User Manual

Dell Shared PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) 8 User’s Guide

Notes, Cautions, and Warnings

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your computer.

CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid the problem.

WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death.

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2013 - 06

Rev. A00

Contents

1 Overview.......................................................................................................................................5

Supported Operating Systems..................................................................................................................................6

Related Documentation............................................................................................................................................ 7

Locating Your System Service Tag...........................................................................................................................7

Contacting Dell......................................................................................................................................................... 7

Documentation Feedback.........................................................................................................................................7

2 Shared PERC 8 Card Features...................................................................................................9

Physical Disk Power Management...........................................................................................................................9

Consistency Checks..................................................................................................................................................9

Virtual Disk Initialization........................................................................................................................................... 9

Background Initialization Of Virtual Disks..........................................................................................................9

Full Initialization Of Virtual Disks......................................................................................................................10

Fast Initialization Of Virtual Disks.....................................................................................................................10

Disk Roaming.......................................................................................................................................................... 10

Using Disk Roaming..........................................................................................................................................10

FastPath.................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Configuring FastPath-Capable Virtual Disks.................................................................................................... 11

Virtual Disk Migration............................................................................................................................................. 11

Migrating Virtual Disks.....................................................................................................................................12

Virtual Disk Cache Policies.....................................................................................................................................12

Virtual Disk Write Cache Policies.................................................................................................................... 12

Virtual Disk Read Cache Policies..................................................................................................................... 13

Fault Tolerance....................................................................................................................................................... 13

The SMART Feature......................................................................................................................................... 13

Patrol Read.......................................................................................................................................................14

Physical Disk Failure Detection........................................................................................................................14

Physical Disk Hot Swapping.............................................................................................................................14

Auto Replacement Of A Virtual Disk Member And Revertible Hot Spares...................................................... 14

Controller Cache Preservation.........................................................................................................................15

Battery Transparent Learn Cycle..................................................................................................................... 15

3 Deploying The Shared PERC 8 Card.......................................................................................17

Removing The Shared PERC 8 Controller............................................................................................................... 17

Installing The Shared PERC 8 Controller.................................................................................................................18

4 Driver Installation......................................................................................................................21

Accessing The Device Driver Media For Windows Driver Update........................................................................ 21

Downloading Drivers From The Dell Systems Service And Diagnostic Tools Media For Windows................21

Downloading Drivers From The Dell Support Website For Windows.............................................................. 22

Updating Existing Windows Server 2008 R2 Or Windows Server 2012.................................................................. 22

5 Management Applications For Shared PERC 8 Card.......................................................... 25

6 Troubleshooting.........................................................................................................................27

Controller Boots Into Safe Mode............................................................................................................................27

Degraded State Of Virtual Disks............................................................................................................................. 27

Performance........................................................................................................................................................... 28

General Issues........................................................................................................................................................28

Shared PERC 8 Card Has Yellow Exclamation Mark In Device Manager........................................................ 28

Shared PERC 8 Card Not Seen In Device Manager......................................................................................... 28

Physical Disk Issues............................................................................................................................................... 28

Physical Disk In Failed State............................................................................................................................ 28

Unable to Rebuild A Fault Tolerant Virtual Disk............................................................................................... 28

Fatal Error Or Data Corruption Reported..........................................................................................................29

Physical Disk Displayed As Blocked By Management Application.................................................................29

Multiple Disks Become Inaccessible...............................................................................................................29

Rebuilding A Failed Physical Disk.................................................................................................................... 29

Virtual Disk Fails During Rebuild Using A Global Hot Spare............................................................................ 30

Virtual Disk Fails During Rebuild Using A Dedicated Hot Spare......................................................................30

Virtual Disk Fails Rebuild Using A Dedicated Hot Spare..................................................................................30

Physical Disk Takes A Long Time To Rebuild...................................................................................................30

SMART Errors......................................................................................................................................................... 30

SMART Error Detected On A Physical Disk In A Redundant Virtual Disk........................................................ 30

SMART Error Detected On A Physical Disk In A Non-Redundant Virtual Disk................................................31

Auto Replacement Member Errors.........................................................................................................................31

Source Disk Fails During Auto Replacement Member Operation....................................................................31

Target Disk Fails...............................................................................................................................................31

General Disk Fails.............................................................................................................................................32

Disk Carrier LED Indicators.....................................................................................................................................32

7 Appendix: RAID Description....................................................................................................33

Summary Of RAID Levels........................................................................................................................................33

RAID Terminology...................................................................................................................................................33

Disk Striping..................................................................................................................................................... 33

Disk Mirroring...................................................................................................................................................34

Spanned RAID Levels.......................................................................................................................................34

Parity Data........................................................................................................................................................34

Overview

The Dell Shared PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) 8 card installed on the PowerEdge VRTX system supports Single Root Input Output Virtualization (SR-IOV). This feature allows multiple systems to share available hardware resources.

In the PowerEdge VRTX system, the Shared PERC 8 card allows four server modules to access a local shared storage.

Each server module's operating system loads a Virtual Function (VF) driver that allows the server module to communicate with the Shared PERC 8 firmware. The server module can then be mapped to either a single Virtual Disk (VD) or multiple VDs that are located on the shared storage. Therefore, from a single server module, you can only access the VDs that are mapped to that server module.

The characteristics of a Shared PERC 8 card are as follows:

• Compatible with serial-attached SCSI (SAS) 2.0 providing up to 6 Gb/sec throughput.

• Supports Dell-qualified SAS-hard drives and SAS solid-state drives (SSDs).

NOTE: Mixing disks of different speeds (7,200 rpm, 10,000 rpm, or 15,000 rpm) and bandwidth (3 Gbps or 6 Gbps) while maintaining the same drive type (SAS) and technology (HDD or SSD) is supported. Mixing hard drives and SSDs within a virtual disk is not supported.

NOTE: SATA drives are not supported.

• Offers RAID control capabilities, which include support for RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60.

NOTE: Non-RAID drives are not supported.

• Provides reliability, I/O virtualization, and fault-tolerant disk subsystem management.

• Controller configuration is only accessible through the Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC).

NOTE: The Shared PERC 8 card does have the Option ROM (OP-ROM).

NOTE: Booting from a shared storage is not supported. You can only boot from the storage located on the server module.

• Contains a unique firmware image that supports SR-IOV using an operating system device driver that is loaded on a server module.

• Supports up to four available VF drivers to map server modules to VDs.

Table 1. Shared PERC 8 Card Capabilities

Specification Shared PERC 8 Card Capabilities

RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60

Enclosure per port Not applicable

Processor Dell Adapter SAS RAID-on-Chip, 8-Port with LSI 2208 Chipset

Battery backup unit Yes

Non-volatile cache Yes

Cache memory 1 GB DDR3, 1333 MHz

Specification Shared PERC 8 Card Capabilities

Cache policies Write Back, Write Through, Adaptive Read Ahead, No Read

Ahead, and Read Ahead

Maximum number of spans per disk group Eight

Maximum number of virtual disks per disk group 16

Dedicated and global hot spares Yes

Hot swap devices supported Yes

Hardware XOR engine Yes

Virtual disk initialization; background, full, and fast Yes

Consistency check Yes

Disk roaming Yes

FastPath Yes

NOTE: FastPath is not supported on systems implementing VMware.

Virtual disk migration between two Shared PERC 8 cards

Yes

SMART detection Yes

Patrol Read Yes

Automatic replace member Yes

SAS (HDD/SSD) hard drive Yes

Physical disk power management IDLE-C for compliant HDDs only. No support for balanced,

maximum, and customized power savings.

SATA (HDD/SSD) hard drive Only supported on PERC H310, H710, and H710P cards

Manual replace member Only supported on PERC H310, H710, and H710P cards

Online capacity expansion Only supported on PERC H310, H710, and H710P cards

Virtual disk migration from PERC H310, H710, or H710P cards to a Shared PERC 8 card

Cachecade Only supported on PERC H310, H710, and H710P cards

Local Key Management (LKM) Only supported on PERC H310, H710, and H710P cards

PCIe hot-plug of controller No

Supported Operating Systems

The Shared PERC 8 card supports the following operating systems:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 including Hyper-V virtualization

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

• VMware ESXi 5.1

NOTE: For the latest list of supported operating systems and driver installation instructions, see the system documentation at dell.com/support/manuals. For specific operating system service pack requirements, see the Drivers and Downloads section at dell.com/support.

Related Documentation

NOTE: For all storage controllers documents, see dell.com/support/manuals, and select Choose from a list of all Dell products → Servers, Storage & Networking → Dell Adapters.

NOTE: For all Dell Blade Servers documents, see dell.com/support/manuals, and select Choose from a list of all Dell products → Servers, Storage & Networking → PowerEdge Servers.

NOTE: For PowerEdge VRTX system documentation, see dell.com/support/manuals and enter the system service tag to get your system documentation.

NOTE: For

Dell PowerEdge VRTX Enclosure Owner's Manual

, see dell.com/support/manuals.

Locating Your System Service Tag

Your system is identified by a unique Express Service Code and Service Tag number. The Express Service Code and Service Tag are found on the front of the system by pulling out the information tag. Alternatively, the information may be on a sticker on the chassis of the system. This information is used by Dell to route support calls to the appropriate personnel.

Contacting Dell

NOTE: Dell provides several online and telephone-based support and service options. If you do not have an active Internet connection, you can find contact information on your purchase invoice, packing slip, bill, or Dell product catalog. Availability varies by country and product, and some services may not be available in your area.

To contact Dell for sales, technical support, or customer-service issues:

1. Go to dell.com/contactdell.

2. Select your country or region from the interactive world map.

When you select a region, the countries for that region are displayed.

3. Select the appropriate language under the country of your choice.

4. Select your business segment.

The main support page for the selected business segment is displayed.

5. Select the appropriate option depending on your requirement.

NOTE: If you have purchased a Dell system, you may be asked for the Service Tag.

Documentation Feedback

If you have feedback for this document, write to documentation_feedback@dell.com. Alternatively, you can click on the Feedback link in any of the Dell documentation pages, fill up the form, and click Submit to send your feedback.

Shared PERC 8 Card Features

Some of the features of the Shared PERC 8 card are as follows:

• Physical disk power management

• Consistency checks

• Types of virtual disk initialization

• Disk roaming

• FastPath

• Virtual disk migration

• Virtual disk cache policies

• Fault tolerance

• Patrol read

Physical Disk Power Management

Physical disk power management is a power saving feature of the Shared PERC 8 card. Idle-C feature, as defined by the T10 organization, is auto-enabled for physical disk power management. Physical disks that support Idle-C feature, spin at lower RPMs upon timer expiration when there is no I/O activity.

NOTE: There is a delay to I/O operations when you are using a configured disk spun up to full RPM.

Consistency Checks

Consistency Check (CC) is a background operation that verifies and corrects the mirror or parity data for fault tolerant virtual disks. It is recommended that you periodically run a consistency check on virtual disks. You can manually start a CC in the Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC).

NOTE: For detailed navigation of the CMC for Shared PERC 8, see the

Dell Chassis Management Controller for Dell

PowerEdge VRTX User’s Guide

at dell.com/esmmanuals.

Virtual Disk Initialization

CAUTION: Initializing virtual disks erases the files and file systems but keeps the virtual disk configuration intact. Initializing a virtual disk destroys all data on the virtual disk.

You can initialize virtual disks as described in the following sections.

Background Initialization Of Virtual Disks

Both Consistency Check (CC) and Background Initialization (BGI) correct parity errors. However, CC reports data inconsistencies through an event notification, but BGI does not. You can start CC manually, but not BGI.

NOTE: BGI does not run on RAID 0 virtual disks.

NOTE: You cannot disable BGI permanently. If you cancel BGI, it automatically restarts within five minutes.

NOTE: Unlike full or fast initialization of virtual disks, background initialization does not clear data from the physical disks.

NOTE: CC or BGI typically causes some loss in performance until the operation completes.

Full Initialization Of Virtual Disks

CAUTION: Performing a full initialization on a virtual disk overwrites all blocks and destroys any data that previously existed on the virtual disk. Full initialization of a virtual disk eliminates the need for the virtual disk to undergo a BGI. Full initialization can be performed after the creation of a virtual disk.

During full initialization, the host is not able to access the virtual disk. You can start a full initialization on a virtual disk in the CMC.

NOTE: For detailed navigation of the CMC for Shared PERC 8, see the

Dell Chassis Management Controller for Dell

PowerEdge VRTX User’s Guide

at dell.com/esmmanuals.

NOTE: If the system reboots during a full initialization, the operation terminates and a BGI begins on the virtual disk.

Fast Initialization Of Virtual Disks

A fast initialization on a virtual disk overwrites the first and last 8 MB of the virtual disk, clearing any boot records or partition information. The operation takes only 2-3 seconds to complete and is recommended when you are recreating virtual disks. You can perform a fast initialization in the CMC.

NOTE: A BGI starts five minutes after the Fast Initialization is completed.

NOTE: For detailed navigation of the CMC for Shared PERC 8, see the

Dell Chassis Management Controller for Dell

PowerEdge VRTX User’s Guide

at dell.com/esmmanuals.

Disk Roaming

Disk roaming is moving the physical disks from one backplane slot to another on the same controller. The controller automatically recognizes the relocated physical disks and logically places them in the virtual disks that are part of the disk group. You can perform disk roaming only when the system is turned off.

Using Disk Roaming

Perform the following steps to use disk roaming:

1. Turn off the power to the system, physical disks, enclosures, and system components.

2. Disconnect power cables from the system.

3. Move the physical disks to desired positions on the backplane or the enclosure.

4. Perform a safety check. Make sure the physical disks are inserted properly.

5. Turn on the system.

The controller detects the RAID configuration from the configuration data on the physical disks.

FastPath

FastPath is a feature that improves application performance by delivering high I/O per second (IOPS). The Shared PERC 8 card supports FastPath in non-VMware systems.

FastPath is a further enhancement of the Cut Through IO (CTIO) feature, introduced in earlier PERC cards. FastPath is used to accelerate I/O performance by reducing the I/O processing overhead of the firmware. CTIO reduces the instruction count required to process a given I/O. It also ensures that the optimal I/O code path is placed close to the processor to allow faster access when processing the I/O.

Under specific conditions with FastPath, the I/O bypasses the controller cache and is committed directly to the physical disk from the host memory, through the second core of the dual-core RAID-on-Chip (ROC) on the controller. FastPath and CTIO are both ideal for random workloads with small blocks.

Both CTIO and FastPath provide enhanced performance benefits to SAS SSD volumes, as they can fully capitalize on the lower access times and latencies of these volumes.

FastPath provides I/O performance benefits to rotational HDD-based volumes configured with Write Through and No Read Ahead cache policies, specifically for read operations across all RAID levels and write operations for RAID 0.

Configuring FastPath-Capable Virtual Disks

All simple virtual disks configured with write-cache policy Write Through and read-cache policy No Read Ahead can utilize FastPath. Only I/O block sizes smaller than virtual disk’s stripe size are eligible for FastPath. In addition, there must be no background operations (rebuild, initialization) running on the virtual disks. FastPath is not used if these operations are active.

NOTE: RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60 virtual disks cannot use FastPath.

The following table summarizes the FastPath-eligibility of read and write I/Os across the supported RAID levels.

Table 2. FastPath Eligibility Across Supported RAID Levels

RAID 0 RAID 1 RAID 5 RAID 6

Read Yes Yes

(Optimal and Degraded)

Yes (Optimal and Degraded)

Write Yes No No No

Virtual Disk Migration

The Shared PERC 8 card supports migration of virtual disks from one controller to another without taking the target controller offline. The controller can import RAID virtual disks in optimal, degraded, or partially degraded states. You cannot import a virtual disk that is in a failed state. Virtual disk migration:

• Supports migration of virtual disks from a similar Shared PERC 8 card.

• Does not support migration from any other PERC cards such as PERC H310, H700, H710, H800, and H810.

• Does not support Non-RAID disks.

NOTE: You must turn off the source system before you perform the disk migration.

When a controller detects a physical disk with an existing configuration, it flags the physical disk as a foreign disk and generates an alert indicating that a foreign disk was detected.

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