•Intel® RAID Controllers using the
Intel® RAID Software Stack 3
Revision 19.0
April, 2012
Intel Order Number: D29305-019
INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH INTEL®
PRODUCTS. NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, BY ESTOPPEL OR OTHERWISE, TO ANY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS GRANTED BY THIS DOCUMENT. EXCEPT AS
PROVIDED IN INTEL'S TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALE FOR SUCH PRODUCTS, INTEL
ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER, AND INTEL DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
WARRANTY, RELATING TO SALE AND/OR USE OF INTEL PRODUCTS INCLUDING LIABILITY
OR WARRANTIES RELATING TO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE,
MERCHANTABILITY, OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT OR OTHER
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT. Intel products are not intended for use in medical, life saving,
life sustaining applications. Intel may make changes to specifications and product descriptions at
any time, without notice.
Intel is a trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United
States and other countries.
The software described in this document is designed for use with Intel® RAID controllers, and
with on-serverboard RAID solutions that use the Intel
package names begin with “ir3”), Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 (driver package
names begin with ESRT2) or Intel
Supported Hardware
This manual covers the software stack that is shared by multiple Intel® server products:
•Intel
®
Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 (ESRT2) on the Intel® Enterprise South
Bridge 2 (ESB2) in the chipset, the Intel
3420 PCH chipset, Intel
following:
—Intel® Server Board S1200BTL/S1200BTS
—Intel® Server Boards based on the Intel® S5000 and S7000 chipsets
—Intel® Server Boards based on the Intel® 5500/5520 chipset with the Intel® I/O
Controller Hub 10R (ICH10R)
—Intel® Server Boards that include the LSI* 1064e SAS (Serially attached SCSI)
controller and some that include the LSI* 1068 SAS controller
—Intel® Server Boards S3420GP
®
RAID Software Stack 3 (driver
®
IT/IR RAID.
®
®
C200 series chipset and Intel® C600 series chipset used in the
I/O Controller Hub 9R (ICH9R), the Intel®
—Intel® Server Boards S3200SH and X38ML
—Intel® SAS Entry RAID Module AXX4SASMOD (when the module is in
ESRTII mode)
—Intel® RAID Controller SASMF8I
Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 provides driver based RAID modes 0,1,
®
and 10 with an optional RAID 5 mode provided by Intel
RAID C600 Upgrade Key
RKSATA4R5, RKSATA8R5, RKSAS4R5 or RKSAS8R5.
Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 provides driver-based RAID modes 0, 1,
and 10 with an optional RAID 5 mode provided by the Intel
AXXRAKSW5 on the ESB2 and LSI* 1064e on some models of Intel
®
RAID Activation Key
®
server boards.
ESB2 supports SATA only.
LSI* SAS 1064e and 1068 provide SATA (Serial ATA) and SAS support. Not all 1068
®
SAS boards provide Intel
Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 modes.
Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 must be enabled in the server system BIOS
®
before it is available. Intel
Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 is limited to a
maximum of eight drives including hot spare(s). Expander devices are not yet supported
by ESRT2.
•Intel
®
IT/IR RAID solutions with below Intel® IT/IR RAID controllers:
—Intel® RAID Controller SASWT4I
—Intel® RAID Controller SASUC8I
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide1
—Intel® RAID SAS Riser Controller AFCSASRISER in Intel® Server System
®
S7000FC4UR without Intel
SAS RAID Activation Key AXXRAKSAS2 installed.
—Intel® RAID SAS Riser Controller AFCSASRISER in Intel® Server System
®
S7000FC4UR without Intel
SAS RAID Activation Key AXXRAKSAS2 installed
—Intel® SAS Entry RAID Module AXX4SASMOD
—Intel® 6G SAS PCIe Gen2 RAID Module RMS2LL080 and RMS2LL040
•Intel
®
Integrated RAID Technology on the Intel® ROMB solutions. Server boards and
systems include:
—Intel® Server Board S5000PSL (Product code: S5000PSLROMB)
—Intel® Server System SR1550AL (Product code: SR1550ALSAS)
—Intel® Server System SR2500 (Product code: SR2500LX)
—Intel® Server System SR4850HW4s
—Intel® Server System SR6850HW4s
—Intel® Server System S7000FC4UR with a SAS riser card
—Intel® Server Boards S3420GP, S5520HC/S5500HCV, S5520UR, S5520SC, and
®
S5500WB12V/S5500WB with the Intel
Integrated RAID Controller
SROMBSASMR
Systems using the Intel® RAID Controller SROMBSAS18E provide XOR RAID modes
®
0, 1, 5, 10, and 50 when the optional Intel
RAID Activation Key AXXRAK18E and a
DDR2 400 MHz ECC DIMM are installed.
Systems using the Intel® RAID Controller SROMBSASFC or SROMBSASMP2
®
require the optional Intel
RAID Activation Key AXXRAKSAS2 and a DDR2 667
MHz ECC DIMM to provide RAID modes 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60.
The Intel® Integrated RAID Controller SROMBSASMR has a specially designed
®
connector that only fits Intel
Server Boards S5520HC/S5500HCV, S5520UR,
S5520SC, and S5500WB12V/S5500WB.
Note: This manual does not include the software RAID modes provided by the SAS riser
®
card on the Intel
Server System S7000FC4UR. This manual does not include the
RAID modes provided by the FALSASMP2 without Intel
RS25AB080, RS25SB008, RS25DB080, RS25NB008, RS2VB080, RS2VB040,
RT3WB080, RS2SG244, RS2WG160, RS2BL080, RS2BL080SNGL,
RS2BL080DE, RS2BL040, RS2PI008, RS2PI008DE, RS2MB044, RS2WC080,
RS2WC040, RMS2MH080, RMS2AF080 and RMS2AF040) support SAS 2.0 new
features with XOR RAID modes 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60. (RS2WC080 and
RS2WC040 are entry level hardware RAID controllers and do not support RAID 6
and 60; RMS2AF080 and RMS2AF040 are entry level hardware RAID controllers
and do not support RAID 10, 6 and 60.)
For more details, refer to the Technical Product Specification (TPS) or Hardware User's Guide (HWUG) for the RAID controllers.
Note: The Intel® RAID Controllers RMS2AF080, RMS2AF040, RS2WC080, and RS2WC040 only support
strip sizes of 8KB, 16KB, 32KB, and 64KB. Also, their Cache Policy only supports Write Through,
Direct I/O, and Normal RAID (No Read Ahead). For more details,refer to their Hardware User's
Guide (HWUG).
This manual does not include information about native SATA or SAS-only modes of the RAID
controllers.
Two versions of the Intel® RAID Controller RS2BL080 are available - RS2BL080, RS2BL080DE.
All features on RS2BL080 are supported on RS2BL080DE. In addition, RS2BL080DE provides one
more feature of FDE (Full Disk Encryption) that RS2BL080 doesn't support.
Two versions of the Intel® RAID Controller RS2PI008 are available - RS2PI008, RS2PI008DE.
All features on RS2PI008 are supported on RS2PI008DE. In addition, RS2PI008DE provides one
more feature of FDE (Full Disk Encryption) that RS2PI008 doesn't support.
Caution: Some levels of RAID are designed to increase the availability of data and some to provide data
redundancy. However, installing a RAID controller is not a substitute for a reliable backup strategy.
It is highly recommended you back up data regularly via a tape drive or other backup strategy to
guard against data loss. It is especially important to back up all data before working on any system
components and before installing or changing the RAID controller or configuration.
Software
Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology 2, Intel® IT/IR RAID and Intel® Integrated Server
RAID controllers include a set of software tools to configure and manage RAID systems.
These include:
•Intel
®
RAID controller software and utilities: The firmware installed on the RAID
controller provides pre-operating system configuration.
—For Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology 2, press <Ctrl> + <E> during the
server boot to enter the BIOS configuration utility.
—For Intel® IT/IR RAID, press <Ctrl> + <C> during the server boot to enter the LSI
MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility
—For Intel® Integrated Server RAID, press <Ctrl> + <G> during the server boot to
enter the RAID BIOS Console II.
•Intel
®
RAID Controller Drivers: Intel provides software drivers for the following
operating systems.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide3
—Microsoft Windows 2000*, Microsoft Windows XP*, and Microsoft Windows
Server 2003* (32-bit and 64-bit editions)
—Red Hat* Enterprise Linux 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 (with service packs; X86 and X86-64)
—SuSE* Linux Enterprise Server 9.0, SuSE* Linux Enterprise Server 10, and SuSE*
Linux Enterprise Server 11(with service packs; X86 and X86-64)
—VMWare* ESX 4i
Note: Only the combinations of controller, driver, and Intel® Server Board or System
listed in the Tested Hardware and Operating System List (THOL) were tested.
Check the supported operating system list for both your RAID controller and your
server board to verify operating system support and compatibility.
•Intel
®
RAID Web Console 2: A full-featured graphical user interface (GUI) utility is
provided to monitor, manage, and update the RAID configuration.
RAID Terminology
RAID is a group of physical disks put together to provide increased I/O (Input/Output)
performance (by allowing multiple, simultaneous disk access), fault tolerance, and reliability
(by reconstructing failed drives from remaining data). The physical drive group is called an
array, and the partitioned sets are called virtual disks. A virtual disk can consist of a part of one
or more physical arrays, and one or more entire arrays.
Using two or more configured RAID arrays in a larger virtual disk is called spanning. It is
represented by a double digit in the RAID mode/type (10, 50, 60).
Running more than one array on a given physical drive or set of drives is called a sliced
configuration.
The only drive that the operating system works with is the virtual disk, which is also called a
virtual drive. The virtual drive is used by the operating system as a single drive (lettered
storage device in Microsoft Windows*).
The RAID controller is the mastermind that must configure the physical array and the virtual
disks, and initialize them for use, check them for data consistency, allocate the data between
the physical drives, and rebuild a failed array to maintain data redundancy. The features
available per controller are highlighted later in this document and in the hardware guide for the
RAID controller.
The common terms used when describing RAID functions and features can be grouped into
two areas: fault tolerance (data protection and redundancy) and performance.
Fault Tolerance
Fault tolerance describes a state in which even with a drive failure, the data on the virtual drive
is still complete and the system is available after the failure and during repair of the array.
Most RAID modes are able to endure a physical disk failure without compromising data
integrity or processing capability of the virtual drive.
4Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Hot Spare
RAID mode 0 is not fault tolerant. With RAID 0, if a drive fails, then the data is no longer
complete and no longer available. Backplane fault tolerance can be achieved by a spanned
array where the arrays are on different backplanes.
True fault tolerance includes the automatic ability to restore the RAID array to redundancy so
that another drive failure will not destroy its usability.
True fault tolerance requires the availability of a spare disk that the controller can add to the
array and use to rebuild the array with the data from the failed drive. This spare disk is called a
hot spare. It must be a part of the array before a disk failure occurs. A hot-spare drive is a
physical drive that is maintained by the RAID controller but not actually used for data storage
in the array unless another drive fails. Upon failure of one of the array’s physical drives, the
hot-spare drive is used to hold the recreated data and restore data redundancy.
Hot-spare drives can be global (available to any array on a controller) or dedicated (only
usable by one array). There can be more than one hot spare per array and the drive of the
closest capacity is used. If both dedicated and global hot-spare drives are available, then the
dedicated drive is used first. If the hot swap rebuild fails, then that hot spare is also marked
failed. Since RAID 0 is not redundant, there is no hot spare value.
If a hot-spare drive is not an option, then it is possible to perform a hot or cold swap of the
failed drive to provide the new drive for rebuild after the drive failure. A swap is the manual
substitution of a replacement drive in a disk subsystem. If a swap is performed while the
system is running, it is a hot swap. A hot swap can only be performed if the backplane and
enclosure support it. If the system does not support hot-swap drives, then the system must be
powered down before the drive swap occurs. This is a cold swap.
In all cases (hot spare, hot swap, or cold swap), the replacement drive must be at least as large
as the drive it replaces. In all three cases, the failed drive is removed from the array. If using a
hot spare, then the failed drive can remain in the system. When a hot spare is available and an
automatic rebuild starts, the failed drive may be automatically removed from the array before
the utilities detect the failure. Only the event logs show what happened.
If the system is shut down during the rebuild, all rebuilds should automatically restart
on reboot.
Note: If running a sliced configuration (RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 6 on the same set of physical drives),
then the rebuild of the spare will not occur until the RAID 0 array is deleted.
On Intel® RAID Controller RS2WC080 and RS2WC040, if Virtual Drive is in degrade mode
due to failed physical drive, auto rebuild is not supported for hot-plugged drive until a manual
®
selection is made by users. As part of JBOD implementation for Intel
RAID Controller
RS2WC080 and RS2WC040, all new drives that are hot-plugged will automatically become
JBOD. Users need to manually move the JBOD drive to Unconfigured Good and auto rebuild
starts after that. For more details, refer to Hardware User's Guide (HWUG) for
above controllers.
Data Redundancy
Data redundancy is provided by mirroring or by disk striping with parity stripes.
•Disk mirroring is found only in RAID 1 and 10. With mirroring, the same data
simultaneously writes to two disks. If one disk fails, the contents of the other disk can be
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide5
used to run the system and reconstruct the failed array. This provides 100% data
redundancy but uses the most drive capacity, since 50% of the total capacity is available.
Until a failure occurs, both mirrored disks contain the same data at all times. Either drive
can act as the operational drive.
•Parity is the ability to recreate data by using a mathematical calculation derived from
multiple data sets. Parity is basically a checksum of all the data known as the
“ABCsum”. When drive A fails, the controller uses the ABCsum to calculates what
remains on drives B+C. The remainder must be recreated onto new drive A.
Parity can be dedicated (all parity stripes are placed on the same drive) or distributed
(parity stripes are spread across multiple drives). Calculating and writing parity slows
the write process but provides redundancy in a much smaller space than mirroring.
Parity checking is also used to detect errors in the data during consistency checks and
patrol reads.
RAID 5 uses distributed parity and RAID 6 uses dual distributed parity (two different
sets of parity are calculated and written to different drives each time.) RAID modes 1
and 5 can survive a single disk failure, although performance may be degraded,
especially during the rebuild. RAID modes 10 and 50 can survive multiple disk failures
across the spans, but only one failure per array. RAID mode 6 can survive up to two disk
failures. RAID mode 60 can sustain up to two failures per array.
Data protection is also provided by running calculations on the drives to make sure data is
consistent and that drives are good. The controller uses consistency checks, background
initialization, and patrol reads. You should include these in regular maintenance schedules.
•The consistency check operation verifies that data in the array matches the redundancy
data (parity or checksum). This is not provided in RAID 0 in which there is no
fault tolerance.
•Background initialization is a consistency check that is forced five minutes after the
creation of a virtual disk. Background initialization also checks for media errors on
physical drives and ensures that striped data segments are the same on all physical drives
in an array.
•Patrol read checks for physical disk errors that could lead to drive failure. These checks
usually include an attempt at corrective action. Patrol read can be enabled or disabled
with automatic or manual activation. This process starts only when the RAID controller
is idle for a defined period of time and no other background tasks are active, although a
patrol read check can continue to run during heavy I/O processes.
Enclosure Management
Enclosure management is the intelligent monitoring of the disk subsystem by software or
hardware usually within a disk enclosure. It increases the ability for the user to respond to a
drive or power supply failure by monitoring those sub systems.
Performance
Performance improvements come from multiple areas including disk striping and disk
spanning, accessing multiple disks simultaneously, and setting the percentage of processing
capability to use for a task.
6Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Disk Striping
Disk Spanning
Disk striping writes data across all of the physical disks in the array into fixed size partitions or
stripes. In most cases, the stripe size is user-defined. Stripes do not provide redundancy but
improve performance since striping allows multiple physical drives to be accessed at the same
time. These stripes are interleaved in a repeated sequential manner and the controller knows
where data is stored. The same stripe size should be kept across RAID arrays.
Terms used with strip sizing are listed below.
•Strip size: One disk section
•Stripe size: Total of one set of strips across all data disks, not including parity stripes
•Stripe width: The number of disks involved
Disk spanning allows more than one array to be combined into a single virtual drive. The
spanned arrays must have the same stripe size and must be contiguous. Spanning alone does
not provide redundancy but RAID modes 10, 50, and 60 all have redundancy provided in their
pre-spanned arrays through RAID 1, 5, or 6.
Note: Spanning two contiguous RAID 0 drives does not produce a new RAID level or add fault tolerance.
CPU Usage
It does increase the size of the virtual volume and improves performance by doubling the number of
spindles. Spanning for RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60 requires two to eight arrays of RAID 1, 5,
or 6 with the same stripe size and that always uses the entire drive.
Resource allocation provides the user with the option to set the amount of compute cycles to
devote to various tasks, including the rate of rebuilds, initialization, consistency checks, and
patrol read. Setting resource to 100% gives total priority to the rebuild. Setting it at 0% means
the rebuild will only occur if the system is not doing anything else. The default rebuild rate
is 30%.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide7
8Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
2RAID Levels
The RAID controller supports RAID levels 0, 1E, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60. The supported RAID
levels are summarized below. In addition, it supports independent drives (configured as RAID
0). This chapter describes the RAID levels in detail.
Summary of RAID Levels
•RAID 0: Uses striping to provide high data throughput, especially for large files in an
®
environment that does not require fault tolerance. In Intel
called Integrated Striping (IS), which supports striped arrays with two to ten disks.
IT/IR RAID, RAID 0 is also
•RAID 1: Uses mirroring so that data written to one disk drive simultaneously writes to
another disk drive. This is good for small databases or other applications that require
small capacity but complete data redundancy. In Intel
called Integrated Mirroring (IM) which supports two-disk mirrored arrays and hot-spare
disks.
®
IT/IR RAID, RAID 1 is also
•RAID 5: Uses disk striping and parity data across all drives (distributed parity) to
provide high data throughput, especially for small random access.
•RAID 6: Uses distributed parity, with two independent parity blocks per stripe, and disk
striping. A RAID 6 virtual disk can survive the loss of two disks without losing data.
•RAID IME: Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (IME) which supports mirrored arrays with
®
three to ten disks, plus hot-spare disks. This is implemented in Intel
IT/IR RAID.
•RAID 10: A combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1, consists of striped data across
mirrored spans. It provides high data throughput and complete data redundancy but uses
a larger number of spans.
•RAID 50: A combination of RAID 0 and RAID 5, uses distributed parity and disk
striping and works best with data that requires high reliability, high request rates, high
data transfers, and medium-to-large capacity.
Note: It is not recommended to have a RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 6 virtual disk in the
same physical array. If a drive in the physical array has to be rebuilt, the RAID 0
virtual disk will cause a failure during the rebuild.
•RAID 60: A combination of RAID 0 and RAID 6, uses distributed parity, with two
independent parity blocks per stripe in each RAID set, and disk striping. A RAID 60
virtual disk can survive the loss of two disks in each of the RAID 6 sets without losing
data. It works best with data that requires high reliability, high request rates, high data
transfers, and medium-to-large capacity.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide9
RAID Adapter
ABCDEF
A
C
E
B
D
F
Data Striping
RAID 0
Available Capacity
N=# disks
C = Disk Capacit y
Available Capacity = N*C
RAID 0
Selecting a RAID Level
To ensure the best performance, select the optimal RAID level when the system drive is
created. The optimal RAID level for a disk array depends on a number of factors:
•The number of physical drives in the disk array
•The capacity of the physical drives in the array
•The need for data redundancy
•The disk performance requirements
RAID 0 - Data Striping
RAID 0 provides disk striping across all drives in the RAID array. RAID 0 does not provide
any data redundancy, but does offer the best performance of any RAID level. RAID 0 breaks
up data into smaller segments, and then stripes the data segments across each drive in the
array. The size of each data segment is determined by the stripe size. RAID 0 offers high
bandwidth.
Note: RAID level 0 is not fault tolerant. If a drive in a RAID 0 array fails, the whole virtual disk (all
physical drives associated with the virtual disk) will fail.
By breaking up a large file into smaller segments, the RAID controller can use both SAS drive
and SATA drives to read or write the file faster. RAID 0 involves no parity calculations to
complicate the write operation. This makes RAID 0 ideal for applications that require high
bandwidth but do not require fault tolerance.
Figure 1. RAID 0 - Data Striping
Table 1. RAID 0 Overview
Uses
Strong Points
Provides high data throughput, especially for large files. Any environment
that does not require fault tolerance.
Provides increased data throughput for large files. No capacity loss penalty
for parity.
Weak Points
Drives
10Intel
Does not provide fault tolerance or high bandwidth. If any drive fails, all data
is lost.
1 to 32
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
RAID Adapter
ABC
A
B
C
A
B
C
Disk Mirroring
RAID 1
Available Capacity
N=# disks
C = Disk Capaci ty
Available Cap acity =
(N*C) /2
RAID 1
RAID 1 - Disk Mirroring/Disk Duplexing
In RAID 1, the RAID controller duplicates all data from one drive to a second drive. RAID 1
provides complete data redundancy, but at the cost of doubling the required data storage
capacity. Table 2 provides an overview of RAID 1.
Table 2. RAID 1 Overview
Uses
Strong Points
Weak Points
Drives
Use RAID 1 for small databases or any other environment that requires fault
tolerance but small capacity.
Provides complete data redundancy. RAID 1 is ideal for any application that
requires fault tolerance and minimal capacity.
Requires twice as many disk drives. Performance is impaired during drive
rebuilds.
2 to 32 (must be an even number of drives)
Figure 2. RAID 1 - Disk Mirroring/Disk Duplexing
RAID 5 - Data Striping with Striped Parity
RAID 5 includes disk striping at the block level and parity. Parity is the data’s property of
being odd or even, and parity checking detects errors in the data. In RAID 5, the parity
information is written to all drives. RAID 5 is best suited for networks that perform a lot of
small I/O transactions simultaneously.
RAID 5 addresses the bottleneck issue for random I/O operations. Because each drive contains
both data and parity, numerous writes can take place concurrently.
Table 3 provides an overview of RAID 5.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide11
RAID Adapter
ABCDEF
A
C
P3
B
P2
E
Data Striping &
Striped Parity
RAID 5
Available Capacity
N=# disks
C = Disk Capacity
Available Capacity =
(N*C)(N-1) /N
P1
D
F
RAID 5
Table 3. RAID 5 Overview
Provides high data throughput, especially for large files. Use RAID 5 for
transaction processing applications because each drive can read and write
Uses
independently. If a drive fails, the RAID controller uses the parity drive to
recreate all missing information. Use also for office automation and online
customer service that requires fault tolerance. Use for any application that
has high read request rates but low write request rates.
Strong Points
Weak Points
Drives
Provides data redundancy, high read rates, and good performance in most
environments. Provides redundancy with lowest loss of capacity.
Not well suited to tasks requiring lot of writes. Suffers more impact if no
cache is used (clustering). If a drive is being rebuilt, disk drive performance
is reduced. Environments with few processes do not perform as well
because the RAID overhead is not offset by the performance gains in
handling simultaneous processes.
3 to 32
Figure 3. RAID 5 - Data Striping with Striped Parity
RAID 6 - Distributed Parity and Disk Striping
RAID 6 is similar to RAID 5 (disk striping and parity), but instead of one parity block per
stripe, there are two. With two independent parity blocks, RAID 6 can survive the loss of two
disks in a virtual disk without losing data.
Table 4 provides an overview of RAID 6.
Table 4. RAID 6 Overview
Provides a high level of data protection through the use of a second parity block in
each stripe. Use RAID 6 for data that requires a high level of protection from loss.
In the case of a failure of one drive or two drives in a virtual disk, the RAID
controller uses the parity blocks to recreate the missing information. If two drives
Uses
12Intel
in a RAID 6 virtual disk fail, two drive rebuilds are required, one for each drive.
These rebuilds do not occur at the same time. The controller rebuilds one failed
drive at a time.
Use for office automation and online customer service that requires fault
tolerance. Use for any application that has high read request rates but low write
request rates.
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Segment 1
Segment 6
Segment 2
Segment 7
Segment 3
Segment 8
Segment 4
Parity (P5-P8)
Parity (P1-P4)
Parity (Q5-Q8)
Parity (Q9–Q1
Parity (Q1-Q4)
Segment 5
Parity is distributed across all drives in the array. When only three hard drives are available for
RAID 6, the situation has to be that P equals Q equals original data, which means that the original
data has three copies across the three hard drives.
Segment 10
Parity (P9-P12)
Segment 9
Segment 12
Segment 11
Segment 16
Parity (P17-P20)
Parity (P13-P16)
Segment 19
Segment 15
Segment 17
Segment 13
Segment 18
Segment 14
Parity (Q17-Q20)
Parity (Q13-Q16)
Segment 20
Strong Points
Weak Points
Provides data redundancy, high read rates, and good performance in most
environments. Can survive the loss of two drives or the loss of a drive while
another drive is being rebuilt. Provides the highest level of protection against drive
failures of all of the RAID levels. Read performance is similar to that of RAID 5.
Not well suited to tasks requiring lot of writes. A RAID 6 virtual disk has to
generate two sets of parity data for each write operation, which results in a
significant decrease in performance during writes. Disk drive performance is
reduced during a drive rebuild. Environments with few processes do not perform
as well because the RAID overhead is not offset by the performance gains in
handling simultaneous processes. RAID 6 costs more because of the extra
capacity required by using two parity blocks per stripe.
RAID IME
Drives
3 to 32
The following figure shows a RAID 6 data layout. The second set of parity drives are denoted
by Q. The P drives follow the RAID 5 parity scheme.
Figure 4. Example of Distributed Parity across Two Blocks in a Stripe (RAID 6)
An IME volume can be configured with up to ten mirrored disks (one or two global hot spares
can also be added). Figure 5 shows the logical view and physical view of an Integrated
Mirroring Enhanced (IME) volume with three mirrored disks. Each mirrored stripe is written
to a disk and mirrored to an adjacent disk. This type of configuration is also called RAID 1E.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide13
Figure 5. Integrated Mirroring Enhanced with Three Disks
Table 5. RAID 1E Overview
Uses
Strong Points
Weak Points
Drives
Use RAID 1E for small databases or any other environment that requires
fault tolerance but small capacity.
Provides complete data redundancy. RAID 1E is ideal for any application that
requires fault tolerance and minimal capacity.
Requires twice as many disk drives. Performance is impaired during drive
rebuilds.
3 to 10
RAID 10 - Combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0
RAID 10 is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1. RAID 10 consists of stripes across
mirrored drives. RAID 10 breaks up data into smaller blocks and then mirrors the blocks of
data to each RAID 1 RAID set. Each RAID 1 RAID set then duplicates its data to its other
drive. The size of each block is determined by the stripe size parameter, which is set during the
creation of the RAID set. RAID 10 supports up to eight spans.
Table 6 provides an overview of RAID 10.
14Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
RAID Ad apter
ABCDEF
Disk Mirror
&
Data Striping
RAID 10
Available Capacity
N=# disks
C = Disk Capacity
Available Capacity =
(N*C) /2
A
C
E
A
C
E
B
D
F
B
D
F
Stripe Set
Mirror Set
RAID 10
Table 6. RAID 10 Overview
Appropriate when used with data storage that requires 100 percent
Uses
redundancy of mirrored arrays and that needs the enhanced I/O
performance of RAID 0 (striped arrays). RAID 10 works well for mediumsized databases or any environment that requires a higher degree of fault
tolerance and moderate to medium capacity.
Strong Points
Weak Points
Drives
Figure 6. RAID 10 - Combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0
Provides both high data transfer rates and complete data redundancy.
Requires twice as many drives as all other RAID levels except RAID 1.
4 - 240
RAID 50 - Combination of RAID 5 and RAID 0
RAID 50 provides the features of both RAID 0 and RAID 5. RAID 50 includes both parity and
disk striping across multiple arrays. RAID 50 is best implemented on two RAID 5 disk arrays
with data striped across both disk groups.
RAID 50 breaks up data into smaller blocks and then stripes the blocks of data to each RAID 5
disk set. RAID 5 breaks up data into smaller blocks, calculates parity by performing an
exclusive-or on the blocks and then writes the blocks of data and parity to each drive in the
array. The size of each block is determined by the stripe size parameter, which is set during the
creation of the RAID set.
RAID level 50 supports up to eight spans and tolerates up to eight drive failures, though less
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide15
than total disk drive capacity is available. Though multiple drive failures can be tolerated, only
one drive failure can be tolerated in each RAID 1 level array.
Table 7 provides an overview of RAID 50.
RAID Adapt er
ABCDEFGHIJK
RAID 5
&
Data Striping
RAID 50
Available Capacity
N=# disks
C = Disk Capacity
Available Capacity =
(N*C)(N-1) /N
Stripe Set
RAID 5 Set
A
E
P(I+K)
C
P(E+G)
I
P1(A+C)
G
K
B
F
P(J+L)
D
P(F+H)
J
P1(B+D)
H
L
RAID 50
Table 7. RAID 50 Overview
Uses
Strong Points
Weak Points
Drives
Figure 7. RAID 50 - Combination of RAID 5 and RAID 0
Appropriate when used with data that requires high reliability, high request
rates, high data transfer, and medium to large capacity.
Provides high data throughput, data redundancy, and very good
performance.
Requires 2 to 8 times as many parity drives as RAID 5.
6 to 32
RAID 60 - Combination of RAID 0 and RAID 6
RAID 60 provides the features of both RAID 0 and RAID 6, and includes both parity and disk
striping across multiple arrays. RAID 6 supports two independent parity blocks per stripe.
A RAID 60 virtual disk can survive the loss of two disks in each of the RAID 6 sets without
losing data. RAID 60 is best implemented on two RAID 6 disk groups with data striped across
both disk groups.
RAID 60 breaks up data into smaller blocks, and then stripes the blocks of data to each RAID
6 disk set. RAID 6 breaks up data into smaller blocks, calculates parity by performing an
exclusive-or on the blocks and then writes the blocks of data and parity to each drive in the
array. The size of each block is determined by the stripe size parameter, which is set during the
creation of the RAID set.
RAID 60 supports up to 8 spans and tolerates up to 16 drive failures, though less than total
disk drive capacity is available. Each RAID 6 level can tolerate two drive failures.
Table 8 provides an overview of RAID 60.
16Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Strong Points
Weak Points
Uses
Table 8 . RAID 60 Overview
Provides a high level of data protection through the use of a second parity block in
each stripe. Use RAID 60 for data that requires a very high level of protection from
loss.
In the case of a failure of one drive or two drives in a RAID set in a virtual disk, the
RAID controller uses the parity blocks to recreate all the missing information. If
two drives in a RAID 6 set in a RAID 60 virtual disk fail, two drive rebuilds are
required, one for each drive. These rebuilds do not occur at the same time. The
controller rebuilds one failed drive, and then the other failed drive.
Use for office automation, online customer service that requires fault tolerance or
for any application that has high read request rates but low write request rates.
Provides data redundancy, high read rates, and good performance in most
environments. Each RAID 6 set can survive the loss of two drives or the loss of a
drive while another drive is being rebuilt. Provides the highest level of protection
against drive failures of all of the RAID levels. Read performance is similar to that
of RAID 50, though random reads in RAID 60 might be slightly faster because
data is spread across at least one more disk in each RAID 6 set.
Not well suited to tasks requiring a lot of writes. A RAID 60 virtual disk has to
generate two sets of parity data for each write operation, which results in a
significant decrease in performance during writes. Disk drive performance is
reduced during a drive rebuild. Environments with few processes do not perform
as well because the RAID overhead is not offset by the performance gains in
handling simultaneous processes. RAID 6 costs more because of the extra
capacity required by using two parity blocks per stripe.
Drives
A minimum of 6.
The following figure shows a RAID 6 data layout. The second set of parity drives are denoted
by Q. The P drives follow the RAID 5 parity scheme.
Note: When only three hard drives are available for RAID 6, the situation has to be that P equals Q equals
original data, which means that the three hard drives have the same original data, which can afford
two disk failures.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide17
Segment 1
Segment 8
Segment 2
Segment 12
Parity (P1-P2)
Parity (Q11–Q1
NOTE: Parity is distributed across all drives in the array.
Parity (Q1-Q2)
Segment 16
Segment 7
Parity (P15-P16)Segment 15
Segment 11
Parity (Q15-Q16)
Parity (P11-P12)
RAID 6
RAID 6
RAID 0
Parity (P3-P4)Parity (Q3-Q4)
Segment 3
Segment 6
Segment 4
Segment 10
Parity (P3-P4)
Parity (Q9–Q1
Parity (Q3-Q4)
Segment 14
Segment 5
Parity (P13-P14)Segment 13
Segment 9
Parity (Q13-Q14)
Parity (P9-P10)
Parity (P5-P6)Parity (Q5-Q6)
RAID 60
Figure 8. RAID 60 Level Virtual Drive
18Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
RAID Configuration Strategies
The most important factors in RAID array configuration are:
•Virtual disk availability (fault tolerance)
•Virtual disk performance
•Virtual disk capacity
You cannot configure a virtual disk that optimizes all three factors, but it is easy to choose a
virtual disk configuration that maximizes one factor at the expense of another factor. For
example, RAID 1 (mirroring) provides excellent fault tolerance, but requires a redundant
drive. The following subsections describe how to use the RAID levels to maximize virtual disk
availability (fault tolerance), virtual disk performance, and virtual disk capacity.
Maximizing Fault Tolerance
Fault tolerance is achieved through the ability to perform automatic and transparent rebuilds
using hot-spare drives and hot swaps. A hot-spare drive is an unused online available drive
that the RAID controller instantly plugs into the system when an active drive fails. After the
hot spare is automatically moved into the RAID array, the failed drive is automatically rebuilt
on the spare drive. The RAID array continues to handle requests while the rebuild occurs.
A hot swap is the manual substitution of a replacement unit in a disk subsystem for a defective
one, where the substitution can be performed while the subsystem is running hot-swap drives.
Auto-Rebuild in the WebBIOS Configuration Utility allows a failed drive to be replaced and
automatically rebuilt by “hot swapping” the drive in the same drive bay. The RAID array
continues to handle requests while the rebuild occurs, providing a high degree of fault
tolerance and zero downtime.
Table 9. RAID Levels and Fault Tolerance
RAID
Level
0Does not provide fault tolerance. All data is lost if any drive fails. Disk striping writes data
across multiple disk drives instead of just one disk drive. It involves partitioning each
drive storage space into stripes that can vary in size. RAID 0 is ideal for applications that
require high bandwidth but do not require fault tolerance.
1 or
IME
5Combines distributed parity with disk striping. Parity provides redundancy for one drive
Provides complete data redundancy. If one drive fails, the contents of the other drive can
be used to run the system and reconstruct the failed drive. The primary advantage of
disk mirroring is that it provides 100 percent data redundancy. Since the contents of the
drive are completely written to a second drive, no data is lost if one of the drives fails.
Both drives contain the same data at all times. RAID 1 or IME is ideal for any application
that requires fault tolerance and minimal capacity.
failure without duplicating the contents of entire disk drives. If a drive fails, the RAID
controller uses the parity data to reconstruct all missing information. In RAID 5, this
method is applied to the entire drive or stripes across all disk drives in an array. Using
distributed parity, RAID 5 offers fault tolerance with limited overhead.
Fault Tolerance
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide19
RAID
Level
6Combines distributed parity with disk striping. RAID 6 can sustain two drive failures and
still maintain data integrity. Parity provides redundancy for two drive failures without
duplicating the contents of entire disk drives. If a drive fails, the RAID controller uses the
parity data to reconstruct all missing information. In RAID 6, this method is applied to
entire drives or stripes across all drives in an array. Using distributed parity, RAID 6
offers fault tolerance with limited overhead.
10Provides complete data redundancy using striping across spanned RAID 1 arrays. RAID
10 works well for any environment that requires the 100 percent redundancy offered by
mirrored arrays. RAID 10 can sustain a drive failure in each mirrored array and maintain
drive integrity.
50Provides data redundancy using distributed parity across spanned RAID 5 arrays. RAID
50 includes both parity and disk striping across multiple drives. If a drive fails, the RAID
controller uses the parity data to recreate all missing information. RAID 50 can sustain
one drive failure per RAID 5 array and still maintain data integrity.
60Provides data redundancy using distributed parity across spanned RAID 6 arrays. RAID
60 can sustain two drive failures per RAID 6 array and still maintain data integrity. It
provides the highest level of protection against drive failures of all of the RAID levels.
RAID 60 includes both parity and disk striping across multiple drives. If a drive fails, the
RAID controller uses the parity data to recreate all missing information.
Maximizing Performance
Fault Tolerance
A RAID disk subsystem improves I/O performance. The RAID array appears to the host
computer as a single storage unit or as multiple virtual units. I/O is faster because drives can be
accessed simultaneously. Table 10 describes the performance for each RAID level.
Table 10. RAID Levels and Performance
RAID
Level
0RAID 0 (striping) offers the best performance of any RAID level. RAID 0 breaks up data
1 or
IME
into smaller blocks, then writes a block to each drive in the array. Disk striping writes data
across multiple drives instead of just one drive. It involves partitioning each drive storage
space into stripes that can vary in size from 8 KB to 128 KB. These stripes are
interleaved in a repeated sequential manner. Disk striping enhances performance
because multiple drives are accessed simultaneously.
With RAID 1 or IME (mirroring), each drive in the system must be duplicated, which
requires more time and resources than striping. Performance is impaired during drive
rebuilds.
Performance
20Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
RAID
Level
5RAID 5 provides high data throughput, especially for large files. Use this RAID level for
any application that requires high read request rates, but low write request rates, such as
transaction processing applications, because each drive can read and write
independently. Since each drive contains both data and parity, numerous writes can take
place concurrently. In addition, robust caching algorithms and hardware based
exclusive-or assist make RAID 5 performance exceptional in many different
environments.
Parity generation can slow the write process, making write performance significantly
lower for RAID 5 than for RAID 0 or RAID 1. Disk drive performance is reduced when a
drive is being rebuilt. Clustering can also reduce drive performance. Environments with
few processes do not perform as well because the RAID overhead is not offset by the
performance gains in handling simultaneous processes.
6RAID 6 works best when used with data that requires high reliability, high request rates,
and high data transfer. It provides high data throughput, data redundancy, and very good
performance. However, RAID 6 is not well suited to tasks requiring a lot of writes. A RAID
6 virtual disk has to generate two sets of parity data for each write operation, which
results in a significant decrease in performance during writes. Disk drive performance is
reduced during a drive rebuild. Environments with few processes do not perform as well
because the RAID overhead is not offset by the performance gains in handling
simultaneous processes.
10RAID 10 works best for data storage that need the enhanced I/O performance of RAID 0
(striped arrays), which provides high data transfer rates. Spanning increases the size of
the virtual volume and improves performance by doubling the number of spindles. The
system performance improves as the number of spans increases (the maximum number
of spans is eight). As the storage space in the spans is filled, the system stripes data
over fewer and fewer spans and RAID performance degrades to that of a RAID 1 or
RAID 5 array.
Performance
50RAID 50 works best when used with data that requires high reliability, high request rates,
and high data transfer. It provides high data throughput, data redundancy, and very good
performance. Spanning increases the size of the virtual volume and improves
performance by doubling the number of spindles. The system performance improves as
the number of spans increases (the maximum number of spans is eight). As the storage
space in the spans is filled, the system stripes data over fewer and fewer spans and
RAID performance degrades to that of a RAID 1 or RAID 5 array.
60RAID 60 works best when used with data that requires high reliability, high request rates,
and high data transfer. It provides high data throughput, data redundancy, and very good
performance. Spanning increases the size of the virtual volume and improves
performance by doubling the number of spindles. The system performance improves as
the number of spans increases (the maximum number of spans is eight). As the storage
space in the spans is filled, the system stripes data over fewer and fewer spans and
RAID performance degrades to that of a RAID 1 or RAID 6 array.
RAID 60 is not well suited to tasks requiring a lot of writes. A RAID 60 virtual disk has to
generate two sets of parity data for each write operation, which results in a significant
decrease in performance during writes. Disk drive performance is reduced during a drive
rebuild. Environments with few processes do not perform as well because the RAID
overhead is not offset by the performance gains in handling simultaneous processes.
Maximizing Storage Capacity
Storage capacity is an important factor when selecting a RAID level. There are several
variables to consider. Striping alone (RAID 0) requires less storage space than mirrored data
(RAID 1 or IME) or distributed parity (RAID 5 or RAID 6). RAID 5, which provides
redundancy for one drive failure without duplicating the contents of entire disk drives, requires
less space then RAID 1. Table 11 explains the effects of the RAID levels on storage capacity.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide21
Table 11. RAID Levels and Capacity
RAID
Level
0RAID 0 (disk striping) involves partitioning each drive storage space into stripes that can
vary in size. The combined storage space is composed of stripes from each drive. RAID
0 provides maximum storage capacity for a given set of physical disks.
1 or
IME
5RAID 5 provides redundancy for one drive failure without duplicating the contents of
6RAID 6 provides redundancy for two drive failures without duplicating the contents of
10RAID 10 requires twice as many drives as all other RAID levels except RAID 1. RAID 10
50RAID 50 requires two to four times as many parity drives as RAID 5. This RAID level
With RAID 1 (mirroring), data written to one disk drive is simultaneously written to
another disk drive, which doubles the required data storage capacity. This is expensive
because each drive in the system must be duplicated.
entire disk drives. RAID 5 breaks up data into smaller blocks, calculates parity by
performing an exclusive-or on the blocks, then writes the blocks of data and parity to
each drive in the array. The size of each block is determined by the stripe size parameter,
which is set during the creation of the RAID set.
entire disk drives. However, it requires extra capacity because it uses two parity blocks
per stripe. This makes RAID 60 more expensive to implement.
works well for medium-sized databases or any environment that requires a higher
degree of fault tolerance and moderate to medium capacity. Disk spanning allows
multiple disk drives to function like one big drive. Spanning overcomes lack of disk space
and simplifies storage management by combining existing resources or adding relatively
inexpensive resources.
works best when used with data that requires medium to large capacity.
Capacity
60RAID 60 provides redundancy for two drive failures in each RAID set without duplicating
the contents of entire disk drives. However, it requires extra capacity because a RAID 60
virtual disk has to generate two sets of parity data for each write operation. This makes
RAID 60 more expensive to implement.
22Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
RAID Availability
RAID Availability Concept
Data availability without downtime is essential for many types of data processing and storage
systems. Businesses want to avoid the financial costs and customer frustration associated with
failed servers. RAID helps you maintain data availability and avoid downtime for the servers
that provide that data. RAID offers several features, such as spare drives and rebuilds, that you
can use to fix any physical disk problems, while keeping the servers running and data
available. The following subsections describe these features.
Spare Drives
You can use spare drives to replace failed or defective drives in an array. A replacement drive
must be at least as large as the drive it replaces. Spare drives include hot swaps, hot spares, and
cold swaps.
A hot swap is the manual substitution of a replacement unit in a disk subsystem for a defective
one, where the substitution can be performed while the subsystem is running (performing its
normal functions). In order for the functionality to work, the backplane and enclosure must
support hot swap.
Hot-spare drives are physical drives that power up along with the RAID drives and operate in
a standby state. If a physical disk used in a RAID virtual disk fails, a hot spare automatically
takes its place and the data on the failed drive is rebuilt on the hot spare. Hot spares can be
used for RAID levels 1, IME, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60.
Note: If a rebuild to a hot spare fails for any reason, the hot-spare drive will be marked as “failed”. If the
source drive fails, both the source drive and the hot-spare drive will be marked as “failed”.
Before you replace a defective physical disk in a disk subsystem, a cold swap requires that you
power down the system.
Rebuilding
If a physical disk fails in an array that is configured as a RAID 1, IME, 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60
virtual disk, you can recover the lost data by rebuilding the drive. If you have configured hot
spares, the RAID controller automatically tries to use them to rebuild failed arrays. A manual
rebuild is necessary if there are no hot spares available with enough capacity to rebuild the
failed array. Before rebuilding the failed array, you must install a drive with enough storage
into the subsystem.
Drive in Foreign State
When newly inserted drives are detected by the RAID controller, and are displayed in either
RAID BIOS Console 2 or RAID Web Console 2, their state may show as (Foreign)
Unconfigured Good, or (Foreign) Unconfigured Bad. The Foreign state indicates that the
RAID controller finds existing RAID configuration on the new drives. Since these drives
cannot be configured directly, avoid deleting data on the existing RAID by mistake. Use “Scan
for Foreign Configuration” option in RAID Web Console 2, or use “Scan Devices” option in
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide23
Copyback
RAID BIOS Console 2, in order to preview, import or clear the existing RAID configurations
on the drives. If existing RAID configurations are cleared, their state changes to Unconfigured
Good or Unconfigured Bad.
The copyback feature allows you to copy data from a source drive of a virtual drive to a
destination drive that is not a part of the virtual drive. Copyback is often used to create or
restore a specific physical configuration for a drive group (for example, a specific arrangement
of drive group members on the device I/O buses). Copyback can be run automatically or
manually.
Typically, when a drive fails or is expected to fail, the data is rebuilt on a hot spare. The failed
drive is replaced with a new disk. Then the data is copied from the hot spare to the new drive,
and the hot spare reverts from a rebuild drive to its original hot spare status. The copyback
operation runs as a background activity, and the virtual drive is still available online to the
host.
Copyback is also initiated when the first Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology
(SMART) error occurs on a drive that is part of a virtual drive. The destination drive is a hot
spare that qualifies as a rebuild drive. The drive with the SMART error is marked as "failed"
only after the successful completion of the copyback. This avoids putting the drive group in
degraded status.
Note: During a copyback operation, if the drive group involved in the copyback is deleted because of a
virtual drive deletion, the destination drive reverts to an Unconfigured Good state or hot spare state.
Order of Precedence
In the following scenarios, rebuild takes precedence over the copyback operation:
1.If a copyback operation is already taking place to a hot spare drive, and any virtual drive
on the controller degrades, the copyback operation aborts, and a rebuild starts. The
rebuild changes the virtual drive to the optimal state.
2.The rebuild operation takes precedence over the copyback operation when the
conditions exist to start both operations. For example:
—Where the hot spare is not configured (or unavailable) in the system.
—There are two drives (both members of virtual drives), with one drive exceeding the
SMART error threshold, and the other failed.
—If you add a hot spare (assume a global hot spare) during a copyback operation, the
copyback is aborted, and the rebuild operation starts on the hot spare.
Configuration Planning
Factors to consider when planning a configuration are the number of physical disks the RAID
controller can support, the purpose of the array, and the availability of spare drives.
Each type of data stored in the disk subsystem has a different frequency of read and write
activity. If you know the data access requirements, you can more successfully determine a
strategy for optimizing the disk subsystem capacity, availability, and performance.
24Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Servers that support video-on-demand typically read the data often, but write data
infrequently. Both the read and write operations tend to be long. Data stored on a generalpurpose file server involves relatively short read and write operations with relatively small
files.
Dimmer Switch Feature
Powering and cooling drives represents a major cost for data centers. The new MegaRAID
Dimmer™ Switch reduces the power consumption of the devices connected to a MegaRAID
controller. This helps to share resources more efficiently and lower costs.
With Dimmer Switch, any unconfigured drive connected to a MegaRAID controller is spun
down after 30 minutes of inactivity, reducing its power usage. Spun down drives are spun up
automatically when you create a configuration using those drives.
Number of Physical Disks
Your configuration planning for the SAS RAID controller depends in part on the number of
physical disks that you want to use in a RAID array. The number of drives in an array
determines the RAID levels that can be supported. Only one RAID level can be assigned to
each virtual disk.
MegaRAID Fast Path
The MegaRAID Fast Path Premium Feature is a high performance IO Accelerator technology
for Solid State Drive RAID Arrays connected to a MegaRAID adapter. There are two “Levels”
to this feature. Level 1 Fast Path enabled by default without PFK. The “Standard” or Level 1
Fast Path pertains to general IO Path improvements to Write Through data transfers.
Additionally, controller cache tuning has resulted in improvements to configurations
leveraging write back mode.
Level 2 Fast Path enabled automatically with Intel
AXXRPFKSSD or AXXRPFKSSD2 installed. Level 2 Fast Path is SSD-centric. This is where
the Premium Feature kicks in by supporting full optimization of SSD Virtual Disk groups.
With this premium feature enabled, Solid State Drive configurations tuned for small, random
block-size IO activity -- typical of transactional database applications -- can sustain higher
numbers of IO READs Per Second, compared with Level 1 Fast Path. The performance levels
reached with this solution are equivalent to those of much costlier Flash-based adapter card
solutions.
®
Refer to Intel
AXXRPFKSNSH Installation Guide (E88588-00x) or Intel
AXXRPFKSSD2, AXXRPFKDE2, and AXXRPFKSNSH2 Installation Guide (G29824-00x) for
description of the Premium Feature Key (PFK).
RAID Premium Feature Key AXXRPFKSSD, AXXRPFKDE, and
4K Sector Drive Support
®
RAID Premium Feature Key
®
RAID Premium Feature Keys
The disk drive industry is in transition to support disk drives with native formatting of 4K
sectors. 4K formatted drives provide an opportunity to improve capacity and error correction
efficiencies as capacities grow, and as improvements in error correction are implemented.
Drives supporting 4K sectors will also support a 512 byte emulation mode which will allow
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide25
the drive to be operated with legacy OS and hardware products that do not support 4K byte
®
sectors. Intel
plans to implement 4K sector support on all new products, beginning with those
designed to utilize the LSI 2208 and LSI2308 SAS products. Currently shipping Intel
and SAS products will support 4K sector drives running in legacy 512b sector mode.
Larger than 2TB Drive Support
The disk drive industry is in transition to support disk drives with volume size larger than 2
Terabytes. The Intel
the volume of these disk drives. For the other RAID types listed in “Supported Hardware”
section, there is no problem for the first 2TB space of the disk drive to be recognized and
configured.
®
6G SAS PCIe Gen2 RAID Controllers can fully recognize and configure
Power Save settings
The controller conserves energy by placing certain unused drives into powersave mode. The
controller will automatically spin up drives from powersave mode whenever necessary. Drives
that can be set to power save mode are: Unconfigured Drives, Hot Spare Drives, Configured
Drives. The setting can be made in either RAID BIOS Console 2, or RAID Web Console 2.
There is also a way to disable this setting from CmdTool2, by typing:
CmdTool2 -LDSetPowerPolicy -None -Lall -a0
This command only has effect when one or more logical drives are created. The Power Save
mode currently is only supported by Intel
®
Intelligent RAID products.
®
RAID
Shield State
Physical devices in RAID firmware transit between different states. If the firmware detects a
problem or a communication loss for a physical drive, the firmware transitions the drive to a
bad (FAILED or UNCONF BAD) state. To avoid transient failures, an interim state called the
Shield State is introduced before marking the drive as being in a bad state.
The Shield State is an interim state of a physical drive for diagnostic operations. The results of
the diagnostic tests determine if the physical drive is good or bad. If any of the diagnostic tests
fail, the physical drive transitions to a bad state (FAILED or UNCONF BAD).
The three possible Shield States are:
•Unconfigured - Shielded
•Configured - Shielded
•Hotspare - Shielded
Physical View and Logical View in either RAID BIOS Console 2 or RAID Web Console 2 can
reflect drive Shield State. Other drive states include:
•Unconfigured Good
•Online
•Hotspare
•Failed
•Rebuilding
26Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Array Purpose
•Unconfigured Bad
•Missing
•Offline
•None
Important factors to consider when creating RAID arrays include availability, performance,
and capacity. Define the major purpose of the disk array by answering questions related to
these factors, such as the following, which are followed by suggested RAID levels for each
situation:
•Will this disk array increase the system storage capacity for general-purpose file and
print servers? Use RAID 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60.
•Does this disk array support any software system that must be available 24 hours per
day? Use RAID 1, IME, 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60.
•Will the information stored in this disk array contain large audio or video files that must
be available on demand? Use RAID 0.
•Will this disk array contain data from an imaging system? Use RAID 0 or 10.
Fill out Table 12 to help you plan the array configuration. Rank the requirements for your
array, such as storage space and data redundancy, in order of importance, and then review the
suggested RAID levels.
Table 12. Factors to Consider for Array Configuration
Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 BIOS
Configuration Utility
With support for up to six SATA drives or eight SAS/SATA drives, depending on the server
board or system, the embedded RAID BIOS has the following features:
•Support for interrupt 13 and Int19h.
•Support for SATA CD-ROM/DVD-ROM devices, including support for booting from a
CD-ROM drive.
•POST (Power On Self Test) and run-time BIOS support for device insertion and
removal.
•Support for a migration path from Intel
Integrated Server RAID hardware.
®
Embedded Server RAID Technology 2 to Intel
•Automatic resume of rebuilding, check consistency, and initialization.
•Global hot spare support based on the virtual drive size.
•Support for RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 10.
•Support for auto rebuild.
•Support for different capacity disks in the same array.
•Support for up to eight physical drives and eight virtual drives.
•Stripe size of 64 KB only.
•Support for disk coercion with options of None, 128 MB, or 1 GB.
•Ability to select a virtual drive as boot device. By default, virtual drive 0 is bootable.
LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility
You can use the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility to create one or two IM/IME
volumes on each Intel
disks. All disks in an IM/IME volume must be connected to the same Intel
Controller.
Although you can use disks of different size in IM and IME volumes, the smallest disk in the
volume will determine the logical size of all disks in the volume. In other words, the excess
space of the larger member disk(s) will not be used. For example, if you create an IME volume
with two 100 GB disks and two 120 GB disks, only 100 GB of the larger disks will be used for
the volume.
®
IT/IR RAID Controller, with one or two optional global hot-spare
®
IT/IR RAID
Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced support the following features:
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide29
•Configurations of one or two IM or IME volumes on the same Intel
Controller. IM volumes have two mirrored disks; IME volumes have three to ten
mirrored disks. Two volumes can have up to a total of 12 disks.
Note: This feature requires IR RAID firmware v1.20.00 or above to be installed.
•One or two global hot-spare disks per controller, to automatically replace failed disks in
IM/IME volumes. The hot-spare drives are in addition to the 12-disk maximum for two
volumes per Intel
Note: Support for two hot-spare disks requires IR RAID firmware v1.20.00 or above.
®
IT/IR RAID Controller.
•Mirrored volumes run in optimal mode or in degraded mode (if one mirrored disk fails).
•Hot-swap capability.
•Presents a single virtual drive to the OS for each IM/IME volume.
•Supports both SAS and SATA disks. The two types of disks cannot be combined in the
same volume. However, a Intel
SATA disks and a second volume with SAS disks.
®
IT/IR RAID Controller can support one volume with
•Fusion-MPT* architecture.
•Easy-to-use BIOS-based configuration utility.
•Error notification: The drivers update an OS-specific event log.
®
IT/IR RAID
•LED status support.
•Write journaling, which allows automatic synchronization of potentially inconsistent
data after unexpected power-down situations.
•Metadata used to store volume configuration on mirrored disks.
•Automatic background resynchronization while the host continues to process
inputs/outputs (I/Os).
•Background media verification ensures that data on IM/IME volumes is always
accessible.
Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 Configuration Utility for
Intelligent RAID
The Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 configuration utility provides full-featured, GUI-based
configuration and management of RAID arrays. The Intel
resides in the controller firmware and is independent of the operating system. The Intel
RAID BIOS Console 2 configuration utility lets you:
•Select an Intel
®
RAID controller
•Choose a configuration method for physical arrays, disk groups, and virtual drives
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 utility
®
•Create drive arrays
•Define virtual drives
•Initialize virtual drives
•Access controllers, virtual drives, and physical arrays to display their properties
30Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
•Create hot-spare drives
•Rebuild failed drives
•Verify data redundancy in RAID 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60 virtual drives
Intel® RAID Web Console 2 Configuration and Monitoring
Utility
The Intel® RAID Web Console 2 is an operating system-based, object-oriented GUI utility
that configures and monitors RAID systems locally or over a network. The Intel
Console 2 runs on each of the supported Microsoft Windows* and Linux operating systems.
®
With the Intel
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 or with the Intel® Embedded Server RAID BIOS Configuration
Intel
utility. In addition, the Intel
creating almost limitless adaptability and expansion of any virtual drive while the system
remains operational.
The Intel
RAID Web Console 2, you can perform the same tasks as you can with the
®
RAID Web Console 2 provides on-the-fly RAID migration,
®
RAID Web Console 2 allows you to:
®
RAID Web
•Create and manage virtual drives
•Add a drive to a RAID virtual drive
The following situations assume RAID 0 has one drive and RAID 1 has two drives:
•convert from RAID 0 to RAID 1 by adding one additional drive.
•convert from RAID 0 to RAID 5 by adding two additional drives.
•convert from RAID 0 to RAID 6 by adding three additional drives.
•convert from RAID 1 to RAID 0.
•convert from RAID 1 to RAID 5 by adding one additional drive.
•convert from RAID 1 to RAID 6 by adding two additional drives.
•convert from RAID 5 to RAID 0.
•convert from RAID 5 to RAID 6 by adding one additional drive.
•convert from RAID 6 to RAID 0.
•convert from RAID 6 to RAID 5.
•convert a degraded RAID into RAID 0.
•remove physical drives from a virtual drive.
Note: While you can apply RAID-level migration at any time, Intel® recommends that you do so when
there are no reboots. Many operating systems issues I/O operations serially (one at a time) during
boot. With a RAID-level migration running, a boot can often take more than 15 minutes.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide31
Drive Hierarchy within the RAID Firmware
The Intel® Integrated RAID firmware is based on three fundamental levels. Virtual drives are
created from drive arrays that are created from physical drives.
•Level 1 consists of the physical drives (hard drives and removable hard disks). The
firmware identifies each drive by its physical ID and maps it to a virtual address. A
virtual drive can be constructed of more than one physical drive.
•Level 2 consists of the array(s) formed by firmware made of one or more disks and can
be made into RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60.
•Level 3 consists of the virtual drives. These are the only drives that can be accessed by
the operating system. These are the drives given drive letters (C, D, and so forth) under
the Microsoft Windows* operating system. The firmware automatically transforms each
newly installed drive array into a virtual drive. RAID 0, 1, 5, or 6 use a single array and
RAID 10, 50, 60 use multiple arrays.
Intel® Intelligent RAID Controller Features
Enterprise Features
•Online capacity expansion (OCE). Add capacity to the virtual drive. The added capacity
can be presented to the operating system as additional space for the operating system to
partition it as an additional drive, or it may be added to an operating system drive,
depending upon the capability of the operating system.
•Online RAID level migration allows for upgrading a RAID level. Options are to go from
RAID 1 to RAID 0, RAID 5 to RAID 0, RAID 6 to RAID 0, RAID 6 to RAID 5. With
OCE, options are to go from RAID 0 to RAID 1, RAID 0 to RAID 5, RAID 0 to RAID 6,
RAID 1 to RAID 5, RAID 1 to RAID 6, RAID 5 to RAID 6.
—You cannot migrate or perform OCE on a spanned RAID array or disk group
—You cannot migrate to a smaller capacity configuration.
—You cannot perform OCE when there is more than one virtual drive on a virtual array
•Each controller allows 128 virtual drives.
•When five or more disks are used, Smart Initialization automatically checks consistency
of virtual drives for RAID 5. This allows performance optimization by enabling readmodify-write mode of operation with five or more disks in a RAID 5 array or disk group.
Peer read mode of operation is used when the RAID 5 array or disk group contains three
or four physical drives.
(RAID
or disk group.
10, RAID 50, or RAID 60).
•If the system shuts down, the initialization or rebuild process automatically resumes on
the next boot. Auto resume must be enabled prior to virtual drive creation.
•Stripe size is user definable on a per drive basis and can be 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 KB in
size. The default is 256 KB, which is optimal for many data access types.
32Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
•Hot spares can be set as global or dedicated. A global hot spare automatically comes
online to replace the first drive to fail on any array or disk group on the controller. A
dedicated hot spare is assigned to a specific array or disk group and only comes online to
rebuild this specific failed array or disk group. A hot spare only comes online if it is the
same size or larger than the failing drive (see drive coercion below), and if a drive has
been marked as failed. If a drive is removed (and marked as failed) within a virtual drive,
the hot spare automatically comes online. However, there must be disk activity (I/O to
the drive) in order for a missing drive to be marked as failed.
•Drive coercion refers to the ability of the controller to recognize the size of the physical
drives connected and then force the larger drives to use only the amount of space
available on the smallest drive. Drive coercion allows an option to map out a reserved
space to compensate for slightly smaller drive sizes that may be added later. The default
is set to 1 GB. The coercion algorithm options are:
—None: No coercion of size.
—128 MB: The software rounds the drive capacity down to the next 128 MB boundary
and then up to the nearest 10 MB until the coerced capacity is larger than the actual
drive size. It is then reduced by 10 MB.
—1 GB: The software rounds the drive capacity down to the nearest 1 GB boundary
and then down by 1 MB. This corresponds to the terms most drive manufacturers
use.
Fault Tolerant Features
•Configuration on Disk (COD) and NVRAM (Non-volatile Random Access Memory)
storage of array and disk group configuration information. Array and disk group
configuration information is stored both on the hard drive (COD) and in NVRAM. This
helps protect against loss of the configuration due to adapter and/or drive failure.
•Failed drives are automatically detected and a transparent rebuild of the failed array
automatically occurs using a hot-spare drive.
•Support for SAF-TE (SCSI Accessed Fault-Tolerant Enclosure) enabled enclosures
allows enhanced drive failure and rebuild reporting via enclosure LEDs (Light-Emitting
Diodes); support also includes hot swapping of hard drives.
•A battery backup for cache memory is available as an option. RAID controller firmware
automatically checks for the presence of the battery module, and if found, allows the
write back cache option. The adapter continuously tracks the battery voltage and reports
if the battery is low. If low, the battery is first given a fast charge to replenish the charge
and is then given a trickle charge to keep it at an optimal power level. Adapters that
support the battery module include a “dirty cache” LED; when power is lost to the
system and data remains in the cache memory that has not been written to disk, the LED
signals that this operation needs to be completed. Upon reboot, the data in memory can
then write to the hard disk drive.
•Although I/O performance may be lower, hard disk drive write-back cache is disabled by
default because data can potentially be lost if a power outage occurs. Enabling the HDD
write-back cache may improve performance, but when enabled, you should use a UPS
(Uninterruptible Power Supply) device to prevent data loss during power outages.
•Battery life is about three years. You should monitor the battery health and replace when
needed.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide33
•SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) technology is supported.
This provides a higher level of predictive failure analysis of the hard disk drives by the
RAID controller.
Cache Options and Settings
Cache options and settings can be unique for each virtual drive.
•Cache Write Policy
—Write Through: I/O completion is signaled only after the data is written to hard disk.
—Write Back with BBU: I/O completion is signaled when data is transferred to cache.
—Always Write Back- Write back is enabled even if BBU is bad or missing
•Cache Policy
—Direct I/O: When possible, no cache is involved for both reads and writes. The data
transfers are directly from host system to the disk and from the disk to the host
system.
—Cached I/O: All reads first look at cache. If a cache hit occurs, the data is read from
cache; if not, the data is read from disk and the read data is buffered into cache. All
writes to drive are also written to cache.
•Read Policy
—No Read Ahead: Provides no read ahead for the virtual drive.
—Read Ahead: Reads and buffers additional consecutive stripes/lines into cache.
—Adaptive: The read ahead automatically turns on and off depending upon whether
Background Tasks
•Rebuilding a failed drive is performed in the background. The rebuild rate is tunable
—The rebuild rate controls the amount of system resources allocated to the rebuild.
Caution: It is not recommended to increase the rebuild rate to over 50%. A higher
•A consistency check scans the consistency of data on a fault-tolerant disk to determine if
•Background initialization is a background check of consistency. It has the same
the disk is accessed for sequential reads or random reads.
from 0-100%.
rebuild rate can result in operating system requests not being serviced in a
timely fashion and causing an operating system error.
data has been corrupted.
functionality as the check consistency option but is automatic and can be canceled only
temporarily. If it is canceled, it starts again in a few minutes. Background initialization is
only performed on redundant volumes.
•RAID level migration and online capacity expansion are completed in the background.
•Patrol Read is a user definable option available in the Intel
performs drive reads in the background and maps out any bad areas of the drive.
34Intel
®
RAID Web Console 2 that
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Error Handling
Audible Alarm
•Most commands are retried four or more times. The firmware is programmed to provide
the best effort to recognize an error and recover from it if possible.
•Failures are logged and stored in NVRAM. Operating system-based errors are viewable
from the event viewer in the Web Console
2.
•RAID-related errors can be reported by the hard drive firmware, SAF-TE controller, or
the RAID controller firmware. These errors may be reported to the operating system
through RAID management software, through SMART monitoring, or through CIM
management. Some errors may also be reported by the SAF-TE controller and logged in
the system event log (SEL) for the Intel
may report access errors. Depending on the RAID controller and drive enclosure, the
error may be evident by the color of LEDs, the flashing of LEDs, or audible alarms.
The following list of beep tones is used on Intel® Intelligent RAID Controllers. These beeps
usually indicate that a drive has failed.
®
server board. In addition, the operating system
•Degraded Array or Disk Group: Short tone, 1 second on, 1 second off
•Failed Array or Disk Group: Long tone, 3 seconds on, 1 second off
•Hot Spare Commissioned - Short tone, 1 second on, 3 seconds off
During a rebuild, the tone alarm stays on. After the rebuild completes, an alarm with a
different tone will sound.
®
The disable alarm option in either the Intel
management utilities holds the alarm disabled after a power cycle. You must use the enable
alarm option to re-enable the alarm.
The silence alarm option in either the Intel
Console 2 management utilities will silence the alarm until a power cycle or another event
occurs.
RAID BIOS Console 2 or Intel® Web Console 2
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 or the Intel® Web
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide35
36Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
4Intel
Note: Intel updates software frequently and updated drivers may provide additional features. Check for
new software at the Intel Web site: http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/. See the
Readme file that accompanies the download for updated information. For operating systems that
are not listed here, but are listed at the above Intel Web site see Readme file that accompanies the
download for installation steps.
RAID Drivers
The drivers that Intel provides for Intel® RAID Controllers are not compatible with SCSI or
SATA-only RAID controllers. The RAID driver files are available on the Resource CD that
accompanies the RAID controllers. The driver files are also available at
http://downloadcenter.intel.com. If you need to transfer the driver files to another system, you
can copy them to a floppy disk or a USB key.
RAID Driver Installation for Microsoft Windows*
Installation in a New Microsoft Windows* Operating System
®
This procedure installs the RAID device driver system during the Microsoft Windows 2003*,
Microsoft Windows 2000*, or Microsoft Windows XP* operating system installation. The
system must contain an Intel
the driver to the registry and copies the driver to the appropriate directory.
1.Start the Microsoft Windows* installation by booting from the Microsoft Windows*
CD-ROM disk. The system BIOS must support booting from a CD-ROM drive. You
may need to change BIOS settings to allow CD-ROM booting. See your system
documentation for instructions.
2.Press <F6> to install when the screen displays:
Press F6 if you need to install...
Note: You must press <F6> for the system to recognize the new driver.
3.Choose <S> to specify an additional device when the screen displays:
Setup could not determine the type...
Note: If this screen is not displayed as the first user input, then the setup program did not
register that the <F6> key was pressed. Reboot the system and return to
4.When the system asks for the manufacturer-supplied hardware support disk, insert the
Microsoft Windows* driver disk and press <Enter>.
5.Select the appropriate Microsoft Windows* driver from the menu by highlighting it.
Press <Enter> to proceed. The driver is added to the registry and copied to the
appropriate directory.
®
RAID controller. Microsoft Windows 2003* automatically adds
step 2.
6.Continue with the Microsoft Windows* operating system installation procedure.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide37
Installation in an Existing Microsoft Windows* Operating System
This procedure installs or upgrades the RAID device driver on an existing Microsoft Windows
2003*, Microsoft Windows 2000*, or Microsoft Windows XP* operating system.The system
must contain an Intel
1.Boot to the Microsoft Windows* operating system. The Found New Hardware Wizard
is displayed. The program identifies the SAS controller and requests the driver disk.
2.Insert the Microsoft Windows* driver disk into the floppy drive.
3.For Microsoft Windows 2003* or Microsoft Windows XP*, choose Install Software
Automatically. In Microsoft Windows 2000*, choose Search for a Suitable Driver.
4.Microsoft Windows 2000* only: Click the Specify location box and make sure the
search location is the floppy drive.
5.Click Next.
6.A message that this driver is not digitally signed may display. This message informs you
that a nonsigned driver is being installed. If you see this message, click Continue
Anyway.
7.The system loads the driver from the Microsoft Windows* driver disk and copies the
driver to the system disk. The Found New Hardware Wizard screen displays the
message:
The wizard has finished...
®
RAID controller.
8.Click Finish to complete the driver upgrade.
RAID Driver Installation for Red Hat* Enterprise Linux
This section describes the installation of the device driver on new Red Hat* Enterprise Linux
3, 4, or 5 systems. The following are general installation guidelines. Refer to the release notes
that accompanied the driver for information on updating the driver on an existing Red Hat*
Linux system.
1.Boot to the CD-ROM with Disk 1. Command: linux dd
2.Press <Enter> at the boot prompt on the Welcome screen.
3.Copy the Linux driver image from the Resource CD to a disk or USB key.
4.Insert the disk with driver image.
5.Select Yes.
6.Scroll down to select Intel® RAID adapter driver. The utility locates and loads the
driver for your device.
7.Follow the Red Hat* Linux installation procedure to complete the installation.
38Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
RAID Driver Installation for SuSE* Linux
SuSE* Linux uses a program called YaST2 (Yet another System Tool) to configure the
operating system during installation. For complex installations, you can select “Install
Manually” at the first install screen and a different program,
assumes a straightforward installation using YaST2.
1.Insert CD-ROM disk 1 into the CD-ROM drive and the RAID controller driver diskette
in the floppy drive.
1.Boot to the CD-ROM.
2.The operating system loads a minimal operating system from the CD-ROM onto a
RAM disk. The operating system also loads any driver module found in the floppy
drive.
3.At the Welcome to YaST2 screen, select your language and click Accept.
4.At the Installation Settings screen, set up the disk partitioning.
5.Continue with the SuSE* Linux installation procedure.
linuxrc, is used. This section
RAID Driver Installation for Novell NetWare*
Installation in a New Novell Netware* System
Follow the instructions in the Novell Netware* Installation Guide to install Novell Netware in
the server. Perform the following steps to install Novell NetWare using your Intel
controller as a primary adapter.
Note: Drivers for Novell Netware* are not available on the CD-ROM. The latest drivers are available at
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/ or from your CDI account.
1.Boot from Novell NetWare*.
2.Follow the instructions on the screen until you reach the Device Driver screen, which is
used to modify drivers.
3.Select Modify and press <Enter>.
4.On the Storage Driver Support screen select Storage Adapters and press <Enter>.
5.Delete any existing Intel® RAID adapter listings.
6.Press <Insert> to add unlisted drivers.
7.Press <Insert> again.
A path is displayed.
®
RAID
8.Press <F3>.
9.Insert the driver disk into the floppy drive, and press <Enter>.
The system will locate the .HAM driver.
10. Press the <Tab> key.
11. Select the Driver Summary screen, and press <Enter>.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide39
12. Continue the Novell NetWare installation procedure.
Installation in an Existing Novell Netware* System
Perform the following steps to add the Novell NetWare* driver to an existing Installation.
Note: Drivers for Novell Netware* are not available on the CD-ROM. The latest drivers are available at
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/ or from your CDI account.
1.Type nwconfig at the root prompt and press <Enter>. The Configuration Options screen
loads.
2.Select Drive Options and press <Enter>.
3.Select Configure Disk and Storage Device Options, and press <Enter>.
4.Select one of the following options displayed in the window:
a.Discover and Load an Additional Driver - If you select this option, the system
discovers the extra unit and prompts you to select a driver from the list. Press
<Insert> to insert the driver. This completes the procedure.
b.Select an Additional Driver - If you select this option the Select a Driver screen
displays. Press <Insert>. Follow the instructions that display. Insert a disk into the
floppy drive, and press <Enter>. The system will find and install the driver. This
completes the procedure.
RAID Driver Installation for Solaris* 10
Installation in a New Solaris* System
This updated driver can be applied using the normal operating system installation options.
Note: Drivers for Solaris* 10 are not available on the CD-ROM. The latest drivers are available at
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/ or from your CDI account.
Boot the target system from the Solaris* 10 OS DVD (starting with DVD #1).
3.Insert driver floppy or CD into USB floppy or DVD-ROM drive, respectively, on the
target system.
Installation in an Existing Solaris* System
1.Create a temporary directory “/tmp” under current working directory. Command: mkdir
tmp.
2.Depending on your platform, untar i386.tar or x86_64.tar. Command: tar -xf i386.tar or
tar -xf x86_64.tar.
3.Depending on your platform, run install.sh or install32.sh. Command: sh install or sh
install32.
40Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
5Intel
Configuration Utility
If the SATA RAID or SAS RAID options are enabled in the server BIOS, an option to enter the
Intel
process. To enter the utility, press <Ctrl> + <E> when prompted.
The Intel
•Create, add, modify, and clear virtual drive configurations
•Initialize or rebuild the configured drives
•Set the boot drive
•Create a global hot-spare drive
•View physical and virtual drive parameters
•View and set adapter properties, including consistency check and auto-resume
SATA and SAS systems use different versions of the Intel® Embedded Server RAID BIOS
Configuration utility, but both versions use the same keystrokes and contain identical menus.
The utility menus show limited help at the bottom of the screen and selections are chosen with
the arrow keys and the space bar. If no virtual drive is available to configure, a warning is
displayed. Only the number of potential physical drives differs for the SAS and SATA versions
of the utility.
®
Embedded Server RAID BIOS
®
Embedded Server RAID BIOS Configuration utility displays during the server boot
®
Embedded Server RAID BIOS Configuration utility allows a user to:
The following menu and sub-menu options are available:
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide41
Figure 9. Intel® Embedded Server RAID BIOS Configuration Utility Screen
Creating, Adding or Modifying a Virtual Drive Configuration
To create, add, or modify a virtual drive configuration, follow these steps:
1.Boot the system.
2.Press <Ctrl> + <E> when prompted to start the Intel® Embedded Server RAID BIOS
Configuration utility.
3.Select Configure from the Main Menu.
4.Select a configuration method:
—Easy Configuration does not change existing configurations but allows new
configurations.
—New Configuration deletes any existing arrays and virtual drives and creates only
new configurations.
—View/Add Configuration lets you view or modify an existing configuration.
For each configuration method, a list of available physical drives is displayed. These
drives are in the READY state. If you select a physical drive in the list, information
about each drive is displayed.
5.Use the arrow keys to move to a drive and press the space bar to add it to the array.
42Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Note: The utility limits each drive to the size of the smallest drive.
The status for each selected drive that is added to an array changes status from READY
to ONLIN A[array#]-[drive#]. For example, ONLIN A00-01 means array 0, disk
1.
drive
6.(Optional) Create a global hot-spare drive by highlighting a drive that is marked
READY and press the <F4> key. Then select Ye s from the pop-up menu.
7.Repeat step 5 and step 6 to create a second array if needed. When you have selected
drives for all desired arrays, press the <F10> key.
8.Select an array by highlighting it. Press the <Enter> key to set the properties.
9.The virtual drive configuration screen is displayed, This screen shows the following:
—Virtual drive number
—RAID level
—Virtual drive size
—Number of stripes in the physical array
—Stripe size
—State of the virtual drive
—Access Policy
To set these options, highlight a property and press the <Enter> key. The available
parameters for that property are displayed for the selection.
10. Select a RAID level: Select 0, 1, or 10 depending upon number of drives and the
purpose.
11. Consider whether you need to override the default virtual drive size. By default, all
available space in the array is assigned to the current virtual drive. For RAID 10 arrays,
only one virtual drive can be defined for the entire array.
Note: If you create an SSD virtual drive and set the access policy to ‘Read-only', it is
strongly recommended that you reboot the system for the changes to take effect, or
else, you will still have access to create files, and delete them.
12. (Optional) Change the default Write Cache and Read Ahead policies. See Setting the
Write Cache and Read Ahead Policies.
13. When you have finished defining the current virtual drive, select Accept and press the
<Enter> key.
14. Repeat step 8 through step 13 for all virtual drives.
15. Save the configuration when prompted, and press any key to return to the Main Menu.
16. Select Initialize and use the space bar to highlight the virtual drive to initialize.
Caution: All data on the virtual drive is erased during an initialization.
17. Press the <F10> key. Select Ye s at the prompt and press the <Enter> key to begin the
initialization. A graph shows the progress of the initialization.
18. After the initialization is complete, press the <Esc> key to return to the previous menu.
Pressing the <Esc> key closes the current menu. If a process is running when you press
the <Esc> key, you are given the following options:
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide43
—Abort: When Abort is selected, the task is stopped and will not resume. If an
initialization has started, Abort does not restore data.
—Stop: When Stop is selected, the current task stops. Stop is available only if auto
resume is enabled on the adapter. See AutoResume/AutoRestore for information.
—Continue: The task continues normally. Continue cancels the press of the <Esc>
key. If AutoResume is enabled, the task resumes from the point at which it was
stopped.
Setting the Write Cache and Read Ahead Policies
Read and write cache settings apply to all virtual drives in an array. They may show as on/off;
enable/disable; or as initials of the desired state, such as WB for Write Back. They are in
menus as Write Policy and Read Policy or as Write Cache (WC) and Read Ahead (RA). You
can view these policies from the Adapter Properties or from the Virtual Drive's View/Update
Parameters.
The following are the cache policies:
•If WC is on, the write cache of the physical drives, which makes the virtual drive turn
on. In this mode, when the physical drive cache receives all the data, the I/O request is
signaled as completed.
Caution: If power fails before the cached data is written to the drive, the data is lost.
•If WC is off, only if the data is written to the media of the drive, the I/O request is
signaled as completed.
•RA = ON allows the read ahead mode of the physical drives, which makes the virtual
drive turn on. In this mode, the physical drive will read additoinal data and store that data
into its cache. This improves performance on sequential reads.
2.Use the arrow key to select the option to change. Press the <Enter> key.
3.Use the arrow key to select Off or On.
4.If asked to confirm the change, use the arrow key to select Ye s . Press the <Enter> key to
change the cache setting.
Working with a Global Hot-spare Drive
A global, but not dedicated, hot-spare drive can be created to automatically replace a failed
drive in a RAID 1 or RAID 10 array. For new arrays, you should create the global hot-spare
during the configuration process. See “Creating, Adding or Modifying a Virtual Drive
Configuration” on page 42.
44Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Adding a Hot-spare Drive
To add a hot-spare drive to an existing configuration, follow these steps:
1.Select Objects from the Main Menu.
2.Select Physical Drive. A list of physical drives is displayed.
3.Select an unused drive from the list, and select Make Hot Spare. The screen changes to
indicate HOTSP.
Removing a Hot-spare Drive
To remove a hot-spare drive, follow these steps:
1.Select Objects from the Main Menu.
2.Select Physical Drive. A list of physical drives is displayed.
3.Select the disk that displays HOTSP, press the <Enter> key.
4.Select Force Offline and press the <Enter> key. The status of the drive changes to
READY. The drive can be used in another array.
Rebuilding a Drive
The Intel® Embedded Server RAID BIOS Configuration utility includes a manual rebuild
option that rebuilds a failed array due to an individual failed drive in a RAID 1 or 10 array.
RAID 0 drives are not redundant and cannot be rebuilt. You can also rebuild a good drive (not
physically failed) using the existing configuration data.
To rebuild a drive:
1.Select Rebuild from the Main Menu. The failed drives show the status FAIL.
2.Press the arrow keys to highlight the physical drive that you want to rebuild. Press the
space bar to select the drive.
3.Press the <F10> key and select Y to confirm. As the rebuild process begins, the drive
indicator shows REBLD.
4.When the rebuild is complete, press any key to continue.
Auto Rebuild and Auto Resume
To ensure data protection, enable Auto Rebuild and Auto Resume so that drives are
automatically re-created to maintain redundancy.
•In a pre-boot environment, auto rebuild starts only when you enter the BIOS utility.
Note: Hot-plug support is not available in the pre-boot environment. For the system
BIOS or the Intel
the physical drive, insert the drive when the system is off.
®
Embedded Server RAID BIOS Configuration utilityto detect
•When the operating system is running, the auto rebuild starts if the system has a hot-
spare drive or if you replace the failed drive with a new drive.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide45
The Auto Rebuild and Auto Resume options are available in the Intel® Embedded Server
RAID BIOS Configuration utility from the menu that is displayed after you select Objects | Adapter.
Checking Data Consistency
The Check Consistency feature can be used on RAID 1 or RAID 10 drives to verify the data
consistency between the mirrored drives. It can be set to only report or to both report and
automatically fix the data.
1.From the Main Menu, select Check Consistency and press the <Enter> key.
A list of configured virtual drives is displayed.
2.Use the arrow keys to choose the desired drive. Press the space bar to select the virtual
drive to check for consistency. (RAID 1 or 10 only)
3.Press the <F10> key.
4.At the prompt, select Ye s and then press the <Enter> key.
If the Report and Fix/Report options are not shown, select Main Menu | Objects | Adapter |
ChkCons and set Report only or Fix\Report.
Viewing and Changing Device Properties
You can view adapter, virtual drive, and physical drive properties. You can also change some
adapter properties and the Write Cache and Read Ahead for Virtual Drives.
1.From the Main Menu select Objects.
2.Choose Adapter, Virtual Drive, or Physical Drive.
3.Select the device from the list and view the properties.
The numeric values of the rates settings are the percentage of system resources. FGI and
BGI are abbreviations for foreground and background initialization rates.
4.To change a value, highlight the property and press the <Enter> key.
Note: Some values cannot be changed.
5.Select or type a different value for the property and press the <Enter> key.
6.When you are finished, press the <Esc> key until you return to the Main Menu.
Forcing Drives Online or Offline
A drive can be forced offline so that a hot-spare drive will replace it. Power failures may cause
a drive to go offline and you must force it back online.
46Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Forcing a Drive Online or Offline
You can force a drive offline so that a hot-spare replaces it. Power failures may cause a drive to
go offline and you must force it back online.l To force a drive online or offline, follow these
steps:
1.On the Main Menu, select Objects and then Physical Drive.
2.Highlight a physical drive that is a member of an array and press the <Enter> key.
3.From the menu, choose one of the following:
—Force Offline to take the drive off line. If the drive was online, its status changes to
FAIL.
—Force Online to bring the drive on line. If the drive was offline, its status changes to
ONLINE.
Configuring a Bootable Virtual Drive
Follow these steps to configure a bootable virtual drive:
1.From the Main Menu, select Configure | Select Boot Drive.
2.Select a virtual drive from the list to make it the designated boot drive.
Note: You should also check the system BIOS Setup utility for the boot order setting. To access the BIOS
Setup utility, press the <F2> key when prompted during POST.
Deleting (Clearing) a Storage Configuration
Caution: Before you clear a storage configuration, back up all the data you want to keep.
To clear a storage configuration, follow these steps:
1.On the Main Menu, select Configure | Clear Configuration.
2.When the message appears, select Ye s to confirm. All virtual drives are deleted from the
configuration.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide47
48Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
6Intel
This chapter explains how to create Integrated Mirroring (IM), Integrated Mirroring
Enhanced (IME), and Integrated Striping (IS) volumes using the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS
Configuration Utility.
IT/IR RAID Configuration
IM and IME Configuration Overview
®
Features
Note: This feature requires IR RAID firmware v1.20.00 or above to be installed.
You can use the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility to create one or two IM/IME
volumes on each Intel
disks. All disks in an IM/IME volume must be connected to the same Intel
Controller.
Although you can use disks of different size in IM and IME volumes, the smallest disk in
the volume will determine the logical size of all disks in the volume. In other words, the
excess space of the larger member disk(s) will not be used. For example, if you create an
IME volume with two 100 GB disks and two 120 GB disks, only 100 GB of the larger
disks will be used for the volume.
Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced support the following featurs:
•Configurations of one or two IM or IME volumes on the same Intel
Controller. IM volumes have two mirrored disks; IME volumes have three to ten
mirrored disks. Two volumes can have up to a total of 12 disks.
•One or two global hot-spare disks per controller, to automatically replace failed
disks in IM/IME volumes. The hot-spare drivess are in addition to the 12-disk
maximum for two volumes per Intel
®
IT/IR RAID Controller, with one or two optional global hot-spare
®
IT/IR RAID Controller.
®
IT/IR RAID
®
IT/IR RAID
Note: Support for two hot-spare disks requires IR RAID firmware v1.20.00 or above.
•Mirrored volumes run in optimal mode or in degraded mode (if one mirrored disk
fails).
•Hot-swap capability.
•Presents a single virtual drive to the OS for each IM/IME volume.
•Supports both SAS and SATA disks. The two types of disks cannot be combined in
the same volume. However, a Intel
with SATA disks and a second volume with SAS disks.
•Fusion-MPT* architecture.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide49
®
IT/IR RAID Controller can support one volume
•Easy-to-use BIOS-based configuration utility.
•Error notification: The drivers update an OS-specific event log.
•LED status support.
•Write journaling, which allows automatic synchronization of potentially
inconsistent data after unexpected power-down situations.
•Metadata used to store volume configuration on mirrored disks.
•Automatic background resynchronization while the host continues to process
inputs/outputs (I/Os).
Background media verification ensures that data on IM/IME volumes is always
accessible.
Creating IM and IME Volumes
The LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility is part of the Fusion-MPT* BIOS. When
the BIOS loads during boot and you see the message about the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS
Configuration Utility, press <Ctrl> + <C> to start the utility. The message then changes
to:
Please wait, invoking LSI SAS Configuration Utility...
After a brief pause, the main menu appears. On some systems, however, the following
message appears:
Configuration Utility will load following initialization!
In this case, the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility loads after the system has
completed a power-on self test. You can configure one or two IM or IME volumes per
Fusion-MPT* controller. You can also configure one IM/IME and one Integrated Striping
(IS) volume on the same controller, up to a maximum of 12 physical disk drives for the
two volumes. In addition, you can create one or two hot spares for the IM/IME array(s).
The following guidelines also apply when creating an IM or IME volume:
•All physical disks in a volume must be either SATA (with extended command set
support) or SAS (with SMART support). SAS and SATA disks cannot be combined
in the same volume. However, you can create one volume with SAS disks and a
second volume with SATA disks on the same controller.
•Disks must have 512 byte blocks and must not have removable media.
•An IM volume must have two drives. An IME volume can have three to ten drives.
In addition, one or two hot spares can be created for the IM/IME volume(s).
Note: If a disk in an IM/IME volume fails, it is rebuilt on the global hot spare if one is available.
Intel recommends that you always use hot spares with IM/IME volumes.
50Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide
Creating an IM Volume
To create an IM volume with the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility, follow
these steps:
1.On the Adapter List screen, use the arrow keys to select an adapter.
2.Press <Enter> to go to the Adapter Properties screen, shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10. Adapter Properties Screen
3.On the Adapter Properties screen, use the arrow keys to select RAID Properties on
the screen and press <Enter>.
4.When prompted to select a volume type, select Create IM Volume.
The Create New Array screen shows a list of disks available to be added to a
volume.
5.Move the cursor to the RAID Disk column and select a disk. To add the disk to the
volume, change the No to Yes by pressing the <+> or <-> keys, or the space bar.
When the first disk is added, the utility prompts you to either keep existing data or
overwrite existing data.
6.Press <M> to keep the existing data on the first disk or press <D> to overwrite it.
If you keep the existing data, this is called a data migration. The first disk will be
mirrored onto the second disk, so any data you want to keep must be on the first
disk selected for the volume. Data on the second disk is overwritten. The first disk
must have 512 KB available for metadata after the last partition.
As disks are added, the Array Size field changes to reflect the size of the new
volume.
7.[Optional] Add one or two global hot spares by moving the cursor to the hot spare
column and pressing the <+> or <-> keys, or the space bar.
Figure 11 shows an IM volume configured with one global hot-spare disk.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide51
8.When the volume has been fully configured, press <C> and select Save Changes.
Then exit this menu to commit the changes.
The LSI MPT SAS BIOS Configuration Utility* pauses while the array is created.
Creating an IME Volume
To create an IME volume with the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility, follow
these steps:
1.On the Adapter List screen, use the arrow keys to select an Intel® IT/IR RAID
Controller.
2.Press <Enter> to load the Adapter Properties screen, shown in Figure 10.
3.On the Adapter Properties screen, use the arrow keys to select RAID Properties on
the screen and press <Enter>.
4.When prompted to select a volume type, choose Create IME Volume.
The Create New Array screen shows a list of disks that can be added to a volume.
5.Move the cursor to the RAID Disk column and select a disk. To add the disk to the
volume, change the No to Yes by pressing the <+> or <-> keys, or the space bar.
6.Repeat this step to select a total of three to ten disks for the volume.
Figure 11. Create New Array Screen
All existing data on all the disks you select will be overwritten. As you add disks,
the Array Size field changes to reflect the size of the new volume.
7.[Optional] Add one or two global hot spares to the volume by moving the cursor to
the hot spare column and pressing the <+> or <-> keys, or the space bar.
8.When the volume has been fully configured, press <C> and then select Save changes. Exit the menu to commit the changes.
The utility pauses while the array is created.
52Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide
Creating a Second IM or IME Volume
Intel® IT/IR RAID Controllers allow you to configure two IM or IME volumes per
controller. If one volume is already configured, and if there are available disk drives, there
are two ways to add a second volume.
Option 1:
1.In the configuration utility, select an adapter from the Adapter List.
2.Select the RAID Properties option to display the current volume.
3.Press <C> to create a new volume.
4.Continue with either step 4 in “Creating an IM Volume“ on page 51 or step 4 in
“Creating an IME Volume“ on page 52 to create a second volume.
Option 2:
1.On the Adapter List screen, use the arrow keys to select an Intel® IT/IR RAID
Controller.
2.Press <Enter> to go to the Adapter Properties screen, shown in Figure 10.
3.On the Adapter Properties screen, use the arrow keys to select RAID Properties
and press <Enter>.
4.Continue with either step 4 in “Creating an IM Volume“ on page 51 or step 4 in
“Creating an IME Volume“ on page 52to create a second volume.
Managing Hot Spares
You can create one or two global hot-spare disks to protect the IM or IME volumes on an
®
IT/IR RAID controller. Usually, you create global hot spares at the same time you
Intel
create the IM/IME volume.
To add global hot-spare disks after an IM/IME volume has been created, follow these
steps:
1.On the View Array screen, select Manage Array.
2.In the Manage Array screen select Manage Hot Spares, as shown in Figure 12.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide53
Figure 12. Manage Array Screen
3.Select a disk from the list by pressing the <+> or <-> key, or the space bar.
4.After you select the global hot-spare disk, press <C>.
An error message appears if the selected disk is not at least as large as the smallest
disk used in the IM/IME volume(s). The global hot-spare disk must have 512 byte
blocks, it cannot have removable media, and the disk type must be either SATA
with extended command set support or SAS with SMART support.
If SATA disks are used for the IM/IME volume(s), the hot-spare disk must also be a
SATA disk. If SAS disks are used, the hot-spare disk must also be a SAS disk. An
error message appears if the selected disk is not the same type as the disks used in
the IM/IME volumes.
5.[Optional] Select a second hot-spare disk.
6.Select Save changes then exit this menu to commit the changes.
The configuration utility pauses while the global hot spares are added.
To delete a global hot spare, follow these steps:
1.Select Manage Hot Spare on the Manage Array screen.
2.Select Delete Hot Spare and then press <C>.
If there are two hot spares, select one to delete.
3.Select Save changes then exit this menu to commit the changes.
The configuration utility pauses while the global hot spare is removed.
54Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide
Other Configuration Tasks
This section explains how to perform other configuration and maintenance tasks for IM
and IME volumes.
Viewing Volume Properties
To view the properties of volumes, follow these steps:
1.In theLSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility, select an adapter from the
Adapter List.
2.Select the RAID Properties option.
The properties of the current volume are displayed. If global hot spares are defined,
they are also listed.
Note: If you create one volume using SAS disks, another volume using SATA disks,
and another using global hot-spare disks, the hot-spare disks will only appear
when you view the volume that has the same type of disks as the hot-spare
disks.
3.If two volumes are configured, press <Alt> + <N> to view the other array.
4.To manage the current array, select Manage Array and press < Enter>.
Synchronizing an Array
The Synchronize Array command forces the firmware to resynchronize the data on the
mirrored disks in the array. It is seldom necessary to use this command, because the
firmware automatically keeps the mirrored data synchronized during normal operation.
When you use this command, one disk of the array is placed in a degraded state until the
data on the mirrored disks has been resynchronized.
To force the synchronization of a selected array, follow these steps:
1.Select Synchronize Array on the Manage Array screen.
2.Press <Y> to start the synchronization, or <N> to cancel it.
Activating an Array
An array can become inactive if it is removed from one controller or computer and moved
to another one. The Activate Array option allows you to reactivate an inactive array that
has been added to a system. This option is only available when the selected array is
currently inactive.
To activate a selected array, follow these steps:
1.Select Activate Array on the Manage Array screen.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide55
2.Press <Y> to proceed with the activation, or press <N> to abandon it.
After a pause, the array will be active.
Note: If there is a global hot-spare disk on the controller to which you have moved
the array, the BIOS checks when you activate the array to determine if the hot
spare is compatible with the new array. An error message appears if the disks
in the activated array are larger than the hot-spare disk or if the disks in the
activated array are not the same type as the hot-spare disk (SATA versus SAS).
Deleting an Array
Caution: If a volume has been deleted, it cannot be recovered. Before deleting an array, be sure to
back up all data on the array that you want to keep.
To delete a selected array, follow these steps:
1.Select Delete Array on the Manage Array screen.
2.Press <Y> to delete the array.
After a pause, the array is deleted. If there is a remaining array and one or two hotspare disks, the BIOS checks the hot-spare disks to determine if they are
compatible with the remaining array. If they are not compatible (i.e., they are too
small or the wrong disk type), the firmware deletes them as well.
Note: When an IM volume is deleted, the data is preserved on the primary disk.
When an IME volume is deleted, the master boot records of all disks are
deleted.
Locating a Drive or Multiple Drives in a Volume
You can use the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility to locate and identify a
specific physical disk drive by flashing the drive’s LED. You can also use the utility to
flash the LEDs of all the disk drives in a RAID volume. There are several ways to do this:
•When you are creating an IM or IME volume, and a disk drive is set to Yes as part of
the volume, the LED on the disk drive is flashing. The LED is turned off when you
have finished creating the volume.
•You can locate individual disk drives from the SAS Topology screen. To do this,
move the cursor to the name of the disk in the Device Identifier column and press
<Enter>. The LED on the disk flashes until the next key is pressed.
•You can locate all the disk drives in a volume by selecting the volume on the SAS
Topology screen. The LEDs flash on all disk drives in the volume.
Note: The LEDs on the disk drives will flash as described above if the firmware is correctly
configured and the drives or the disk enclosure supports disk location.
56Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide
Selecting a Boot Disk
You can select a boot disk in the SAS Topology screen. The selected disk is moved to scan
ID 0 on the next boot, and remains at this position. This makes it easier to set the BIOS
boot device options and to keep the boot device constant during device additions and
removals. There can only be one boot disk.
To select a boot disk, follow these steps:
1.In the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility, select an adapter from the
Adapter List.
2.Select the SAS Top ol ogy option.
The current topology is displayed. If the selection of a boot device is supported, the
bottom of the screen lists the <Alt> + <B> option. This is the key for toggling the
boot device. If a device is currently configured as the boot device, the Device Info
column on the Topology screen will show the word “Boot.”
3.To select a boot disk, move the cursor to the disk and press <Alt> + <B>.
4.To remove the boot designator, move the cursor down to the current boot disk and
press <Alt> + <B>.
This controller will no longer have a disk designated as boot.
5.To change the boot disk, move the cursor to the new boot disk and press <Alt> +
<B>.
The boot designator will move to this disk.
Note: The firmware must be configured correctly in order for the <Alt> + <B>
feature to work.
IS Configuration Overview
You can use the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility to create one or two IS
volumes, with up to a total of 12 drives, on an Intel
can have from two to ten drives. Disks in an IS volume must be connected to the same
®
IT/IR RAID Controller, and the controller must be in the BIOS boot order.
Intel
Although you can use disks of different size in IS volumes, the smallest disk determines
the “logical” size of each disk in the volume. In other words, the excess space of the larger
member disk(s) is not used. Usable disk space for each disk in an IS volume is adjusted
down to a lower value in order to leave room for metadata. Usable disk space may be
further reduced to maximize the ability to interchange disks in the same size classification.
The supported stripe size is 64 kbytes.
For more information about Integrated Striping volumes, see “Features“ on page 49.
®
IT/IR RAID Controller. Each volume
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide57
Creating IS Volumes
The LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility is part of the Fusion-MPT* BIOS. When
the BIOS loads during boot and you see the message about the utility, press <Ctrl> + <C>
to start it. After you do this, the message changes to:
Please wait, Invoking Configuration Utility...
After a brief pause, the main menu of the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility
appears. On some systems, however, the following message appears next:
Configuration Utility will load following initialization!
In this case, the utility will load after the system has completed its power-on self test.
Follow the steps below to configure an Integrated Striping (IS) volume with the LSI
MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility. The procedure assumes that the required
controller(s) and disks are already installed in the computer system. You can configure an
IM/IME volume and an IS volume on the same Intel
1.On the Adapter List screen of the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility, use
the arrow keys to select a RAID adapter.
2.Press <Enter> to go to the Adapter Properties screen, as shown in Figure 13.
®
IT/IR RAID Controller.
Figure 13. Adapter Properties Screen
3.On the Adapter Properties screen, use the arrow keys to select RAID Properties
and press <Enter>.
4.When you are prompted to select a volume type, select Create IS Volume.
The Create New Array screen shows a list of disks that can be added to a volume.
5.Move the cursor to the RAID Disk column. To add a disk to the volume, change the
No to Yes by pressing the <+> or <-> key, or the space bar. As disks are added, the
Array Size field changes to reflect the size of the new volume.
There are several limitations when creating an IS (RAID 0) volume:
58Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide
—All disks must be either SATA (with extended command set support) or SAS
(with SMART support).
—Disks must have 512 byte blocks and must not have removable media.
—There must be at least two and no more than ten drives in a valid IS volume.
Hot-spare drives are not allowed.
Figure 14. Create New Array Screen
6.When you have added the desired number of disks to the array, press <C> and then
select Save changes. Then exit the menu to commit the changes. The configuration
utility pauses while the array is created.
Creating a Second IS Volume
The Intel® IT/IR RAID Controllers allow you to configure two IS volumes, or an IS
volume and an IM/IME volume. If one volume is already configured, and if there are
available disk drives, there are two ways to add a second volume.
Option 1: Perform the following steps:
1.In the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility select an adapter from the
Adapter List. Select the RAID Properties option.
The current volume will be displayed.
2.Press <C> to create a new volume.
3.Continue with Step 4 of “Creating IS Volumes,” to create a second IS volume.
Option 2: Perform the following steps:
1.On the Adapter List screen, use the arrow keys to select an Intel® IT/IR RAID
Controller.
2.Press <Enter> to go to the Adapter Properties screen, shown in Figure 13.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide59
3.On the Adapter Properties screen, use the arrow keys to select RAID Properties
and press <Enter>.
4.Continue with step 4 in “Creating IS Volumes“ on page 58 to create a second IS
volume.
Other Configuration Tasks
This section explains how to perform other configuration and maintenance tasks for IS
volumes.
Viewing IS Volume Properties
To view the properties of IS volumes, follow these steps:
1.In the configuration utility, select an adapter from the Adapter List.
2.Select the RAID Properties option.
The properties of the current volume are displayed.
3.If more than one volume is configured, press <Alt> + <N> to view the next array.
4.To manage the current array, press <Enter> when the Manage Array item is
selected.
Activating an Array
An array can become inactive if, for example, it is removed from one controller or
computer and moved to another one. The “Activate Array” option allows you to reactivate
an inactive array that has been added to a system. This option is only available when the
selected array is currently inactive.
To activate an array once it has been selected, follow these steps:
1.Choose Activate Array on the Manage Array screen.
2.Press <Y> to proceed with the activation, or press <N> to abandon it. After a pause,
the array will be active.
Deleting an Array
Caution: Once a volume has been deleted, it cannot be recovered. Before deleting an array, be sure
to back up all data on the array that you want to keep.
To delete a selected array, follow these steps:
1.Select Delete Array on the Manage Array screen.
60Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide
2.Press <Y> to delete the array, or press <N> to abandon the deletion. After a pause,
the firmware deletes the array.
Note: The master boot records of all disks are deleted and data cannot be recovered.
Locating a Disk Drive, or Multiple Disk Drives in a Volume
You can use the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility to locate and identify a
specific physical disk drive by flashing the drive’s LED. You can also use the utility to
flash the LEDs of all the disk drives in a RAID volume. There are several ways to do this:
•When you are creating an IS volume, and a disk drive is set to Yes as part of the
volume, the LED on the disk drive is flashing. The LED is turned off when you are
finished creating the volume.
•You can locate individual disk drives from the SAS Topology screen. To do this,
move the cursor to the name of the disk in the Device Identifier column and press
<Enter>. The LED on the disk flashes until the next key is pressed.
•You can locate all the disk drives in a volume by selecting the volume on the SAS
Topology screen. The LEDs flash on all disk drives in the volume.
Note: The LEDs on the disk drives will flash as described above if the firmware is correctly
configured and the drives or the disk enclosure supports disk location.
Selecting a Boot Disk
You can select a boot disk in the SAS Topology screen. This disk is then moved to scan ID
0 on the next boot, and remains at this position. This makes it easier to set BIOS boot
device options and to keep the boot device constant during device additions and removals.
There can be only one boot disk.
To select a boot disk, follow these steps:
1.In the LSI MPT* SAS BIOS Configuration Utility, select an adapter from the
Adapter List.
2.Select the SAS Topology option.
The current topology is displayed. If the selection of a boot device is supported, the
bottom of the screen lists the <Alt> + <B> option. This is the key for toggling the
boot device. If a device is currently configured as the boot device, the Device Info
column on the SAS Topology screen will show the word “Boot.”
3.To select a boot disk, move the cursor to the disk and press <Alt> + <B>.
4.To remove the boot designator, move the cursor down to the current boot disk and
press <Alt> + <B>.
This controller will no longer have a disk designated as boot.
5.To change the boot disk, move the cursor to the new boot disk and press <Alt> +
<B>.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide61
The boot designator will move to this disk.
Note: The firmware must be configured correctly for the <Alt> + <B> feature to
work.
62Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide
7Intel
The Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 utility provides a GUI utility to configure and manage
RAID volumes. The utility configures disk groups and virtual drives. Because the utility
resides in the RAID controller firmware, it is independent of the operating system.
The Intel
•Selects controller
•Displays controller properties
•Scans devices
•Displays the physical properties of devices
•Configures physical drives
•Defines virtual drives
•Displays virtual drive properties
•Initializes virtual drives
•Checks data for consistency
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 Utility
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 utility:
The Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 utility provides a Configuration Wizard to guide you
through the configuration of virtual drives and physical arrays.
Quick Configuration Steps
This section provides the steps to configure arrays and disk groups, and virtual drives using the
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 utility. The following sections describe how to perform each
Intel
action using the Intel
1.Power on the system.
2.Press <Ctrl>+<G> to start the Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 utility.
Note: Some server boards have a BIOS SETUP option called "Port 60/64 Emulation" (or
with other similar name). Please ensure this option is enabled in order to use
Intel
3.Start the Configuration Wizard.
4.Choose a configuration method.
5.Using the available physical drives, create arrays and disk groups.
6.Using the space in the arrays and disk groups, define the virtual drive(s).
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 utility. The steps are as follows:
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 successfully.
7.Initialize the new virtual drives.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide63
Detailed Configuration Steps using the Intel® RAID BIOS
Console 2
Start the Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 Utility
1.When the system boots, hold down the <Ctrl> key and press the <G> key when the
following is displayed:
Press <Ctrl><G> to enter the RAID BIOS Console
After you press <Ctrl>+<G>, the Controller Selection screen appears.
2.Select a controller and click Start to begin the configuration.
Note: If there is a configuration mismatch between the disks and the NVRAM, the utility automatically
displays the Select Configuration screen. Choose whether the configuration should be read from the
RAID array or from NVRAM. For more information, see
page 70.
Screen and Option Descriptions
“Configuration Mismatch Screen” on
Toolbar Options
This section describes the Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 screens and options.
Return to the page you accessed immediately
before the current page.
Exit the Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 utility.
Silence the alarm.
64Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Main Screen
From the main screen, you can scan the devices connected to the controller, select an Intel®
RAID controller, and switch between the Physical Drives view and Virtual Drives view. The
main screen also provides access to the following screens and tools:
•Controller Selection
•Controller Properties
•Scan Devices
•Virtual Drives
•Drives
•Configuration Wizard
•Physical View
•Events
•Exit
Figure 15. Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 Menu
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide65
Controller Selection
This option allows you to choose an Intel® RAID controller installed in the system.
Controller Properties Screen
When you select the Controller Selection option on the main screen, the Intel® RAID BIOS
Console 2 utility displays a list of the Intel RAID controllers in the system.
The Controller Properties screen allows you to view and configure the software and hardware
of the selected controller.
•Host Interface: The host interface for the installed RAID controller.
•NVRAM Size: The NVRAM size on the RAID controller.
•Firmware Time: The firmware release date/time.
•Min Stripe Size: The minimum stripe size used to read and write data.
•WebBIOS Version: The BIOS version for the Intel
®
RAID BIOS Console 2.
•Sub Device ID: The sub-device ID (identification) for the RAID controller.
•Sub Vendor ID: The sub-vendor ID (identification) for the RAID controller.
•Port Count: Number of ports available.
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®
RAID Software User’s Guide
•Memory Size: The memory size of the installed DIMM (Dual In-Line Memory
Module).
•Max Stripe Size: The maximum stripe size.
•Physical Disk Count: The number of physical disks connected to the RAID controller.
Additional Controller Properties
To access the screen that displays the additional controller properties, click Next on the
Controller Properties screen. To change one of the properties displayed in the screen below,
select the new value and click Submit.
Figure 18. Additional Controller Properties
•Battery Backup: Indicates if a battery backup unit is installed.
•Set Factory Defaults: Change this field to Ye s to reset the RAID controller settings to
the factory defaults.
•Cluster Mode: Enable this field if the RAID controller is used in a cluster.
•Rebuild Rate: Enter a number between 0 and 100 to control the rate at which a future
rebuild will be performed on a disk group.
•Patrol Read Rate: A patrol read is a preventive procedure that monitors physical disks
to locate and resolve potential problems that could lead to disk failure. Enter a number
between 0 and 100 to control the rate at which patrol reads are performed.
•BGI Rate (Background Initialization Rate): Background initialization makes the
virtual drive immediately available for use, even while initialization is occurring. Enter a
number between 0 and 100 to control the rate at which virtual drives are initialized in the
background.
•CC Rate (Check Consistency Rate): A consistency check scans the consistency of data
on a fault-tolerant disk to determine if the data is corrupted. Enter a number between 0
and 100 to control the rate at which a consistency check is done.
•Reconstruction Rate: Enter a number between 0 and 100 to control the rate at which the
reconstruction of a virtual drive occurs.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide67
•Adapter BIOS: Determines whether the Option ROM is loaded.
•Coercion Mode:
—None: No coercion of size.
—128M: The software rounds the drive capacity down to the next 128 MB boundary
and then up to the nearest 10 MB until the coerced capacity is larger than the actual
drive size. It is then reduced by 10 MB.
—1G: The software rounds the drive capacity down to the nearest 1 GB boundary and
then down by 1 MB. This corresponds to the terms most drive manufacturers use.
•PDF Interval: The PDF interval is the predictive disk failure polling interval. This is the
time needed between disk polls to perform SMART polling.
•Alarm Control: Disable the alarm to turn off the on-board speaker alarm.
•Interrupt Throttle Count and Interrupt Throttle Time: Sets the interrupt throttle and
count times. This is the number of times that interrupts are coalesced and the amount of
time that firmware holds an interrupt before passing it to the host software. Set values
lower for better performance—be aware that latency is impacted by these settings.
•Cache Flush Interval: This sets the cache flush interval. Valid settings are 2, 4, 6, 8, or
10 seconds.
•Spinup Drive Count: This setting controls the number of drives that spin up at one
time.
•Spinup Delay: After the RAID controller completes its initialization process, the initial
delay value defines the number of seconds before the first disk interrogation request is
issued to the array or disk group. Do not change this value.
•Stop On Error: Stops system POST if any error is detected.
•NCQ: Enables NCQ (Native Command Queuing) to optimize physical drive
performance and life.
•Stop CC On Error: Stops Consistency Check if any error is detected.
•Schedule CC: Schedules a Consistency Check.
•Maintain PD Fail History: Enables tracking of bad PDs across reboot.
Scan Devices Option
When you select the Scan Devices option on the Main screen, the Intel® RAID BIOS Console
2 checks the physical and virtual drives for any changes of the drive status. The Intel
BIOS Console 2 displays the results of the scan in the physical and virtual drive descriptions.
Virtual Drives Screen
You can access the virtual drives screen by clicking on a virtual drive in the virtual drive list on
the main screen. The upper right section of the screen displays the virtual drives that currently
exist. The Virtual Drives screen provides options to:
®
RAID
•Initialize the virtual drives: The Slow Initialize option initializes the selected virtual
drive by writing zeroes to the entire volume. You should initialize each new virtual drive
that you configure.
Warni ng:Initializing a virtual drive deletes all information on the physical drives that
compose the virtual drive.
68Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
•Check consistency (CC): This option verifies the correctness of the redundancy data and
is available for arrays and disk groups using RAID 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60. If a difference in
the data is found, the Intel
automatically corrects the parity value.
•Display the virtual drive properties: Through the Properties option, you can:
—Display the virtual drive properties (such as RAID level, virtual drive size, and stripe
—Display the read, write, Access, Disk Cache, BGI (Background Initialization), and
—Change the read, write, Access, Disk Cache, BGI, and I/O policies.
—Select Write Through, Write Back with BBU, or Always Write Back.
—Start initialization.
—Start a consistency check.
After setting any property, click Go to perform the selected operation. Click Change to apply
any policy changes.
Physical Drives Screen
size).
I/O policies.
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 assumes that the data is accurate and
This screen displays the physical drives for each channel or port. From this screen, you can
rebuild the physical arrays or disk groups, or view the properties for the physical drive you
select.
•Click Reset to return to the configuration that existed before you made any changes.
•Select Properties and click Go to view the properties. An unconfigured drive can be
made into a hot spare from the Properties screen.
Configuration Wizard Option
This option enables you to clear a configuration, create a new configuration, or add a
configuration. “Setting Up a RAID Array Using the Configuration Wizard” on page 70
provides detailed steps for using the Configuration Wizard.
Events Screen
This option displays the events generated by physical drives, physical devices, enclosure, the
®
Smart Battery, and SAS controller. See Appendix B: “Events and Messages” on
Intel
page 175 for events and message descriptions.
Physical View/Logical View Option
This option toggles between Physical View and Logical View.
Exit
This option allows you to exit and reboot the system.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide69
Configuration Mismatch Screen
A configuration mismatch occurs when the data in the NVRAM and the hard disk drives are
different. It automatically displays after POST when a configuration mismatch occurs. The
Configuration Mismatch screen allows you to:
•Select Create New Configuration to delete the previous configuration and create a new
configuration.
•Select View Disk Configuration to restore the configuration from the hard disk.
•Select View NVRAM Configuration to restore the configuration from the NVRAM.
Setting Up a RAID Array Using the Configuration Wizard
This section provides detailed steps for using the Configuration Wizard to set up a RAID array.
1.Start the Configuration Wizard by selecting the Configuration Wizard icon on the
The following configuration methods options are provided:
—Automatic Configuration
There are two options in Redundancy. Redundancy When Possible or No
Redundancy.
Redundancy When Possible configures configures RAID 1 for systems with two
drives or RAID 5 for systems with three or more drives, or RAID 6 for systems with
three or more drives. All available physical drives are included in the virtual drive
using all available capacity on the disks.
No Redundancy configures all available drives as a RAID 0 virtual drive.
There is a Drive Security Method option which is reserved to be enabled in future.
Note: You must designate hot-spare drives before starting auto configuration using all
available capacity on the disks.
—Manual Configuration
Allows you to configure the RAID mode.
Note: Automatic Configuration cannot be used for RAID 10, 50, or 60 or with mixed SATA and SAS drives.
72Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Creating RAID 0, 1, 5, or 6 using Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2
(detailed)
This section describes the process to set up RAID modes using the custom configuration
options.
1.When the server boots, hold the <Ctrl> key and press the <G> key when the following
is displayed:
Press <Ctrl><G> to enter RAID BIOS Console
The Controller Selection screen appears.
2.Select a controller and click Start to begin the configuration.
3.Choose Manual Configuration and click Next (see Figure 21).
4.At the Disk Group Definition (DG Definition) screen, hold down the <Ctrl> key and
click each drive you want to include in the array or disk group.
See “RAID Levels” on page 9 for the required minimum number of drives that must be
added.
5.Click Add To Array. If you make a mistake and need to remove drives, click Reclaim.
6.Click Next.
7.In the next screen, click Add to Span and then click Next.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide73
8.On the VD Definition window, select RAID 0, 1, 5, or 6 from the first dropdown box.
9.Enter the virtual drive size in the Select Size box.
This example shows a specific size. Depending on the RAID level you choose , you
may need to manually type in the expected volume size. The possible sizes for some
RAID levels are listed on right panel of the screen for reference.
10. If needed, change the Stripe Size, the policies for Access, Read, Write, IO, and Disk
Cache and decide whether to use background initialization.
For information about setting these parameters, see “Setting Drive Parameters” on
16. Click Home to return to the main configuration screen.
17. Select an additional virtual drive to configure or exit the Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2
configuration utility and reboot the system.
76Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
Creating RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60 using Intel® RAID
BIOS Console 2
RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60 require setting up multiple RAID arrays/disk groups.
1.When the server boots, hold the <Ctrl> key and press the <G> key when the following
is displayed:
Press <Ctrl><G> to enter the RAID BIOS Console
After you press <Ctrl>+<G>, the Controller Selection screen appears.
2.Select a controller and click Start to begin the configuration.
3.Select Custom Configuration and click Next (see Figure 21).
4.At the Virtual Drive Definition (VD Definition) screen, hold down the <Ctrl> key and
click each drive you want included in the first array.
—For RAID 10, use two drives.
—For RAID 50, use at least three drives.
—For RAID 60, use at least three drives.
5.Click Add To Array, and then click Accept DG in the right pane to confirm.
The first group of drives appears as a disk group in the right pane. These drives are no
longer available in the left pane.
6.From the drives that are available in the left pane, choose an additional group of drives
and again click Add To Array, and click Accept DG to confirm.
Each disk group must contain the identical quantity and size of drives.
Multiple drive groups are now displayed in the right pane. You can add up to eight
arrays to the right pane for either RAID 10, RAID 50, or RAID 60.
Figure 26. Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 – Multiple Disk Groups for RAID 10, 50, or 60
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide77
7.Select all arrays or disk groups that are to be spanned in the RAID 10, 50, or 60 array by
holding down the <Ctrl> key and selecting each array/disk group in the right pane.
8.Click Next.
9.In the next screen, click Add to SPAN to move all arrays from the left pane to the right
pane. Use <Ctrl> to select all SPANs on the right pane.
10. Click Next.
11. At the Virtual Drive Definition (VD Definition) screen, select either RAID 10, RAID
50, or RAID 60 from the RAID Level drop-down.
RAID 10 is illustrated below.
12. Select the appropriate Stripe Size, Access Policy, Read Policy, Write Policy, IO Policy,
Disk Cache Policy, and Enable/Disable BGI for your application.
For information about setting these parameters, see “Setting Drive Parameters” on
page 82.
13. Set the drive size to a number in MB that is a size greater then the size of the RAID 1,
RAID 5, or RAID 6 size listed in the disk group.
14. Click Next if the application does not automatically progress to the next screen.
78Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
The configuration preview screen displays the virtual drive as shown below. The
configuration preview screen displays the virtual drive (RAID 1 for RAID 10, or RAID
50 or RAID 60).
The following fields are displayed in the VD Definition screen (see Figure 23 and Figure 27),
which can be used to set the virtual drive parameters:
•RAID Level:
—RAID Level 0: Data striping
—RAID Level 1: Data mirroring
—RAID Level 5: Data striping with parity
—RAID Level 6: Distributed Parity and Disk Striping
—RAID level 10: Striped mirroring
—RAID Level 50: Striped RAID 5
—RAID Level 60: Distributed parity, with two independent parity blocks per stripe
•Stripe Size: Specify the size of the segment written to each disk. Available stripe sizes
are 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1024 Kbytes.
•Access Policy: Select the type of data access that is allowed for this virtual drive. The
choices are Read/Write, Read Only, or Blocked.
•Read Policy: Enables the read-ahead feature for the virtual drive. Read Adaptive is the
default setting.
—Normal: The controller does not use read-ahead for the current virtual drive.
—Read-ahead: Additional consecutive stripes are read and buffered into cache. This
option will improve performance for sequential reads.
—Adaptive: The controller begins using read-ahead if the two most recent disk
accesses occurred in sequential sectors.
•Write Policy: Determines when the transfer complete signal is sent to the host. Write-
through caching is the default setting.
—Write-back caching (Further classified as Write Back with BBU or Always Write
Back, which means Write Back is always enabled even if BBU is bad or missing):
The controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller
cache receives all of the data in a transaction. Write-back caching has a performance
advantage over write-through caching, but it should only be enabled when the
optional battery backup module is installed. The risk of using Always Write Back
should be fully recognized.
—Write-through caching: The controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the
host after the disk subsystem receives all the data in a transaction. Write-through
caching has a data security advantage over write-back caching.
Caution: Do not use write-back caching for any virtual drive in a Novell NetWare*
volume.
•IO Policy: Applies to reads on a specific virtual drive. It does not affect the read-ahead
cache.
—Cached IO: All reads are buffered in cache memory.
—Direct IO: Reads are not buffered in cache memory. Data is transferred to cache and
to the host concurrently. If the same data block is read again, it comes from cache
memory.
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®
RAID Software User’s Guide
•Disk Cache Policy: The cache policy applies to the cache on physical drives of the
current array.
—Enable: Enable disk cache. Enabling the disk cache in Write-back mode provides
little or no performance enhancement, while the risk of data loss due to power failure
increases.
—Disable: Disable disk cache.
—NoChange: Leave the default disk cache policy unchanged.
•Disable BGI: Enable or disable background initialization. Set this option to “Yes” to
disable background initialization.
•Select Size: Set the size of the virtual drive in megabytes. The right pane of the virtual
drive configuration window lists the maximum capacity that can be selected, depending
on the RAID level chosen.
Creating a Hot Spare
To create a hot spare, follow these steps:
1.On the main screen, select the drive that should be used as the hot spare.
Figure 33. Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 – Choosing a Hot Spare Drive
2.Select the disk group.
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide83
3.Click one of the following:
—Click Make Dedicated HSP to add the drive as a hot spare dedicated for certain
virtual drives.
—Click Make Global HSP if you want to create a global hot spare for all disk groups.
Figure 34. Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 – Setting a Hot Spare Drive
4.Click Go to create the hot spare.
The Drive State changes to HOTSPARE, as shown below.
Figure 36. Intel® RAID BIOS Console 2 – Main Screen showing Hot Spare Drive
Intel® RAID Software User’s Guide85
Viewing Event Details
Events contain information, warnings, and fatal events. Events can be captured on various
RAID controller components, such as the battery, physical card, and within the configuration.
You can view these using the following steps.
1.On the Main screen, select Events from the menu at the left.
2.Select the component to display from the Event Locale list.
3.Select the type of event to display from the Event Class drop-down.
4.Type the Start Sequence# and the # of Events to display.
The following example shows a selection that was made for informational events for the
virtual drive, starting at sequence number 120 and displaying 10 events.
86Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide
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