Dell UCPM-800 User Manual
Dell Shared PowerEdge RAID Controller
(PERC) 8 For Dell PowerEdge VRTX Systems
User’s Guide
Regulatory Model: UCPM-800
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.
Copyright © 2014 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and
intellectual property laws. Dell™ and the Dell logo are trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States and/or other
jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
2014 - 11
Rev. A03
Contents
1 About The Shared PERC 8 Card..........................................................................6
Configurations of the Shared PERC 8 card..........................................................................................6
Specifications of a Shared PERC 8 card............................................................................................... 7
Supported Operating Systems..............................................................................................................9
Best Practices For Shared PERC 8........................................................................................................ 9
Related Documentation........................................................................................................................9
Locating your system Service Tag......................................................................................................10
Contacting Dell....................................................................................................................................10
Documentation Feedback................................................................................................................... 11
2 Shared PERC 8 Card Features...........................................................................12
Physical Disk Power Management......................................................................................................12
Consistency Checks............................................................................................................................ 12
Virtual Disk Initialization...................................................................................................................... 12
Background Initialization Of Virtual Disks.....................................................................................13
Full Initialization Of Virtual Disks...................................................................................................13
Fast Initialization Of Virtual Disks.................................................................................................. 13
Physical Disk Roaming.........................................................................................................................13
Using Physical Disk Roaming........................................................................................................ 14
FastPath................................................................................................................................................14
Virtual Disk Migration.......................................................................................................................... 14
Migrating Virtual Disks If The Target System Is Turned Off......................................................... 15
Migrating Virtual Disks If The Target System Is Turned On..........................................................15
Virtual Disk Cache Policies..................................................................................................................15
Virtual Disk Write Cache Policies.................................................................................................. 16
Write-Back .................................................................................................................................... 16
Conditions Under Which Write-Back Is Employed...................................................................... 16
Conditions Under Which Forced Write-Back With No Battery Is Employed.............................. 16
Write-through................................................................................................................................16
Conditions under which write-through is employed...................................................................17
Virtual Disk Read Cache Policies...................................................................................................17
Physical Disk Write Cache Policy........................................................................................................ 17
Fault Tolerance.................................................................................................................................... 17
The SMART Feature....................................................................................................................... 18
Patrol Read.....................................................................................................................................18
Physical disk failure detection.......................................................................................................19
Physical Disk Hot Swapping.......................................................................................................... 19
Auto Replacement Of A Virtual Disk Member And Revertible Hot Spares.................................. 19
Shared PERC 8 Card Cache Preservation.....................................................................................19
Battery Transparent Learn Cycle.................................................................................................. 20
The Controller Failover Feature....................................................................................................20
Multipath Support................................................................................................................................21
Configuring Multipath Support In Windows.................................................................................21
Configuring Multipath Support In VMWare.................................................................................. 21
Multipath support in Linux.............................................................................................................21
3 Deploying The Shared PERC 8 Card................................................................22
Installing A New Shared PERC 8 Card................................................................................................22
Replacing A Shared PERC 8 Card.......................................................................................................22
Prerequisites For Removing The Shared PERC 8 Card................................................................23
Removing The Shared PERC 8 Card.............................................................................................23
Installing The Shared PERC 8 Card...............................................................................................25
Post-Installation Tasks For Shared PERC 8 Card......................................................................... 25
Firmware installation or update..........................................................................................................26
Updating firmware.........................................................................................................................26
4 Driver Installation............................................................................................... 27
Downloading Drivers and Firmware For Shared PERC 8 From The Dell Support Website For
All Operating Systems......................................................................................................................... 27
Downloading Drivers From The Dell Systems Service And Diagnostic Tools Media For
Windows.............................................................................................................................................. 27
Installing Or Updating Windows Drivers For Shared PERC 8............................................................28
Installing Or Updating Linux Drivers For Shared PERC 8.................................................................. 29
Installing Or Updating The Driver Package On RHEL Using KMOD Support..............................29
Installing Or Updating The Driver Package On SLES Using KMP Support.................................. 29
Installing Or Updating VMware Drivers For Shared PERC 8..............................................................29
5 Management Applications For Shared PERC 8 Card................................... 30
6 Troubleshooting................................................................................................. 31
Performance variations between write-back and write-through cache modes..............................31
Shared PERC 8 Card Boots Into Safe Mode....................................................................................... 31
Degraded State Of Virtual Disks..........................................................................................................32
General Issues..................................................................................................................................... 32
Shared PERC 8 Card Has Yellow Exclamation Mark In Device Manager.................................... 32
Shared PERC 8 Card Not Seen In Device Manager..................................................................... 32
Critical Errors Or Disk Warning Messages Seen In The Windows Event Log..............................32
Shared PERC 8 Cards Fail To Function.........................................................................................33
Physical disk issues..............................................................................................................................33
Incorrect Number of Virtual Disks Displayed In Windows Disk Manager................................... 33
Physical Disk In Failed State.......................................................................................................... 33
Unable to rebuild a fault tolerant virtual disk............................................................................... 33
Fatal Error Or Data Corruption Reported.....................................................................................34
Physical Disk Displayed As Blocked By Management Application.............................................. 34
Multiple Disks Become Inaccessible.............................................................................................34
Rebuilding A Failed Physical Disk..................................................................................................34
Virtual Disk Fails During Rebuild Using A Global Hot Spare........................................................ 35
Virtual Disk Fails During Rebuild Using A Dedicated Hot Spare.................................................. 35
Physical disk takes a long time to rebuild.....................................................................................35
Controller cache issues.................................................................................................................35
SMART Errors.......................................................................................................................................36
SMART Error Detected On A Physical Disk In A Redundant Virtual Disk.................................... 36
SMART Error Detected On A Physical Disk In A Non-Redundant Virtual Disk............................37
Auto Replacement Member Errors.....................................................................................................37
Source Disk Fails............................................................................................................................37
Target Disk Fails.............................................................................................................................37
General Disk Fails...........................................................................................................................37
Hard-Drive Indicator Patterns............................................................................................................ 38
7 Getting help.........................................................................................................39
Contacting Dell................................................................................................................................... 39
Locating your system Service Tag......................................................................................................39
Documentation feedback.............................................................................................................39
1
About The Shared PERC 8 Card
The Dell Shared PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) 8 card installed on the Dell PowerEdge VRTX system
supports Single Root Input Output Virtualization (SR-IOV). This feature allows multiple systems to share
available hardware resources.
The 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 or
multiple virtual disks that are located on the shared storage. From a single server module, you can only
access the virtual disks that are mapped to that server module.
Configurations of the Shared PERC 8 card
The PowerEdge VRTX system is available in two configurations of the Shared PERC 8 card:
Single Shared PERC 8 Card Configuration — In this configuration, the PowerEdge VRTX system is installed
with a single Shared PERC 8 card. The default cache policy for virtual disks created in this configuration is
write-back. In this mode, write completion information is returned to the host after the data is written to
the Shared PERC 8 controller’s cache.
Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8 Card Configuration — In this configuration, the PowerEdge VRTX system is
installed with two Shared PERC 8 cards. The shared PERC cards are configured in an active-passive
mode. Both the cards can access the storage subsystem. However, only the active controller will provide
the data access. If one Shared PERC 8 card fails, the other Shared PERC 8 card takes control in a
seamless transition.
Checkpoints are created for all background operations. After a failover, operations are restored from the
last checkpoint. The default cache policy for virtual disks created in this configuration is write-back. In
this mode, write completion information is returned to the host after the data is written to the peer
shared PERC 8 controller’s cache.
Host data is also mirrored to the peer controller's cache to allow seamless operation in case of a primary
card failure.
Important information regarding the Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8 Card Configuration:
• Multipath support must be enabled in the operating system for the Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8 card
configuration to function.
• In the event of a controller failover, a Background Initialization (BGI) starts automatically on each
virtual disk.
• An ongoing full initialization does not restart in the event of a failover.
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• Currently, Linux drivers do not support the fault tolerance feature of the PowerEdge VRTX system.
Host servers running Linux are only supported in single-controller configuration.
Specifications of a Shared PERC 8 card
The characteristics of a Shared PERC 8 card are as follows:
Table 1. Shared PERC 8 card specifications
Specification Description
Supported drives Dell-qualified SAS hard drives and SAS solid state drives (SSDs).
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. However, this may affect data transfer
performance.
NOTE: Mixing HDDs and SSDs within a virtual disk is not
supported. SATA drives are not supported.
RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60
NOTE: Non-RAID drives are not supported.
Virtual functions Four virtual functions to support up to four host servers
Management application Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC).
NOTE: Option ROM (OP-ROM) is not supported. Booting
from a shared storage is not supported. You can only boot
from the storage located on the server module.
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
Cache policies Write Back, Forced Write-Back, Write Through, Adaptive Read-
Ahead, No Read-Ahead, and Read Ahead
NOTE: Note that write-back caching in a dual controller
configuration is not supported on the earlier versions of the
Shared PERC 8 solution.
NOTE: For the Shared PERC 8 card to support write-back
feature, ensure that you download the updated firmware
and driver version available at dell.com/support/home.
NOTE: For more information, see the PowerEdge VRTX
Storage Subsystem Compatibility Matrix at dell.com/
support/home.
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Specification Description
Maximum number of spans per disk
group
Maximum number of virtual disks per
disk group
Maximum number of virtual disks 64
Dedicated and global hot spares Yes
Hot swap devices supported Yes
Hardware XOR engine Yes
Virtual disk initialization; background,
full, and fast
Consistency check Yes
Disk roaming Yes
FastPath Yes
Virtual disk migration between two
Shared PERC 8 cards
Virtual disk migration from PERC
H310, H710, or H710P cards to a
Shared PERC 8 card
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Yes
Yes
No
NOTE: The target Shared PERC 8 card firmware level must
be either higher or equal to the source Shared PERC 8 card
firmware level.
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 No
Manual replace member No
Online capacity expansion No
Cachecade No
Local Key Management (LKM) No
PCIe hot-plug of controller No
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Specification Description
Multipath support Required for systems with Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8 card
configuration.
NOTE: Multipath is not supported on systems running Linux
operating system.
Controller failover Available only for systems with Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8
card configuration.
Supported Operating Systems
The Shared PERC 8 card supports the following operating systems:
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 including Hyper-V virtualization
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Update 5
• SUSE Enterprise Linux 11 SP3
• VMware ESXi 5.1 UP1 and above
• VMware ESXi 5.5, ESXi, 5.5 UP1 and above
NOTE: For information on supported software and hardware for the PowerEdge VRTX system,
see the PowerEdge VRTX Storage Subsystem Compatibility Matrix at dell.com/support/manuals.
Best Practices For Shared PERC 8
• Always use the latest firmware and drivers from dell.com/support/drivers.
• Always keep a copy of your virtual disk configuration and server node mapping information. To
document your virtual drive configuration and mapping information, perform the following steps:
a. Open CLI terminal and run the command racadm raid get vdisks –o. Take a screen shot of the
results page and save the captured screen shot to a location of choice, or write down the
information and store it in a safe, secure location.
b. Click Chassis Overview → Storage → Virtual Disks → Assign to view the virtual disk mapping by
the CMC GUI. Take a screen shot of the results page and save the captured screen shot to a
location of choice, or write down the information and store it in a safe, secure location.
c. Click Chassis Overview → Storage → Virtual Disks to get the virtual disk configuration
information by the CMC GUI. Take a screen shot of the results page and save the captured
screen shot to a location of choice, or write down the information and store it in a safe, secure
location.
Related Documentation
WARNING: See the safety and regulatory information that shipped with your system. Warranty
information may be included within this document or as a separate document.
• The Dell PowerEdge VRTX Getting Started Guide shipped with your system provides an overview of
system features, setting up your system, and technical specifications.
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• The PowerEdge VRTX Storage Subsystem Compatibility Matrix provides information on the minimum
driver and firmware requirements for the components of the Dell PowerEdge VRTX storage
subsystem.
• The setup placemat shipped with your system provides information on the initial system setup and
configuration.
• The server module Owner's Manual provides information about the server module features and
describes how to troubleshoot the server module and install or replace the server module
components. This document is available online at dell.com/poweredgemanuals.
• The Updating Servers of M1000e Chassis and Using in VRTX Chassis provides information on updating
M1000e server modules to be used in the VRTX chassis, using the Chassis Management Controller.
This document is available online at dell.com/esmmanuals.
• The rack documentation included with your rack solution describes how to install your system into a
rack, if required.
• The I/O module documentation at dell.com/poweredgemanuals describes the features of the I/O
module installed in the VRTX enclosure.
• The Dell Shared PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) 8 User's Guide provides information about
deploying the Shared PERC 8 card and managing the storage subsystem. This document is available
online at dell.com/storagecontrollermanuals.
• The Dell Chassis Management Controller for Dell PowerEdge VRTX User’s Guide provides information
on installing, configuring and using the Chassis Management Controller (CMC). This document is
available online at dell.com/esmmanuals.
• The Dell PowerEdge VRTX Chassis Management Controller Firmware Event Message Reference Guide
provides information on the error and event messages generated by the firmware or other agents that
monitor system components. This document is available at dell.com/esmmanuals.
• The CMC Online Help provides information and instructions for the current page on the CMC web
interface. To access the Online Help, click Help on the CMC web interface.
• The Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) User’s Guide provides information about
installation, configuration and maintenance of the iDRAC on managed systems. This document is
available online at dell.com/esmmanuals.
• Dell systems management application documentation provides information about installing and using
the systems management software.
• For the full name of an abbreviation or acronym used in this document, see the Glossary at dell.com/
support/manuals.
• Any media that ships with your system that provides documentation and tools for configuring and
managing your system, including those pertaining to the operating system, system management
software, system updates, and system components that you purchased with your system.
NOTE: Always check for updates on dell.com/support/manuals and read the updates first because
they often supersede information in other documents.
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
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,
10
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/support.
2. Select your country from the drop-down menu on the bottom right corner of the page.
3. For customized support:
a. Enter your system Service Tag in the Enter your Service Tag field.
b. Click Submit.
The support page that lists the various support categories is displayed.
4. For general support:
a. Select your product category.
b. Select your product segment.
c. Select your product.
The support page that lists the various support categories is displayed.
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.
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2
Shared PERC 8 Card Features
Some of the features of the Shared PERC 8 card are as follows:
• Physical disk power management
• Consistency checks
• Virtual disk initialization
• Disk roaming
• FastPath
• Virtual disk migration
• Virtual disk cache policies
• Fault tolerance
• Patrol read
• Multipath support
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 a configured disk is being spun up.
NOTE: For detailed information about power management, see the Dell Chassis Management
Controller for Dell PowerEdge VRTX User’s Guide at dell.com/poweredgemanuals.
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 more information about consistency checks, see the Dell Chassis Management
Controller for Dell PowerEdge VRTX Online Help.
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.
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