Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i, AOC-USAS2-L8e, AOC-USAS2-L8iMR User Manual

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR

Add-on Cards

User’s Manual

Revison 1.0a

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

The information in this User’s Manual has been carefully reviewed and i s believed to be accurate. The vendor assumes no responsibility for any inaccuracies that may be contained in this document, makes no commitment to update or to keep current the information in this manual, or to not ify any person or organization of the u pdates. Plea se Note: For the most up-to-date version of this manual, please see

our web site at www.supermicro.com.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (“Supermicro”) reserves the right to make changes to the product described in this manual at any time and without notice. This product, including software, if any, and documentation may not, in whole or in part, be copied, photocop ied, re produced, translated or redu ced t o any medi um or machine without prior written consent.

IN NO EVENT WILL SUPERMICRO BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, SPECULATIVE OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS PRODUCT OR DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN PARTICULAR, SUPERMICRO SHALL NOT HAVE LIABILITY FOR ANY HARDWARE, SOFTWARE, OR DATA STORED OR USED WITH THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING THE COSTS OF REPAIRING, REPLACING, INTEGRATING, INSTALLING OR RECOVERING SUCH HARDWARE, SOFTWARE, OR DATA.

Any disputes arising between manufacturer and cu stomer shall be governed by the laws of Santa Clara County in the State of California, USA. The State of California, Co unty of Santa Clara shall be the exclusive venue for the resolution of any such disputes. Super Micro's total liabilit y for all claims will not exceed the price paid for the hardware product.

FCC State ment: This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class A digital device pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference when the equipment is operated in a commercial environment. This equipment generates, uses, and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instruction manual, may cause harmful interference with radio communications. Operation of this equipment in a residential area is likely to cause harmful interference, in which case you will be required to correct the interference at your own expense.

California Best Management Practices Regulations for Perchlorate Materials: This Perchlorate warning applies only to products containing CR (Manganese Dioxide) Lithium coin cells. Perchlorate Material-special handling may apply. See www.dtsc.ca.gov/hazardouswaste/perchlorate for further details.

WARNING: HANDLING OF LEAD SOLDER MATERIALS USED IN THIS PRODUCT MAY EXPOSE YOU TO LEAD, A CHEMICAL KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE BIRTH DEFECTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIVE HARM.

Manual Revison 1.0a Release Date: September 22, 2010 Unless you request and receive written permission from Super Micro Computer, Inc., you may not copy

any part of this document. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. LSI, Integrated Mirroring, Integrated RAID, Integrated Striping, Fusion-MPT, and MegaRAID are

trademarks or registered trademarks of LSI Corporation. Other produ cts and comp anies referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or mark holders.

All rights reserv ed .

Printed in the United States of America

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Preface

About this Manual

This manual is written for system integrators, PC technicians and knowledgeable PC users who intend to integrate SuperMicro's AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8IR add-on card to their system.

Product Features

The AOC-USAS2-L8i add-on card offers the following features:

• UIO Form Factor

• Dual Internal "ipass" cable ports

• Multiple LED Activity/Failure indicators

• Supports LSI SAS 2008 standard with LSISAS 2008 SAS controller

• Supports RAID 0, 1, 1E and 10

• Supports MegaRAID Storage Manager software

• Supports 3.0 and 6.0 Gb/s SAS and SATA data transfer rates

• 8-port (internal), 6Gb/s per port

• Supports 63 devices

• Double the performance compare with SWR5

• Automatically negotiates PCI-E (1.x and 2.x) link widths

• Power management support

• Port independent auto-negotiation

• Supports SSP, SMP, STP and SATA protocols

• Zoning capability w/ SAS2 expanders

• Processor at 525 MHZ

• Dimensions: 4.376" x 6.6 " (H x L) The AOC-USAS2-L8e add-on card offers the following features:

• UIO Form Factor

• Dual Internal "ipass" cable ports

• Multiple LED Activity/Failure indicators

• Supports LSI SAS 2008 standard with LSISAS 2008 SAS controller

• HBA – No RAID

• Supports MegaRAID Storage Manager software

• Supports 3.0 and 6.0 Gb/s SAS and SATA data transfer rates

• 8-port (internal), 6Gb/s per port

• Supports 122 devices - HBA only

• Double the performance compare with SWR5

• Automatically negotiates PCI-E (1.x and 2.x) link widths

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

• Power management support

• Port independent auto-negotiation

• Supports SSP, SMP, STP and SATA protocols

• Zoning capability w/ SAS2 expanders

• Processor at 525 MHZ

• Dimensions: 4.376" x 6.6 " (H x L) The AOC-USAS2-L8IR add-on card offers the following features:

• UIO Form Factor

• Dual Internal "ipass" cable ports

• Multiple LED Activity/Failure indicators

• Supports LSI SAS 2008 standard with LSISAS 2008 SAS controller

• Supports MegaRAID Storage Manager software

• 8-port (internal), 6Gb/s per port

• Supports 16 devices

• Double the performance compare with SWR5

• Automatically negotiates PCI-E (1.x and 2.x) link widths

• Power management support

• Supports 3.0 and 6.0 Gb/s SAS and SATA data transfer rates

• Port independent auto-negotiation

• Supports SSP, SMP, STP and SATA protocols

• Zoning capability w/ SAS2 expanders

• OS Support :

• Processor at 525 MHZ

• Supports RAID 0,1,10 and 5 (with AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY add-on card)

• Dimensions: 4.376" x 6.6 " (H x L)

Operating Systems Supported

Both add-on cards support the following Operating Systems (OS):

• Windows XP/Windows 2003/Windows 2008/Vista

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux/SUSE Linux

An Important Note to Users

All images and layouts shown in this user's guide are based upon the latest PCB Revision available at the time of publishing. The card you have received may or may not look exactly the same as the graphics shown in this manual.

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Contacting SuperMicro

Headquarters

Address: Super Micro Computer , Inc.

980 Rock Ave.

San Jose, CA 95131 U.S.A. Tel: +1 (408) 503-8000 Fax: +1 (408) 503-8008 Email: [email protected] (General Information)

[email protected] (Technical Support) Web Site: www.supermicro.com

Europe

Preface

Address: Super Micro Computer B.V.

Het Sterrenbeeld 28, 5215 ML

‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands Tel: +31 (0) 73-6400390 Fax: +31 (0) 73-6416525 Email: [email protected] (General Information)

[email protected] (Technical Support)

[email protected] (Customer Support) 9

Asia-Pacific

Address: Super Micro Computer , Inc.

4F, No. 232-1, Liancheng Rd.

Chung-Ho 235, Taipei County

Taiwan, R.O.C. Tel: +886-(2) 8226-3990 Fax: +886-(2) 8226-3991 Web Site: www.supermicro.com.tw Technical Support: Email: [email protected] Tel: +886-2-8228-1366, ext. 132 or 139

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Safety Guidelines..........................................................1-1

1-1 ESD Safety Guidelines.....................................................................1-1

1-2 General Safety Guidelines...............................................................1-1

1-3 An Important Note to Users.............................................................1-1

Chapter 2 Connectors, Jumpers and Indicators...............2-1

2-1 Front Connectors and Pin Definitions............................................2-1

Internal SAS Connectors ........................................................................2-2

Active LED Connector.................................. ...........................................2-2

AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY Connector........................................................2-2

2-2 LED Indicators ...................................................................................2-3

2-3 RAID Minimum Drive Requirements..............................................2-4

Chapter 3 RAID Modes, Firmware and Drivers...................3-1

3-1 RAID Modes.......................................................................................3-1

3-2 Getting Firmware Downloads..........................................................3-1

LSI MegaRAID iMR/IR Firmware Flash Process............................. .......3-2

3-3 Downloading RAID Mode Drivers...................................................3-2

3-4 Activating RAID Modes in OPROM BIOS.....................................3-3

Chapter 4 Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring

Enhanced...................................................................................................4-1

4-1 Introduction.........................................................................................4-1

4-2 IM and IME Features........................................................................4-2

4-3 IM/IME Description............................................................................4-2

4-4 Mirrored Volume Features...............................................................4-4

Resynchronization with Concurrent Host I/O Operation.........................4-5

Hot Swapping..........................................................................................4-5

Hot Spare Disk........................................................................................4-5

Online Capacity Expansion................. ... ... ..............................................4-5

Media Verification.............................................. ... ...................................4-6

Disk Write Caching .................................................................................4-6

NVSRAM Usage................................................................................. ....4-6

Background Initialization.........................................................................4-6

Consistency Check................................ .......................................... ... ....4-6

Make Data Consistent.............................................................................4-6

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

4-5 Creating Mirrored Volumes..............................................................4-7

Starting the LSI SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility ...................................4-7

Creating an Integrated Mirroring Volume................................................4-8

Creating an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirro ri ng and

Striping Volume.......................................................................................4-9

Expanding an Integrated Mirroring Volume with OCE ..........................4-10

4-6 Hot Spare Disks...............................................................................4-11

Creating Hot Sp are Disks.................. .......................................... .. ........4-11

Deleting Hot Spare Disks......................................................................4-12

4-7 Other Configuration Tasks.............................................................4-12

Viewing Volume Properties.......................... ... ......................................4-12

Running a Consistency Check..............................................................4-13

Activating an Array................................................................................4-13

Deleting an Array..................................................................................4-14

Locating Disk Drives in a Volume .........................................................4-14

Selecting a Boot Disk..................... ... .. .......................................... ... .....4-15

Chapter 5 Integrated Striping........................................................5-1

5-1 Introduction.........................................................................................5-1

5-2 IS Features.........................................................................................5-2

5-3 IS Description.....................................................................................5-2

5-4 Integrated Striping Firmware...........................................................5-3

Metadata Support....................................................................................5-3

SMART Support......................................................................................5-4

Disk Write Caching .................................................................................5-4

5-5 Fusion-MPT Support.........................................................................5-4

5-6 IS Configuration Overview...............................................................5-4

5-7 Creating IS Volumes.........................................................................5-4

5-8 Other Configuration Tasks...............................................................5-6

Viewing IS Volume Properties.................................................................5-6

Activating an Array..................................................................................5-6

Deleting an Array....................................................................................5-7

Locating a Disk in a Volume....................................................................5-7

Selecting a Boot Disk..............................................................................5-8

Chapter 6 Using the Configuration Utility.............................6-1

6-1 Hardware and Software Requirements..........................................6-1

6-2 Commands and Interface Description ...........................................6-2

Common Command-Line Parameters....................................................6-3

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Table of Contents

CREATE Command................................................................................6-3

Command Line.............. ... .......................................... .. ........................6-4

Parameters...........................................................................................6-4

Program Return Value..........................................................................6-4

DELETE Command .......................... .. .......................................... ... .......6-4

Command Line.............. ... .......................................... .. ........................6-4

Parameters...........................................................................................6-5

Program Return Value..........................................................................6-5

DISPLAY Command ...............................................................................6-5

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... .. ........................6-5

Parameters...........................................................................................6-5

Program Return Value..........................................................................6-5

Sample Output............................... .. .......................................... ... ... ....6-6

Values ..................................................................................................6-7

HOTSPARE Command................................................ ........................6-8

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... .. ........................6-9

Parameters...........................................................................................6-9

Program Return Value..........................................................................6-9

STATUS Command........................ .......................................... ...............6-9

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... .. ........................6-9

Parameters...........................................................................................6-9

Program Return Value..........................................................................6-9

Sample Output............................... .. .......................................... ........6-10

Values ................................................................................................6-10

LIST Command.....................................................................................6-10

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... ........................6-10

Parameters.........................................................................................6-11

Program Return Value........................................................................6-11

Sample Output............................... .. .......................................... ........6-11

MFGPAGE Command............................................. ..............................6-11

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... ........................6-11

Parameters.........................................................................................6-11

Program Return Value........................................................................6-11

CONSTCHK Command........................................................................6-12

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... ........................6-12

Parameters.........................................................................................6-12

Program Return Value........................................................................6-12

ACTIVATE Command ...........................................................................6-12

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... ........................6-12

Parameters.........................................................................................6-12

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

Program Return Value........................................................................6-12

LOCATE Command ..............................................................................6-13

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... ........................6-13

Parameters.........................................................................................6-13

Program Return Value........................................................................6-13

LOGIR Command.................................................................................6-13

Command Line.............. .......................................... ... ........................6-13

Parameters.........................................................................................6-13

Program Return Value........................................................................6-13

Chapter 7 SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility..........................7-1

7-1 Starting the LSI SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility ........................7-1

7-2 Creating a RAID 1 Volume...............................................................7-3

7-3 Creating a RAID 1E or RAID 10 Volume.......................................7-8

7-4 Creating a RAID 0 Volume.............................................................7-10

7-5 Expanding an Integrated Mirroring Volume with OCE...............7-12

7-6 Hot Spare Disks...............................................................................7-15

Creating Hot Sp are Disks.................. .......................................... .. ........7-15

Deleting Hot Spare Disks......................................................................7-17

7-7 Other Configuration Tasks.............................................................7-17

Viewing Volume Properties.......................... ... ......................................7-17

Changing Properties.............................................................................7-17

Running a Consistency Check..............................................................7-20

Activating a Volume ..............................................................................7-20

Deleting an Volume...............................................................................7-21

Locating Disk Drives in a Volume .........................................................7-22

Selecting a Boot Disk..................... ... .. .......................................... ... .....7-23

Changing Boot Support.........................................................................7-23

Chapter 8 MegaRAID Overview and Installation...............8-1

8-1 Overview.............................................................................................8-1

Creating Storage Configurations.............................................................8-1

8-2 Hardware and Software Requirements..........................................8-2

8-3 Installing for Windows.......................................................................8-2

8-4 Installing for Linux.............................................................................8-3

Linux Error Messages.............................................................................8-4

Chapter 9 MegaRAID Window and Menus ............................9-1

9-1 Starting MegaRAID St orage Manager Software...........................9-1

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Table of Contents

9-2 MegaRAID Storage Manager Window...........................................9-2

Physical/Logical View Panel...................................................................9-3

Properties/Operations/Graphical View Panel..........................................9-3

Event Log Panel........................................ ..............................................9-4

Menu Bar ................................................................................................9-4

File Menu .............................................................................................9-4

Operations Menu..................................................................................9-4

Group Operations Menu.......................................................................9-4

Tools Menu...........................................................................................9-4

Log Menu........................... ... .......................................... .....................9-4

Help Menu............ .......................................... ......................................9-5

9-3 Creating a New Storage Configuration..........................................9-5

Creating a Virtual Drive Using the Simple Method..................................9-7

Creating a Virtual Drive Using the Advanced Method.............................9-9

9-4 Changing Virtual Disk Properties..................................................9-12

9-5 Deleting a Virtual Disk....................................................................9-13

9-6 Controller Configuration Files........................................................9-13

Saving a Storage Configur at ion to Disk................................................9-13

Adding a Configuration .........................................................................9-14

Clearing a Configuration.......................................................................9-14

9-7 Flashing Firmware...........................................................................9-15

9-8 Configuring Alerts............................................................................9-16

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

Notes

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Chapter 1

Safety Guidelines

To avoid personal injury and property damage, carefully follow all the safety steps listed below when accessing your system or handling the components.

1-1 ESD Safety Guidelines

Electric Static Discharge (ESD) can damage electronic components. T o prevent damage to your system, it is important to handle it very carefully. The following measures are generally sufficient to protect your equipment from ESD.

• Use a grounded wrist strap designed to prevent static discharge.

• Touch a grounded metal object before removing a component from the antistatic bag.

• Handle the add-on card by its edges only; do not touch its components, peripheral chips, memory modules or gold contacts.

• When handling chips or modules, avoid touching their pins.

• Put the card and peripherals back into their antistatic bags when not in use.

1-2 General Safety Guidelines

• Always disconnect power cables before installing or removing any components from the computer.

• Disconnect the power cable before installing or removing any cables from the system.

• Make sure that the add-on card is securely and properly installed on the motherboard to prevent damage to the system due to power shortage.

1-3 An Important Note to Users

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Notes

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Chapter 2

Connectors, Jumpers and Indicators

2-1 Front Connectors and Pin Definitions

Connectors are used to attach the add-on card to the system’s mainboard and other peripherals (see Figure 2-1).

Figure 2-1. AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card Front Connectors and Jumpers

Table 2-1 lists the add-on card’s front connectors.

Table 2-1. Front Connectors and Pin Definitions

Number Description

1 Internal SAS Connectors 2 Front Panel LED Connector 3 AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY Connector

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

Internal SAS Connectors

The Internal SAS ports (SFF-8087 connector) connect to the backplane allowing the motherboard to access the hard drives and RAID capabilities. Each connector supports up to four hard drives allowing the add-on card to support a maximum of eight. (SAS 0-3 and SAS 4-7).

Use a single port SAS "ipass" cable (SuperMicro order number CBL-0108L-02).

Active LED Connector

The LED connector allows the add-on card to display activity and status using a standard LED panel. Table 2 -2 lists the pin definitions for this connector.

Table 2-2. Front Jumpers and Pin Definitions

Number Description

1A - LED+ 2 A - LED-

AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY Connector

This connector allows you to connect a AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY in order to allow RAID 5 operation on the AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR add-on card. See Chapter 3 for details.

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2-2 LED Indicators

LED1 and LED2

A0 - A7/PE0 - PE7

Chapter 2: Connectors, Jumpers and Indicators

Figure 2-2. LED Indicators

Figure 2-2 displays LED indicators on the add-on card, while table lists the individual

LEDs, their state and their specification.

Table 2-3. Front Pane LEDs

LED State Specification

LED1 Flashing SAS Port Activity LED2 Flashing Heartbeat and Fault PE0 On Fault in HDD #0 PE1 On Fault in HDD #1 PE2 On Fault in HDD #2 PE3 On Fault in HDD #3 PE4 On Fault in HDD #4 PE5 On Fault in HDD #5 PE6 On Fault in HDD #6 PE7 On Fault in HDD #7 A0 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #0

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e/L8iMR Add-on Card User’s Manual

Table 2-3. Front Pane LEDs (Continued)

LED State Specification

A1 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #1 A2 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #2 A3 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #3 A4 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #4 A5 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #5 A6 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #6 A7 Flashing Normal Activity in HDD #7

2-3 RAID Minimum Drive Requirements

Use Table 2-4 to determine the minimum number of hard drives needed to set up a RAID environment in SR mode for the AOC-USAS2-L8i add-on card. Use Table 2-5 to determine the minimum number of hard drives needed to set up a RAID environment in IR mode for the AOC-USAS2-L8iMR add-on card. The AOC-USAS2-L8e add-on card uses HBA and not RAID, so it does not use these modes.

Table 2-4. RAID Minimum Drive Requirements for SR Mode

RAID Minimum Hard Drives

RAID 0 2 RAID 1 2 RAID 10 4 (Two RAID 1 Arrays)

Table 2-5. RAID Minimum Drive Requirements for IR Mode

RAID Minimum Hard Drives

RAID 0 (Integrated Striping) 2 RAID 1 (Integrated

Mirroring) RAID 1E (Integrated

Mirroring Enhanced)

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Chapter 3

RAID Modes, Firmware and Drivers

To change RAID modes from the AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e add-on card’s default IT Mode, you need to flash your system’s BIOS with a Firmware download and install drivers for the RAID mode to your operating system.

3-1 RAID Modes

There are two RAID modes that are supported by the AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e add-on card:

• IT Mode (Initiator and Target Mode): This is the default mode for the AOC-USAS2-L8e add-on card. The maximum support for this mode is up to 122 hard disk drives under expander topology. This mode does not support RAID.

This mode requires an IT mode firmware flash to the BIOS and an IT mode driver installation to the OS.

• IR Mode (Integrated RAID Mode): In Integrated Raid™ mode the integrated ARM chip on the AOC-USAS2-L8i add-on card creates Integrated Mirroring™ (IM, RAID

1), Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (IME, RAID 1E) and Integrated Striping (IS, RAID

0) through the chipset’s BIOS and the system’s OS. The maximum support for this IR mode is up to 63 hard disk drives under an expander topology.

See Chapter 4: "Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced" on

page 4-1 and Chapter 5: "Integrated Striping" on page 5-1 for details on Integrated

Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Striping. This RAID mode requires an IR mode firmware flash to the BIOS and an IT mode

driver installation to the OS.

• IMR Mode (Integrated MegaRaid Mode): The AOC-USAS2-L8iR add-on card uses the AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY to enable the RAID 5 as well as the RAID 0,1 and 10 function.

It uses a different type of firmware than the AOC-USAS2-L8i (IR mode) and AOC-USAS2-L8e (IT mode) cards, so it can support up to 16 drives and is SAS-2/ PCI-E Gen-2 compatible. The RAID 5 feature in this card is often refered to as SW (Software) RAID due to its absence of a ROC (RAID On Chip) on the card.

3-2 Getting Firmware Downloads

Firmware for RAID modes can only be obtained through contacting SuperMicro Technical Support for instructions and assistance to obtain firmware downloads.

Each of the RAID modes requires a different firmware download. Make sure the firmware download corresponds to the RAID mode (IT or IR) that you wish to use before installing it.

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e Add-on Card User’s Manual

LSI MegaRAID iMR/IR Firmware Flash Process

Use the following procedures for flashing firmware between iMR mode and IR mode.

Flashing IR mode to iMR mode

1. Please copy all files to bootable USB disk

2. Run chkir.bat and if the Device ID is 0x72, the is IR mode need update to iMR

3. Run chksas.bat (Write down the SAS address)

4. Run upimrsbr.bat (the Device ID will change to 0x73; it's iMR mode)

5. Turn off the system and insert the RAID Key: AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY

6. Restart the system

7. Run up2imr.bat

8. Reboot the system

9. Run setsas.bat (Use the SAS address from step#2)

10. Reboot the system

Flashing iMR mode to IR mode

1. Run chkimr.bat and if the Device Id is 0x73 (It's in iMR mode)

2. Run chkadd.bat and find SAS address in the adpinfo.txt (This process will take some time)

3. Run upirsbr.bat (the Device ID will change to 0x72; it's IR mode)

4. Turn off the system and unplug the RAID Key: AOC-SAS2-RAID5-KEY

5. Restart the system

6. Run up2ir.bat

7. Run upsadd.bat with 16 byte SAS address (Please use the SAS address saved in the adpinfo.txt from step#2)

8. Reboot the system

3-3 Downloading RAID Mode Drivers

To obtain drivers go to the SuperMicro FTP site and down the appropriate driver for the operating system you are using.

The drivers can be found at the following FTP site:

ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/LSI/2008/

See the installation text file within each download for details on the installation of these drivers.

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Chapter 3: RAID Modes, Firmware and Drivers

3-4 Activating RAID Modes in OPROM BIOS

RAID modes can be activated by pressing keyboard keys in the OPROM BIOS setup. Press CTRL-C for IT or IR mode to activate your system for one of these modes.

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e Add-on Card User’s Manual

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Chapter 4

Integrated Mirroring and Integrated

Mirroring Enhanced

This chapter provides an overview of the Integrated Mirroring (IM) and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (IME) features. The chapter also explains how to create Integrated Mirroring (IM) and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (IME) volumes using the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility (SAS2 BIOS CU), which is used to setup IR Mode.

NOTE: Integrated Mirroring is also known as RAID 1, while Integrated Mirroring Enhanced is also known as RAID 1E.

4-1 Introduction

As a result of the shift towards Network Attached Storage (NAS), ISPs need a cost effective, fault-tolerant solution to protect the operating systems on small form factor, high-density, rack-mountable servers. The Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced features provide data protection for the system boot volume to safeguard critical information such as the operating system on servers and high performance workstations. The IM and IME features provide a robust, high-performance, fault-tolerant solution to data storage needs, at a lower cost than a dedicated RAID controller.

To provide fault-tolerant protection for critical data, the IM and IME features support one or two mirrored volumes per SAS controller. The two volumes can contain up to twelve disk drives total, plus one or two hot spare disks.

If a disk in an Integrated Mirroring volume fails, the hot swap capability allows you to restore the volume by simply swapping disks. The firmware then automatically re-mirrors the swapped disk. Additionally, each SAS2 controller can have one or two global hot spare disks available to automatically replace a failed disk in the IM or IME storage volumes on the controller. Hot spares make the IM/IME volume even more fault tolerant.

NOTE: You can also configure one IM or IME volume and one Integrated Striping (IS) volume on the same SAS controller.

The IM/IME feature uses the same device drivers as the standard based controllers, providing seamless and transparent fault tolerance. This eliminates the need for complex backup software or expensive RAID hardware. The IM/IME feature operates independently from the operating system, in order to conserve system resources. The BIOS-based configuration utility makes it easy to configure IM and IME volumes.

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AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e Add-on Card User’s Manual

4-2 IM and IME Features

IM and IME support the following features:

• Configurations of one or two IM or IME volumes on the same SAS controller. IM volumes have two mirrored disks; IME volumes have three to ten mirrored disks. Two volumes can have up to 12 disks total. (Requires Integrated RAID firmware v1.20.00 or above.)

• One or two global hot spare disks per controller, to automatically replace failed disks in IM/IME volumes. (Support for two hot spares requires Integrated RAID firmware v1.20.00 or above.) The hot spares are in addition to the 12-disk maximum for two volumes per SAS 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, an SAS controller can support one volume with SATA disks and a second volume with SAS disks.

• Fusion-MPT architecture.

• Easy-to-use BIOS-based configuration utility.

• Error notification: the drivers update an OS-specific event log.

• SES status LED 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 host I/Os continue.

• Background media verification ensures that data on IM/IME volumes is always accessible.

4-3 IM/IME Description

The Integrated RAID solution supports one or two IM/IME volumes on each SAS controller (or one IM/IME volume and one Integrated Striping volume). Typically, one of these volumes is the boot volume, as shown in Figure 4-1. Boot support is available through the firmware of the SAS controller that supports the standard Fusion-MPT interface. The runtime mirroring of the boot disk is transparent to the BIOS, drivers, and operating system. Host-based status software monitors the state of the mirrored disks and reports any error conditions. Figure 4-1 shows an IM implementation with a second disk as a mirror of the first (primary) disk.

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IM Volume

Primary

Mirror

LSI Fusion -MPT

Controller

NVSRAM

(For Write

Journaling )

Flash

(For C onfigura tio n )

Memory B us

SAS

LBA N

...

LBA N

LBA 3

LBA 2

LBA 1

...

LBA 3

LBA 2

LBA 1

LBA N

...

LBA 3

LBA 2

LBA 1

Logical Vi ew Physical View

Figure 4-1. Typical Integrated Mirroring Implementation

The advantage of an IM/IME volume is that there is always a second, mirrored copy of the data. The disadvantage is that writes take longer because data must be written twice. On the other hand, performance is actually improved during reads.

Figure 4-2 shows the logical view and physical view of an IM volume.

Figure 4-2. Integrated Mirroring Volume

An IME volume can be configured with up to ten mirrored disks. (One or two global hot spares can be added also.) Figure 4-3 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.

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Logical View Physical View

+ +

Mirrored Stripe N

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 4

Mirrored Stripe 3

Mirrored Stripe 2

Mirrored Stripe 1

Mirrored Stripe N-1'

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 5'

Mirrored Stripe 4

Mirrored Stripe 2'

Mirrored Stripe 1

Mirrored Stripe N

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 6

Mirrored Stripe 4'

Mirrored Stripe 3

Mirrored Stripe 1'

Mirrored Stripe N’

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 6'

Mirrored Stripe 5

Mirrored Stripe 3'

Mirrored Stripe 2

Logical Vi ew Physical View

+ +

Mirrored Stripe N

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 4

Mirrored Stripe 3

Mirrored Stripe 2

Mirrored Stripe 1

Mirrored Stripe N-1

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 7

Mirrored Stripe 5

Mirrored Stripe 3

Mirrored Stripe 1

Mirrored Stripe N-1'

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 7'

Mirrored Stripe 5'

Mirrored Stripe 3'

Mirrored Stripe 1'

Mirrored Stripe N

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 8

Mirrored Stripe 6

Mirrored Stripe 4

Mirrored Stripe 2

Mirrored Stripe N’

. . .

Mirrored Stripe 8'

Mirrored Stripe 6'

Mirrored Stripe 4'

Mirrored Stripe 2'

Figure 4-3. Integrated Mirroring Enhanced with Three Disks

You can configure an Integrated Mirroring and Striping volume with an even number of disks, ranging from four minimum to ten maximum. Figure shows the logical view and physical view of an Integrated Mirroring and Striping volume with four mirrored disks. The firmware writes each mirrored stripe to a disk and mirrors it to an adjacent disk. RAID 10 is another term for this type of mirrored/striped configuration.

Figure 4-4. Integrated Mirroring and Striping with Four Disks

The SAS2 BIOS-based configuration utility enables you to create mirrored volumes during initial setup and to reconfigure them in response to hardware failures or changes in the environment.

WARNING: All existing data on the disks is deleted when you select disk drives to use for mirrored arrays.

4-4 Mirrored Volume Features

This section describes features of Integrated Mirroring, Integrated Mirroring andStriping, and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes. You can configure up to two mirrored volumes on each SAS2 controller.

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Resynchronization with Concurrent Host I/O Operation

The Integrated RAID firmware allows host I/Os to continue on a mirrored volume while the volume is being resynchronized in the background. The firmware automatically starts resynchronizing data after a disk failure activates a hot spare, or after a physical disk in a mirrored volume has been hot swapped.

Hot Swapping

The Integrated RAID firmware supports hot swapping, and it automatically resynchronizes the hot-swapped disk in the background without any host or user intervention. The firmware detects hot-swap removal and disk insertion.

Following a hot-swap event, the firmware verifies that the new physical disk has enough capacity for the mirrored volume. The firmware resynchronizes all replaced hot-swapped disks, even if the same disk is re-inserted. In a mirrored volume with an even numbers of disks, the firmware marks the hot-swapped disk as a secondary disk and the other disk with data as the primary disk. The firmware resynchronizes all data from the primary disk onto the new secondary disk. In a mirrored volume with an odd number of disks, primary and secondary sets include three disks instead of two.

Hot Spare Disk

You can configure two disks as global hot spare disks to protect data on the mirrored volumes configured on the SAS2 controller. If the Integrated RAID firmware fails one of the mirrored disks, it automatically replaces the failed disk with a hot spare disk and then resynchronizes the mirrored data. The firmware automatically receives a notification when a hot spare replaces the failed disk, and it then designates that disk as the new hot spare.

Online Capacity Expansion

The OCE feature enables you to expand the capacity of an existing two-disk Integrated Mirroring (RAID1) volume by replacing the original disk drives with larger drives that have the same protocol (SAS or SATA).

NOTE: The new drives must be at least 50 GB larger than the original drives of the volume.

After you replace the disk drives and run the Online Capacity Expansion command, you must use a commercial tool specific to the operating system to move or increase the size of the partition on the volume.

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Media Verification

The Integrated RAID firmware supports a background media verification feature that runs at regular intervals when the mirrored volume is in optimal state. If the verification command fails for any reason, the firmware reads the other disk’s data for this segment and writes it to the failing disk in an attempt to refresh the data. The firmware periodically writes the current media verification logical block address to nonvolatile memory so the media verification can continue approximately where it left off prior to a power cycle.

Disk Write Caching

By default, the Integrated RAID firmware disables disk write caching for mirrored volumes. It does this to assure that the write journal entry stored in non-volatile static RAM (NVSRAM) is always valid. If disk write caching were enabled (not recommended), the disk write log could be invalid.

NVSRAM Usage

The Integrated RAID firmware requires at least a 32-KB NVSRAM to perform write journaling for mirrored volumes on LSI SAS2 controllers. The NVSRAM also preserves configuration information across reboots. The firmware uses write journaling to verify that the disks in the mirrored volume are synchronized with each other.

Background Initialization

Background initialization (BGI) is the process of copying data from primary to secondary disks in a mirrored volume. The Integrated RAID firmware starts BGI automatically as a background task when it creates a volume. The volume remains in Optimal state while BGI is in progress.

Consistency Check

A consistency check is the process of reading data from primary and secondary disks in a mirrored volume and comparing it to make sure it is identical. You can use the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility to start a consistency check on a mirrored volume.

Make Data Consistent

Make data consistent (MDC) is an optional background task similar to a consistency check. If enabled, the Integrated RAID firmware starts MDC automatically when you move a redundant volume from one SAS controller to another SAS controller. MDC verifies that data on the primary and secondary disks is the same.

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4-5 Creating Mirrored Volumes

The LSI™ SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility can be used to conf igure one or two Integrated Mirroring, Integrated Mirroring and Striping, and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes on each SAS2 controller.

The utilility can also be used to configure one mirrored volume and one Integrated Striping volume on the same controller, for up to a maximum of fourteen physical disk drives for the two volumes. This includes up to two optional hot spare disks for the mirrored volume(s).

WARNING: You cannot combine both SATA and SAS physical disks in the same volume. All disks in the same volume must be either SATA (with extended command set support) or SAS (with SMART support).

However you can create one volume made up of SAS disks and one volume of SATA disks on the same controller.

NOTE: You must use 512-byte block disks that are not removable media for the LSI SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility.

NOTE: You need two disks for Integrated Mirroring volumes, three to ten disks for Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes and four to ten even numbered disks for Integrated Mirroring and Striping volumes.

NOTE: It is recommended that you create global hot spare disks for all mirrored volumes for your data protection. Failed mirrored volumes are rebuilt by the Integrated RAID firmware using these global hot spares to make the data safe. If one of a pair of mirrored volumes fails on a SAS2 controller, then either of them can use the global hot spares.

Starting the LSI SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility

Use the following procedure for bringing up the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility:

1. Boot the system.

2. Start the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility by pressing C message about the LSI Configuration Utility.

The A

DAPTER LIST window appears after the following message appears on the screen:

Please wait, invoking SAS Configuration Utility...

If the message below appears

TRL+C when you see a

LSI Corp Configuration Utility will load following initialization!

the A

DAPTER LIST window appears after the system completes its power-on self test.

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Creating an Integrated Mirroring Volume

Follow the steps below in order to create a two-disk Integrated Mirroring (RAID 1) volume with the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility. The steps begin with the A window that appears when the configuration utility starts.

You can navigate through this window, and others in the utility, by using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

DAPTER LIST

1. In the A

DAPTER LIST window, select a SAS adapter and then press ENTER.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER. The CREATE ARRAY window appears.

3. Select CREATE RAID 1 VOLUME. The CREATE NEW ARRAY window appears.

4. Move the cursor to the RAID DISK column and select a line that has a No entry in this column, indicating that the disk is not already part of the volume being created. To add the disk to the new array, change the No to Yes by pressing the space bar.

This is the Primary disk in the array.

NOTE: If any of the disks contains dat a that you want to keep, back it up before you start creating the volume. The utility deletes all data from a disk when you select it to use in a mirrored volume.

5. Move the cursor to another line and press the space bar to add the second disk to the array.

This is the Secondary disk in the array.

6. Press C to create the array. A menu screen appears.

7. From the menu options, select S

AVE CHANGES then exit this menu.

A Processing message appears briefly, and then the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility returns to the A

DAPTER PROPERTIES window. Initialization of the new array

continues in the background.

NOTE: To create a second Integrated Mirroring volume, repeat these instructions starting with step 2. Alternatively, follow the instructions in the next section to create an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirroring and Striping volume.

NOTE: See the instructions in Section : "Creating Hot Spare Disks" on

page 4-11, if you want to create one or two global hot spares.

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Creating an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirroring and Striping Volume

Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes can have from three-to-ten physical disks. Data is written to a disk and mirrored on an adjacent disk. Integrated Mirroring and Striping volumes can have a minimum of four and a maximum of ten physical disks, in even numbers. In an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirroring and Striping volume, the data is both mirrored and striped.

Follow these steps to create an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (RAID 1E) or Integrated Mirroring and Striping (RAID 10) volume with the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility.

1. On the A press E

DAPTER LIST window, use the arrow keys to select a SAS adapter and then

NTER.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER. The CREATE ARRAY window appears.

3. Select CREATE RAID 1E VOLUME. The CREATE NEW ARRAY window appears.

5. Move the cursor to another line and press the space bar to add another disk to the array .

If you select an odd number of disks, the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility creates an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced array. If you select an even number of disks, it creates an Integrated Mirroring and Striping array . As you add disks, the A

RRAY SIZE

field changes to reflect the size of the new array.

6. Press C to create the array. A menu screen appears.

7. From the menu options, select S A Processing message appears briefly, and then the SAS2 BIOS Configuration

Utility returns to the A continues in the background.

NOTE: To create a second Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirroring and Striping volume, repeat the instructions above.

AVE CHANGES then exit this menu.

DAPTER PROPERTIES window. Initialization of the new array

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NOTE: See the instructions in Section : "Creating Hot Spare Disks" on

page 4-11, if you want to create one or two global hot spares.

Expanding an Integrated Mirroring Volume with OCE

You can use the online capacity expansion (OCE) feature to expand the capacity of a two-disk Integrated Mirroring (RAID1) volume by replacing the original disks with two larger disk drives while the volume remains online. This process maintains data integrity at all times, even if one of the disks fails during the replacement process. The new disks must be at least 50 GB larger than the disks they are replacing, and they must use the same protocol (SAS or SATA) as the disks they are replacing.

Follow these steps to expand an existing RAID1 volume with OCE:

1. Physically replace one of the two volume disk drives with a drive that is at least 50 GB larger.

If necessary , you can identify the disks in the volume by following the instructions in

"Locating Disk Drives in a Volume".

2. Wait until synchronization is complete on the new disk and the volume returns to the Optimal state, as indicated in the A

DAPTER PROPERTIES window of the SAS2 BIOS

Configuration Utility.

3. Physically replace the other volume disk drive with a drive that is at least 50 GB larger.

4. Again, wait until synchronization is complete on the new disk and the volume returns to the Optimal state.

5. In the A keys to select the SAS adapter with the RAID1 volume and then press E

DAPTER LIST window of the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility, use the arrow

NTER.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

6. Use the arrow keys to select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER.

ELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

The S

7. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The V

IEW ARRAY window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to the

RAID1 volume with the new, larger disk drives.

8. Select M

ANAGE ARRAY.

The MANAGE ARRAY window appears.

9. Select ONLINE CAPACITY EXPANSION. A menu screen appears with a warning message and with options to start the

expansion process or quit.

10. Press Y to start the expansion.

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The RAID PROPERTIES screen appears when the expansion process is complete. This typically occurs in a very short amount of time.

1 1. Run a commercial tool specific to the operating system to move or increase the size

of the partition on the newly-expanded RAID1 volume.

4-6 Hot Sp are Disks

You can create one or two global hot spare disks to protect the data on mirrored volumes on a SAS2 controller. You can also delete hot spare disks.

Creating Hot Spare Disks

Follow these steps to add global hot spare disks to an existing volume. The steps begin with the A

1. In the ADAPTER LIST window, use the arrow keys to select the SAS adapter with the

DAPTER LIST window that appears when the configuration utility starts:

volume that needs hot spare disks and then press E

NTER.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER. The SELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another

array on this adapter.

4. Select M

ANAGE ARRAY.

The MANAGE ARRAY window appears.

5. Select MANAGE HOT SPARES, which is the first option. The MANAGE HOT SPARES window appears.

6. Identify a disk that is not part of a RAID volume (such as the value in the DRIVE S

TATUS column is not RAID) and that is not already identified as a hot spare disk.

NOTE: A global hot spare disk must have 512-byte blocks and nonremovable media. The disk type must be either SATA with extended command set support or SAS with SMART support.

7. Move the highlight to the H

OT SPR (HOT SPARE) field for this disk and press the

space bar. The Hot Spare status changes to Yes.

8. (Optional) Repeat the preceding step to select a second global hot spare disk

9. Press C to create the hot spare disk. A menu window appears. An error message appears if the selected disk is not at

least as large as the smallest disk used in the existing volume(s). An error message

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also appears if you try to add a SATA disk as a hot spare for volumes that use SAS disks, or vice versa.

10. Select S The SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility pauses while it configures the global hot

spares.

AVE CHANGES then exit this menu to create the hot spare disk(s).

Deleting Hot Spare Disks

Follow these steps to delete a global hot spare disk:

1. Access the Manage Hot Spares window by following step 1 through step 5 of

"Creating Hot Spare Disks".

2. Select the disk that you no longer wish to use as a hot spare, and press C.

3. Select S The configuration utility pauses while it removes the global hot spare.

AVE CHANGES then exit this menu to commit the changes.

4-7 Other Configuration Tasks

This section explains how to perform other configuration and maintenance tasks for mirrored volumes.

Viewing Volume Properties

Follow these steps to view the RAID properties of the mirrored volume(s):

1. In the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility, select a SAS2 adapter from the ADAPTER L

IST.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Select RAID PROPERTIES. The SELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears, showing information about the array and each

disk in it. The window includes hot spare information, if you have created global hot spare disks.

NOTE: If you create one volume using SAS disks, another volume using SATA disks, and global hot spare disks, the hot spare disks only appear when you view the mirrored volume that uses the same type of disks as the hot spare disks.

4. If the currently displayed array is not the one you want, press Alt+N to view another array on the adapter.

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Running a Consistency Check

Use the Consistency Check command to verify that the data is synchronized on the mirrored disks in the volume.

Follow these steps to run a consistency check on a selected mirrored volume:

1. In the A

DAPTER LIST window, use the arrow keys to select a SAS adapter.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID P The S

ELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

ROPERTIES, and then press ENTER.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another

array on this adapter.

4. S

ELECT MANAGE ARRAY.

The MANAGE ARRAY window appears.

5. Select CONSISTENCY CHECK in the MANAGE ARRAY window. A menu window appears.

6. Press Y to start the consistency check. The consistency check runs a read-read-compare algorithm in the background. If it

encounters any data miscompares, it stores the information in a bad block table.

Activating an Array

A volume (array) can become inactive if, for example, you remove it from one controller or computer and install it on a different one. The Activate Array option allows you to reactivate an inactive volume. This option is available only when the selected volume is currently inactive.

Follow these steps to activate a selected volume:

1. In the A E

NTER.

DAPTER LIST window, use the arrow keys to select a SAS adapter and press

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER. The SELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another

array on this adapter.

4. Select M

ANAGE ARRAY.

The MANAGE ARRAY window appears.

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5. Select ACTIVATE ARRAY in the MANAGE ARRAY window. A menu window appears.

6. Press Y to activate the array. The array becomes active after a pause.

Deleting an Array

WARNING: Before you delete an array, be sure to back up all data on the array

that you want to keep.

Follow these steps to delete a selected volume (array):

1. In the ADAPTER LIST window, use the arrow keys to select a SAS adapter. The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER. The SELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another

array on this adapter.

4. Select M The MANAGE ARRAY window appears.

5. Select DELETE ARRAY. A menu window appears.

6. Press Y to delete the array, or press N to cancel the deletion process. After a pause, the utility deletes the array. If there is another remaining array and

one or two hot spare disks, the BIOS checks the hot spare disks to determine if they are compatible with the remaining volume. If they are not compatible (too small or wrong disk type), the BIOS deletes them also.

ANAGE ARRAY.

Locating Disk Drives in a Volume

You can use the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility to locate and identify a specific physical disk drive in a disk enclosure by flashing the drive’s LED. You can also flash the LEDs of all the disk drives in a RAID volume, if they are in a disk enclosure.

When you add a disk drive to a new mirrored volume, the LED on the disk drive starts flashing. The LED stops flashing when you finish creating the volume.

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You can locate individual disk drives from the SAS Topology window by flashing their LEDs. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Select the desired SAS2 controller on the A

DAPTER LIST window and press ENTER.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Highlight SAS TOPOLOGY and press ENTER. The SAS TOPOLOGY window appears.

3. Select the disk in the DEVICE IDENTIFIER column and press ENTER. The LED on the disk flashes until you press a key to stop it.

4. To identify all the disk drives in a volume, select the volume in the left column of the SAS T

OPOLOGY window and press ENTER.

The LEDs flash on all disk drives in the volume until you press a key to stop them.

NOTE: The LEDs on the disk drives will flash as described above if the firmware is correctly configured and the drives are in a disk enclosure.

Selecting a Boot Disk

You can select a boot disk in the SAS TOPOLOGY window. The next time you boot the computer, the firmware moves this disk to scan ID 0, making it the new boot disk. This makes it easier to set BIOS boot device options and to keep the boot device constant during device additions and removals. You can also select an alternative boot device. If the BIOS cannot find the preferred boot device when it loads, it will attempt to boot from the alternate device.

Follow these steps to select a boot disk:

1. In the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility, select an adapter from the A

DAPTER LIST.

2. Select the SAS TOPOLOGY option. If a device is currently configured as the boot device, the D

EVICE INFO column on the SAS TOPOLOGY window lists the word Boot.

If a device is currently configured as the alternate boot device, the DEVICE INFO column shows the word Alt.

3. To select the preferred boot disk, move the cursor to the disk and press Alt+B.

4. To remove the boot designator, move the cursor 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 moves to this disk.

6. To select an alternate boot disk, move the cursor to the disk and press Alt+A.

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NOTE: To change the alternate boot device from one disk to another, follow

step 4 and step 5 above, but use Alt+A instead of Alt+B.

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Chapter 5

Integrated Striping

This chapter provides an overview of the LSI Integrated Striping™ (IS) feature and explains how to create Integrated Striping (IS) volumes using the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility, which is used to setup IR Mode.

NOTE: Integrated Striping is also known as RAID 10.

5-1 Introduction

Integrated RAID enables you to create Integrated Striping volumes for applications that require the faster performance and increased storage capacity of striping. The low-cost Integrated Striping feature has many of the advantages of a more expensive RAID striping solution. You can configure an Integrated Striping volume as the boot disk or as a data disk.

The Integrated Striping solution provides better performance and more capacity than individual disks, without burdening the host CPU. The firmware splits host I/Os over multiple disks and presents the disks as a single logical drive. In general, striping is transparent to the BIOS, the drivers, and the operating system.

You use the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility t o configure Integrated Striping volumes. These volumes can consist of two-to-ten disks.

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5-2 IS Features

Integrated Striping supports the following features:

• Support for volumes with two to ten disks

• Support for two Integrated Striping volumes with up to 14 drives total on a SAS2 controller.

• Support for combining one Integrated Striping volume and one Integrated Mirroring, Integrated Mirroring + Striping, or Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volume on a single controller.

• Support for both SAS and SATA drives, although the two types of drives cannot be combined in one volume

• Fusion-MPT architecture

• Easy-to-use SAS BIOS configuration utility

• Error notification

• Disk write caching, which is enabled by default on all Integrated Striping volumes

• Use of metadata to store volume configuration on disks

• OS-specific event log

• Error display inside the Fusion-MPT BIOS

• SCSI Enclosure Services (SES) status LED support for drives used in Integrated Striping volumes

5-3 IS Description

The IS feature writes data across multiple disks instead of onto one disk. This is accomplished by partitioning each disk’s storage space into 64-KB stripes. These stripes are interleaved round-robin, so that the combined storage space is composed alternately of stripes from each disk.

For example, as shown in Figure 5-1, segment 1 is written to disk 1, segment 2 is written to disk 2, segment 3 is written to disk 3, and so on. When the system reaches the end of the disk list, it continues writing data at the next available segment of disk 1.

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Chapter 5: Integrated Striping

LSI

Fusion-MPT

Cont ro ller

Dis k 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

Segment 1 Segment 5 Segment 9

Segment 2 Segment 6

Segment 10

Segment 3 Segment 7

Segment 11

Segment 4 Segment 8

Segment 12

SAS

Logical View Physical View

Stripe N

...

Stripe 3

Stripe 2

Stripe 1

Stripe N

...

Stripe 3

Stripe 2

Stripe 1

Stripe N

...

Stripe 3

Stripe 2

Stripe 1

Stripe N

...

Stripe 3

Stripe 2

Stripe 1

Figure 5-1. Integrated Striping Example

Figure 5-2 shows a logical view and a physical view of Integrated Striping configuration.

Figure 5-2. Integrated Striping – Logical and Physical Views

The primary advantage of IS is speed, because it transfers data to or from multiple disks at once. However, there is no data redundancy; therefore, if one disk fails, that data is lost.

5-4 Integrated Striping Firmware

This section describes features of the Integrated RAID firmware.

Me tada ta Support

The firmware supports metadata, which describes the IS logical drive configuration stored on each member disk. When the firmware is initialized, each member disk is queried to read the stored metadata to verify the configuration. The usable disk space for each IS member disk is adjusted down when the configuration is created, in order to leave room for this data.

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SMART Support

SMART is a technology that monitors hard disk drives for signs of future disk failure and generates an alert if such signs are detected. The firmware polls each physical disk in the volume at regular intervals. If the firmware detects a SMART ASC/ASCQ code on a physical disk in the IS volume, it processes the SMART data and stores it in nonvolatile memory. The IS volume does not support SMART directly, since it is just a logical representation of the physical disks in the volume.

Disk Write Caching

Disk write caching is enabled by default on all IS volumes.

5-5 Fusion-MPT Support

The BIOS uses the LSI Fusion-MPT interface to communicate to the SAS controller and firmware to enable IS. This includes reading the Fusion-MPT configuration to gain access to the parameters that are used to define behavior between the SAS controller and the devices connected to it. The Fusion-MPT drivers for all supported operating systems implement the Fusion-MPT interface to communicate with the controller and firmware.

5-6 IS Configuration Overview

The SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility is a menu-driven utility program that enables you to easily configure and manage Integrated RAID volumes. Y ou can use the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility to create one or two Integrated Striping volumes on each SAS2 controller. Each volume can have from two-to-ten drives. All disks in an Integrated Striping volume must be connected to the same SAS2 controller.

Although you can use disks of different size in Integrated Striping volumes, the smallest disk in the volume determines the logical size of all disks in the volume. In other words, the firmware does not use the excess space of the larger member disk(s). For example, if you create an Integrated Striping volume with two 100-GB disks and two 120-GB disks, the firmware uses only 100 GB on each of the larger disks for the volume. The supported stripe size is 64 kilobytes.

5-7 Creating IS Volumes

The SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility is part of the Fusion-MPT BIOS. When the BIOS loads during boot and you see the message about the Configuration Utility, press Ctrl-C to start it. After you do this, the message changes to:

Please wait, invoking SAS Configuration Utility...

After a brief pause, the main menu of the SAS2 BIOS CU appears. On some systems, however, the following message appears next:

LSI Configuration Utility will load following initialization!

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In this case, the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility will load after the system has completed its power-on self test.

You can configure any combination of up to two Integrated Striping (RAID 0) volumes and mirrored volumes on each SAS2 controller, up to a maximum of 14 physical disk drives for the two volumes. (This includes one or two hot spare disks for mirrored arrays.)

The following guidelines apply when creating an Integrated Striping volume:

• All physical disks in an Integrated Striping volume must be either SATA (with extended command set support) or SAS (with SMART support). You cannot combine SAS and SATA disks 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.

• Integrated Striping volumes must have at least two disks and no more than 10 disks. Integrated Striping volumes do not support hot spare disks.

Follow the steps below to configure an Integrated Striping (IS) volume with the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility. The procedure assumes that the required controller(s) and disks are already installed in the computer system.

Creating IS Volumes

1. On the A keys to select a SAS adapter and press E

DAPTER LIST screen of the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility, use the arrow

NTER.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES screen appears.

2. Select RAID PROPERTIES and press ENTER. The CREATE ARRAY window appears.

3. Select CREATE RAID 0 VOLUME. The CREATE NEW ARRAY window appears.

5. Move the cursor to another line and press the space bar to add another disk to the array .

6. Continue adding disks in this way until you have added the number you want.

7. Press C to create the array. A menu appears.

8. From the menu options, select S A Processing message appears briefly, and then the SAS2 BIOS Configuration

Utility returns to the A continues in the background.

AVE CHANGES then exit this menu.

DAPTER PROPERTIES window. Initialization of the new array

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NOTE: Repeat the instructions above to create a second Integrated Striping volume, if desired and if enough additional disks are available.

5-8 Other Configuration Tasks

This section explains how to perform other configuration and maintenance tasks for IS volumes.

Viewing IS Volume Properties

Follow these steps to view the properties of IS volumes:

1. In the SAS2 BIOS Configuration Utility, select an SAS adapter from the ADAPTER L

IST.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Select RAID PROPERTIES. The SELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears, showing information about the array and each

disk in it.

4. If the currently displayed array is not the one you want, press Alt+N to view another array on the adapter.

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 A reactivate an inactive array that has been added to a system. This option is only available when the selected array is currently inactive.

Follow these steps to activate a selected array.

1. In the A E

DAPTER LIST window, use the arrow keys to select an SAS adapter and press

NTER.

The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER.

CTIVATE ARRAY option allows you to

The SELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another

array on this adapter.

4. Select M

ANAGE ARRAY.

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The MANAGE ARRAY window appears.

5. Select ACTIVATE ARRAY in the MANAGE ARRAY window. A menu window appears.

6. Press Y to activate the array. The array becomes active after a pause.

Deleting an Array

WARNING: Before deleting an array, be sure to back up all data on the array that

you want to keep.

Follow these steps to delete a selected array:

1. In the ADAPTER LIST window, use the arrow keys to select an SAS adapter. The ADAPTER PROPERTIES window appears.

2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID PROPERTIES, and then press ENTER. The SELECT NEW ARRAY TYPE window appears.

3. Select VIEW EXISTING ARRAY. The VIEW ARRAY window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another

array on this adapter.

4. Select M The MANAGE ARRAY window appears.

5. Select DELETE ARRAY. A menu window appears.

6. Press Y to delete the array, or press N to cancel the deletion process. After a pause, the utility deletes the array.

ANAGE ARRAY.

Locating a Disk in a Volume

When you add a disk drive to a new mirrored volume, the LED on the disk drive starts flashing. The LED stops flashing when you finish creating the volume.

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