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Dell UCP-60 Laptop User Manual

1. 37 Patrol Read lt f 6 co soe ies eR a ees 38 Patrol Read Feature 38 PatrolReadModes 39 3 Installaing and Configuring Hardware shin oles Soe eee ath ha are 41 Installing the PERC 6 E and PERC 6 i Adapters 41 Installing the Transportable Battery Backup Unit TBBU forPERCG E 45 Installing the DIMM ona PERC G E Adapter 47 Transferring a TBBU Between Controllers 49 Removing the PERC 6 E and PERC 6 i Adapters 50 Removing the DIMM and Battery from aPERCG6 EAdapter 53 Disconnecting the BBU from a PERC 6 i Adapter ora PERC 6 i Integrated Controller 55 Setting up Redundant Path Support onthe PERC G EAdapter 56 Removing and Installing the CERC 6 i Modular Storage Controller Card Service Only Procedure 59 Installing the Modular Storage ControllerCard 20 61 Contents 4 Installing the Drivers 63 Contents Installing Windows Driver 64 Creating the Driver Media 64 Pre Installation Requirements 64 Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP Operating System Installation 66 Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista Installation 66 Installing a Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Windows Vista or Windows XP Driver for aNewRAlI
2. Rebuilding a physical disk after one of them is in a failed state If you have configured hot spares the PERC 6 controller automatically tries to use one to rebuild a physical disk that is in a failed state Manual rebuild is necessary if no hot spares with enough capacity to rebuild the failed physical disks are available You must insert a physical disk with enough storage into the subsystem before rebuilding the physical disk You can use the BIOS Configuration Utility or Dell OpenManage Storage Management application to perform a manual rebuild of an individual physical disk See the section Performing a Manual Rebuild of an Individual Physical Disk on page 107 for procedures to rebuild a single physical disk A virtual disk fails during rebuild while using a global hot The global hot spare goes back into HOTSPARE state and the virtual disk goes into FAIL state spare A virtual disk fails The dedicated hot spare goes into READY state and the during rebuild while virtual disk goes into FAIL state using a dedicated hot spare A physical disk fails The rebuild operation for the inaccessible physical disk starts during a automatically after the reconstruction is completed reconstruction process on a redundant virtual disk that has a hot spare A physical disk is taking longer than expected to rebuild A physical disk takes longer to rebuild when under high stress For example there is one rebuild I
3. 54 Installing and Configuring Hardware Disconnecting the BBU from a PERC 6 i Adapter or a PERC 6 i Integrated Controller K NOTE A PERC 6 i adapter installed in a Dell workstation or a Dell SC system does not have a BBU K NOTE Batteries with low charges can be detected and recharged The battery must first be charged and the system must be restarted for the battery to be active again This section describes how to disconnect the BBU on a PERC 6 i adapter or a PERC 6 i Integrated controller while the adapter or controller is installed in a system 1 Perform a controlled shutdown on the system in which the PERC 6 i is installed 2 Disconnect the system from the electrical outlet and remove the system COVET A CAUTION Running a system without the system cover installed can cause damage due to improper cooling K NOTE For more information on removing and replacing the system cover refer to the Hardware Owner s Manual that shipped with the system 3 Determine whether the dirty cache LED on the controller is illuminated e Ifthe LED is illuminated replace the system cover reconnect the system to power turn on the system and repeat step and step 2 K NOTE The location of the PERC 6 i varies from system to system For information on PERC 6 i card location see the Hardware Owner s Manual that shipped with the system e Ifthe LED is not illuminated continue with the next step 4 Locate the battery cable con
4. Initializing Virtual Disks You can initialize the virtual disks in four ways as described in the following sections Background Initialization Background Initialization BGI is an automated process that writes the parity or mirror data on newly created virtual disks BGI assumes that the data is correct on all new drives BGI does not run on RAID 0 virtual disks K NOTE You cannot permanently disable BGI If you cancel BGI it automatically restarts within five minutes For information on stopping BGI see Stopping Background Initialization on page 107 The BGI rate is controlled by the Open Manage storage management software After you have changed the BGI rate in Open Manage storage management software the change does not take effect until the next BGI is run K NOTE Unlike full or fast initialization of virtual disks background initialization does not clear data from the physical disks Consistency Check CC and BGI perform similar functions in that they both correct parity errors However Consistency Check reports data inconsistencies through an event notification but BGI does not BGI assumes the data is correct as it is run only on a newly created disk You can start Consistency Check manually but not Background Initialization About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 25 Full Inititialization of Virtual Disks Performing a full initialization on a virtual disk overwrites all blocks and destroys any data that
5. Mirroring The process of providing complete redundancy using two physical disks by maintaining an exact copy of one physical disk s data on the second physical disk If one physical disk fails the contents of the other physical disk can be used to maintain the integrity of the system and to rebuild the failed physical disk Multi bit ECC Errors ECC errors are errors that occur in the memory which can corrupt cached data so that it has to be discarded ECC double bit errors are serious as they result in corrupted data and data loss In case of double bit ECC errors contact Dell Technical Support Multi pathing PERC 6 firmware provides support for detecting and using multiple paths from the RAID controllers to the SAS devices that are in enclosures Devices connected to enclosures have multiple paths to them With edundant paths to the same port of a device if one path fails another path can be used to communicate between the controller and the device Non Read Ahead Non read ahead is a cache read policy If you select Non read ahead in the BIOS Configuration Utility the controller does not read sequentially ahead of requested data and store the additional data in cache memory anticipating that the data is needed soon Non read ahead is most effective when accessing random data Non Redundant Virtual Disk A non redundant virtual disk is one which does not have redundant data on physical disks that can be used to rebuil
6. NOTICE Electrostatic discharge can damage sensitive components Always use proper antistatic protection when handling components Touching components without using a proper ground can damage the equipment Figure 4 14 Removing and Installing the Storage Controller Card 1 storage controller card 2 release lever 60 Installing and Configuring Hardware Installing the Modular Storage Controller Card To install your new CERC 6 i Modular Storage Controller 1 EA Unpack the new CERC 6 i Modular Storage Controller Card and check for damage NOTE If the card is damaged contact Dell Place the Modular Storage Controller Card onto the System Board Place by aligning the Modular Storage Controller Card such that the tabs on the metal System Board tray fit through the notches in the edges of the Modular Storage Controller Card Slide the Modular Storage Controller Card towards the connector on the System Board until the Modular Storage Controller Card s edge connector clicks into place Reinstall the System Board For more information on reinstalling the System Board see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual or the User s Guide Close the top cover of the Modular blade system For more information on closing the top cover of the Modular blade system see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual or the User s Guide Reinstall the Modular blade system in the Modular blade system chassis For more information on r
7. HS and press lt Enter gt A screen displays a list of the current dedicated hot spares and the physical disks that are available to create dedicated hot spares An X displays next to the current dedicated hot spares K NOTE The utility allows only disks of the same drive technology and of equal or greater size to be selected as dedicated hot spare To create a dedicated hot spare press the down arrow key to highlight an available physical disk and press the spacebar to select the disk Repeat this procedure for each dedicated hot spare that you want to create An X displays beside the selected physical disk s To delete a dedicated hot spare use the down arrow key to highlight a current hot spare and press the spacebar to deselect the disk Repeat this procedure for each dedicated hot spare that you want to delete Press lt Enter gt to approve the changes The VD Mgmt screen displays the updated list of hot spares under the Hot spares heading K NOTE If a global hot spare or dedicated hot spare is removed and re inserted it regains its status as a hot spare K NOTE If a dedicated hot spare is removed re inserted and then imported the physical disk changes to a global hot spare upon completion of the foreign configuration import Configuring and Managing RAID Deleting Virtual Disks To delete virtual disks perform the following steps in the BIOS Configuration Utility EA EA NOTE You cannot delete a
8. K NOTE The TBBU on the PERC 6 E adapter consists of a DIMM and battery backup unit This section describes how to remove the TBBU from a PERC 6 E adapter that is currently installed in a system 1 Perform a controlled shutdown on the system in which the PERC 6 E adapter is installed as well as any attached storage enclosures and remove the PERC 6 E adapter from the system by following the instructions detailed in Removing the PERC 6 E and PERC 6 i Adapters on page 50 2 Visually inspect the controller and determine whether the dirty cache LED on the DIMM is illuminated See Figure 4 9 If the LED is illuminated reinsert the controller into the system replace the system cover reconnect the system to power turn the system on and repeat step Figure 4 9 PERC 6 E Adapter Dirty Cache LED Location 1 battery 3 dirty cache LED 2 memory module 4 PERC 6 E adapter Installing and Configuring Hardware 53 A CAUTION Running a system without the system cover installed can cause damage due to improper cooling 3 Remove the TBBU assembly from the adapter by pressing down on the tabs at each edge of the DIMM connector and lifting the TBBU off the adapter Disconnect the battery cable from the DIMM Detach the battery from the DIMM by pressing out on the battery clips inserted through the DIMM and rotating the battery off the DIMM See Figure 4 10 a A Figure 4 10 Removing the TBBU 1 memory module 2 battery
9. Linux Enterprise Server Version 9 64 bit and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Version 10 64 bit VMWare ESX 3 5 and 3 5 NOTE Windows XP and Windows Vista are supported with a PERC 6 controller only when the controller is installed in a Dell Precision workstation DD NOTE For the latest list of supported operating systems and driver installation instructions see the system documentation located at the Dell Support website at support dell com For specific operating system service pack requirements see the Drivers and Downloads section on the Dell Support site at support dell com 16 Overview RAID Description RAID is a group of independent physical disks that provides high performance by increasing the number of drives used for saving and accessing data A RAID disk subsystem improves I O performance and data availability The physical disk group appears to the host system either as a single storage unit or multiple logical units Data throughput improves because several disks are accessed simultaneously RAID systems also improve data storage availability and fault tolerance Data loss caused by a physical disk failure can be recovered by rebuilding missing data from the remaining physical disks containing data or parity NOTICE In the event of a physical disk failure a RAID 0 virtual disk fails resulting in data loss Summary of RAID Levels RAID 0 uses disk striping to provide high data throughput especially for larg
10. Properties e Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD e Space available in the virtual disk e Number of free segments e Number of dedicated hot spares Virtual Disk Virtual Disk Properties e RAID level 0 1 5 6 10 50 or 60 e RAID status of the virtual disk Failed Degraded or Optimal e Size of the virtual disk e Operation currently in progress Disk Group Properties e Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD e Space available on the physical disks e Number of free segments e Number of dedicated hot spares Physical Disks Disk Group Properties e Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD pace available on the physical disks S e Number of free segments N umber of dedicated hot spares 98 Configuring and Managing RAID Table 6 3 Information on the Virtual Disk Management Screen continued Menu Item Selected in Left Panel Physical Disk Information That Displays in Right Panel Physical Disk Properties e Vendor name e Physical disk size e Physical disk state Disk Group Properties e Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD e Space available on the physical disks e Number of free segments e Number of dedicated hot spares Space Allocation Disk Group Properties Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD e Space available on the physical di
11. To reset the configuration perform the following steps in the BIOS Configuration Utility 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the VD Mgmt screen 2 Press lt Tab gt or use the arrow keys to move the cursor to the Controller heading 3 Press lt F2 gt The action menu appears 4 Select Reset Configuration A pop up window appears prompting for confirmation to delete all virtual disks 5 Select OK to delete the virtual disks or Cancel to retain the existing configuration BIOS Configuration Utility Menu Options The first menu that displays when you access the BIOS Configuration Utility is the main menu screen It lists the controller controller number and other information such as the slot number On this screen you can select use the arrow keys to select the RAID controller you want to configure Press lt Enter gt to access the controller This section describes the options for the BIOS Configuration Utility for each of the major menus Virtual Disk Management VD Mgmt menu Physical Disk Management PD Mgmt menu Controller Management Ctrl Mgmt menu Foreign Configuration View menu Most menus consist of two panels e A left panel with the menu options e Aright panel with details of the items selected in the left panel The following sections describe the menu and submenu options for each of the major menus 96 Configuring and Managing RAID Virtual Disk Management VD Mgmt The Virtual Disk Ma
12. Yes Yes No Backup Unit Transportable About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 21 Table 3 1 PERC 6 and CERC 6 i Controller Comparisons continued Specification PERC 6 E PERC 6 i Adapter PERC 6 i CERC 6 i Adapter Integrated Integrated Cache 256 MB 256 MB DDRII 256 MB DDRII 128 MB Memory DDRII cache cache memory cache memory DDRII memory size size size cache Optional 512 ey MB DIMM is Cache Write Back Write Back Write Back Write Back Function Write Throug Write Through Write Through Write h Adaptive Adaptive Adaptive Through Read Ahead Read Ahead Read Ahead Adaptive No Read No Read Ahead No Read Ahead Read Ahead Read Ahead Read Ahead Ahead Read Ahead No Read Ahead Read Ahead Maximum Up to 8 arrays Up to 8 arrays Up to 8 arrays N A Number of Spans per Disk Group Maximum Up to 16 Up to 16 virtual Upto 16 virtual Upto 16 Number of virtual disks disks per disk disks per disk virtual disks Virtual Disks per disk group group for non group for non per disk per Disk for non spanned RAID spanned RAID group Group spanned RAID levels 0 1 5 levels 0 1 5 RAID 0 16 levels 0 1 5 and 6 and 6 Hinte and 6 One virtual disk One virtual disk 7 One virtual per disk group per disk group disk per disk for spanned for spanned group for RAID levels 10 RAID levels 10 spanned RAID 50 and 60 50 and 60 levels 10 50 and 60 Multiple Up to 64 Up to 64 virtual Up to 64 virtual Up to 64 Virtual Disks v
13. and restart your system 114 Troubleshooting Table 7 1 BIOS Errors and Warnings continued Message Meaning Multibit ECC errors were This error is specific to PERC 6 i controller detected on the RAID controller If you continue data corruption Contact technical support to resolve this issue Press X to continue or else power off the system replace the controller and reboot can occur Multi bit ECC errors MBE occur in the memory and can corrupt cached data and discard it NOTICE MBE errors are serious as they cause data corruption and data loss In case of MBE errors contact Dell Technical Support NOTE A similar message appears when multiple single bit ECC errors are detected on the controller during bootup Multibit ECC errors were detected on the RAID controller The DIMM on the controller needs replacement If you continue data corruption can occur Press X to or else power off the system and replace the DIMM module and reboot If you have replaced the DIMM please press X continue continu This error is specific to PERC 6 E controller Multi bit ECC errors MBE occur in the memory and can corrupt cached data and discard it Some have your configured disks been removed from system or are no longer accessibl Check your cables and ensure all disks are present Press any key or C to continue The message indicates that some configured disks
14. program dcopynt K NOTE The output file of might be different depending on how your operating system maps the diskette drive You do not need to mount the diskette drive in order to execute the dd command 4 Use the diskette for operating system installation as described later in this section Creating a Driver Update Diskette Using DKMS Perform the following steps to create the Driver Update Diskette DUD using the DKMS tool K NOTE To work the driver must be installed on the system where this procedure is performed 1 Install the DKMS enabled megaraid_sas driver rpm package 2 Type the following command in any directory dkms mkdriverdisk m megaraid_sas v lt driver version gt k lt kernel version gt d lt distro gt K NOTE The values for the d option are suse for Suse Linux Enterprise Server diskettes and redhat for RHEL diskettes K NOTE For further information on usage of DKMS see the DKMS main page This starts the process to create the megaraid_sas DUD image After the DUD image has been built you can find it in the DKMS tree for the megaraid_sas driver See the output of the dkms mkdriverdisk command for the exact path 70 Installing the Drivers Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux Operating Systems using the Driver Update Diskette Perform the following steps to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 4 and 5 and the appropriate driver 1 Boot normally from the Red Hat Enterprise
15. smartd smartd 2338 Device dev sda Bad IEC SMART mode page err 5 skip device smartd 2338 Unable to register SCSI device dev sda at line 1 of file etc smartd conf This is a known issue An unsupported command is entered through the user application User applications attempt to direct Command Descriptor Blocks to RAID volumes The error message does not effect the feature functionality The Mode Sense Select command is supported by firmware on the controller However the Linux kernel daemon is issuing the command to the virtual disk instead of to the driver IOCTL node This action is not supported Controller LED Indicators The external SAS ports on the PERC 6 E adapter have a port status LED per x4 SAS port This bicolor LED displays the status of any external SAS port The LED indicates whether all links are functional or only partial links are functional Table 7 9 describes the patterns for the PERC 6 E adapter port status Table 7 9 LED Behavior Patterns Port State LED State Power on state Off Reset state Off All links in port connected Green light on One or more links are not connected applicable only in wide port Amber light on configurations All links in the port are disconnected or the cable is disconnected Off Troubleshooting 127 Drive Carrier LED Indicators The LED on the physical disk carrier indicates the state of each physical disk Each drive carrier
16. to access the PD Mgmt screen A list of physical disks displays The status of each disk displays under the heading State Press the down arrow key to highlight a physical disk that is a hot spare Press lt F2 gt to display the menu of available actions Configuring and Managing RAID 105 4 Press the down arrow key to select Remove Hot Spare from the list of actions and press lt Enter gt The physical disk is changed to the Ready state The status of the physical disk is displayed under the heading State K NOTE Try to use physical disks of the same capacity in a specific virtual disk If you use physical disks with different capacities in a virtual disk all physical disks in the virtual disk are treated as if they have the capacity of the smallest physical disk Select additional hot spares if desired and follow step 1 to step 4 to remove them Replacing an Online Physical Disk In addition to the automatic Replace Member operation you can manually replace any physical disk that is part of a virtual disk using the Replace Member functionality Perform the following steps to replace a physical disk 1 106 In the Virtual Disk Management window select Virtual Disk and press the down arrow key until Physical Disks is highlighted Press the right arrow key to expand the list of physical disks that are members of the virtual disk Press the down arrow key until the desired physical disk you want to replace
17. virtual disks and physical disks individually e Select a host controller to work on e Create hot spare physical disks e Configure virtual disks e Initialize one or more virtual disks e Perform consistency checks e Rebuild failed physical disks e Preserve the cache data known as pinned cache from a virtual disk that goes offline or is deleted for any reason The following sections describe the menu options and provide detailed instructions used to perform the configuration tasks They apply to the BIOS Configuration Utility The following is a list of the procedures used to configure physical disks into virtual disks 1 Define virtual disks using a group of physical disks K NOTE A disk group is deleted when the last virtual disk in the disk group is deleted 2 Designate hot spares optional For more information see Managing Dedicated Hot Spares on page 94 3 Save the configuration information Initialize the virtual disks For the detailed configuration procedures see Physical Disk Management on page 104 78 Configuring and Managing RAID BIOS Configuration Utility The BIOS Configuration Utility also known as Ctrl R is a Open Manage storage management application embedded on the PERC 6 controllers that configures and maintains RAID disk groups and virtual disks and manages the RAID system Ctrl R is independent of any operating system K NOTE Use the BIOS Configuration Utility for initial setup and
18. 88 Importing or Clearing Foreign Configurations Using the VD Mgmt Menu 89 Importing or Clearing Foreign Configurations Using the Foreign Configuration View Screen 90 Managing Preserved Cache 93 Managing Dedicated Hot Spares 94 Deleting Virtual Disks 95 Deleting Disk Groups 95 Resetting the Configuration 96 BIOS Configuration Utility Menu Options 96 Contents Physical Disk Management Setting LED Blinking Creating Global HotSpares Removing Global or Dedicated Hot Spares Replacing an Online Physical Disk Stopping Background Initialization Performing a Manual Rebuild of an Individual Physical Disk ControllerManagement Enabling BootSupport Enabling BIOS StoponError Restoring Factory Default Settings 6 Troubleshooting Post ErrorMessages Virtual Disks Degraded MemoryErrors 0 0004 Pinned Cache State General Problems Physical Disk Related Issues Physical Disk Failures and Rebuilds SMART Errors 2 2 00 00005 Replace Member Errors Contents Linux Operating System Errors 125 Controller LED Indicators 127 Drive Carri
19. After the failed drive is replaced in the same slot and the rebuild to the hot spare is complete the controller automatically starts to copy data from the commissioned hot spare to the newly inserted drive After the data is copied the new drive is part of the virtual disk and the hot spare is reverted back to being a ready hot spare this allows hot spares to remain in specific enclosure slots While the controller is reverting the hot spare the virtual disk remains optimal K NOTE The controller automatically reverts a hot spare only if the failed drive is replaced with a new drive in the same slot If the new drive is not placed in the same slot a manual Replace Member operation can be used to revert a previously commissioned hot spare About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 37 Automatic Replace Member with Predicted Failure A Replace Member operation can occur when there is a SMART predictive failure reporting on a drive in a virtual disk The automatic Replace Member is initiated when the first SMART error occurs on a physical disk that is part of a virtual disk The target drive needs to be a hot spare that qualifies as a rebuild drive The physical disk with the SMART error is marked as failed only after the successful completion of the Replace Member This avoids putting the array in degraded status If an automatic Replace Member occurs using a source drive that was originally a hot spare that was used in a rebuild and a n
20. DRIVER UPDATE MEDIUM 8 Select the appropriate driver update medium The system selects the driver from the disk and installs it K NOTE Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 Gold media is required when you install any Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 service pack Installing the RPM Package With DKMS Support Perform the following steps to install the RPM package with DKMS support 1 Uncompress the gzipped tarball driver release package 2 Install the DKMS package using the command rpm ihv dkms lt version gt noarch rpm 3 Install the driver package using the command rpm ihv megaraid_sas lt version gt noarch rpm K NOTE Use rom Uvh lt package name gt when updating an existing package 4 Ifthe previous device driver is in use you must reboot the system for the updated driver to take effect 5 Verify that the driver has been loaded Upgrading the Kernel When upgrading to a new kernel you must reinstall the DKMS enabled driver packages Perform the following steps to update or install the driver for the new kernel 1 Ina terminal window type the following dkms build m lt module_name gt v lt module version gt k lt kernel version gt dkms install m lt module_name gt v lt module version gt k lt kernel version gt 72 Installing the Drivers 2 To check whether the driver is successfully installed in the new kernel type dkms status You must see a message similar
21. Foreign Configuration View screen to manage foreign configurations in each specific case 1 Ifall or some of the physical disks in a configuration are removed and re inserted the controller considers the drives to have foreign configurations Perform the following steps a Select Foreign Configuration View to display the foreign configuration information on the Foreign Configuration View screen b Press lt F2 gt to display the options Import or Clear K NOTE You must have all the drives in the system before you perform the import operation c Select Import to import the foreign configuration to the controller or select Clear to delete the foreign configuration s from the re inserted disk s In the Preview Configuration Data window the status of a physical disk that needs to be rebuilt is displayed as Rebuild Configuring and Managing RAID 91 92 2 K NOTE When you import a foreign configuration the dedicated hot spares in the configuration are imported as dedicated hot spares on two conditions the associated virtual disk is already present or the associated virtual disk is also imported along with the configuration K NOTE Start a consistency check immediately after the rebuild is complete to ensure data integrity for the virtual disks For more information about checking data consistency see Checking Data Consistency on page 88 If all the physical disks in a virtual disk are removed but at differen
22. Linux installation media 2 At the command prompt type linux expert dd 3 When the install prompts for a driver diskette insert the diskette and press lt Enter gt For information about creating a driver diskette see Creating a Driver Diskette on page 69 4 Complete the installation as directed by the installation program The driver is installed Installing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Using the Driver Update Diskette K NOTE For information about creating a driver diskette see Creating a Driver Diskette on page 69 To install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server version 9 or 10 using the DUD 1 Insert the appropriate SUSE Linux Enterprise Server version 9 or 10 Service Pack media in the system 2 Select lt F5 gt for the driver update disk K NOTE If you are installing Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 press lt F5 gt If you are installing Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 press lt F6 gt Select Installation from the menu Press lt Enter gt to load the Linux kernel At the prompt Please insert the driver update floppy click OK The system selects the driver from the diskette and installs it The system then displays the message DRIVER UPDATE ADDED with the description of the driver module Installing the Drivers 71 6 Click OK If you want to install from another driver update medium continue with the following steps 7 The system displays the message PLEASE CHOOSE
23. after the import operation because there is no redundant data to rebuild the drives with Configuring and Managing RAID Managing Preserved Cache If a virtual disk becomes offline or is deleted because of missing physical disks the controller preserves the dirty cache from the virtual disk This preserved dirty cache known as pinned cache is preserved until you import the virtual disk or discard the cache K NOTE Certain operations such as creating a new virtual disk cannot be performed if pinned cache exists You have to enter the BIOS Configuration Utility to resolve the situation before you boot to the operating system Messages are displayed notifying you that you must enter the BIOS Configuration Utility to discard the pinned cache or import the virtual disks with the pinned cache A CAUTION If there are any foreign configurations it is strongly advised that you import the foreign configuration before you discard the preserved cache Otherwise you might lose data that belongs with the foreign configuration Perform the following steps to select whether to import the virtual disk or discard the preserved cache 1 On the VD Mgmt screen click on a controller icon 2 Press lt F2 gt to display the menu of available actions 3 Select Manage Preserved Cache A message displays to advise you to import the foreign configuration before you discard the preserved cache Otherwise you can lose data that belongs with the foreign c
24. all the data in a transaction Write Back caching has a performance advantage over Write Through caching NOTE Certain data patterns and configurations perform better with Write Through cache policy 84 Configuring and Managing RAID Table 6 2 Virtual Disk Parameters and Descriptions continued Parameter Description Read Policy Read ahead enables the Read Ahead feature for the virtual disk You can set this parameter to Read ahead No read ahead or Adaptive The default is No read ahead Read ahead specifies that the controller uses Read Ahead for the current virtual disk Read ahead capability allows the controller to read sequentially ahead of requested data and store the additional data in cache memory anticipating that the data is required soon No read ahead specifies that the controller does not use Read Ahead for the current virtual disk NOTE No Read Ahead shows higher performance results due to the effectiveness of hard drive caching algorithms Adaptive specifies that the controller begins using Read Ahead if the two most recent disk accesses occurred in sequential sectors If all read requests are random the algorithm reverts to No read ahead however all requests are still evaluated for possible sequential operation Virtual Disk Management Creating Virtual Disks K NOTE PERC 6 does not support creation of a virtual disk that combines SAS physical disks and SATA physical disks Perform th
25. and Use Example lt Fll gt Switch between two controllers lt F1l gt lt F12 gt Press lt F 12 gt to display a list of controllers lt F12 gt Spacebar Press the spacebar to select an item such as a virtual Press the disk in the List View select all the virtual disks spacebar to select Mark All or deselect all the virtual disks Unmark each virtual disk All on which you want to check data consistency Setting Up Virtual Disks This section contains the procedures used to set up a disk group and create virtual disks Each of the following procedures are explained individually in this section in detail 1 Create the virtual disks and select the virtual disk options 2 Designate hot spares optional For more information see Managing Dedicated Hot Spares on page 94 4 NOTE A disk group is deleted when the last virtual disk in the disk group is deleted 3 Initialize the virtual disks K NOTE When you use one physical disk group to create multiple virtual disks all the virtual disks must be configured with the same RAID level When you define the virtual disks you can set the virtual disk parameters described in Table 6 2 e RAID level Stripe element size e Read policy e Write policy e Type of initialization e Hot spare configuration Configuring and Managing RAID 83 Table 6 2 Virtual Disk Parameters and Descriptions Parameter Description RAID Level RAID Level specifies the wheth
26. data RAID 1 RAIDO 2 2 Yes Removes redundancy while doubling capacity 34 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Table 3 2 RAID Level Migration continued Source Target Required Numberof Capacity Description RAID RAID Numberof Physical Expansion Level Level Physical Disks Possible Disks End Beginning RAID 1 RAID 5 2 3 or more Yes Removes redundancy while doubling capacity RAID 1 RAID 6 2 4ormore Yes Two drives are required to be added for distributed parity data RAID 5 RAID 0 3 ormore 2ormore Yes Converting to a non redundant virtual disk and reclaiming disk space used for distributed parity data RAID 5 RAID 6 3 or more 4ormore Yes At least one drive needs to be added for dual distributed parity data RAID 6 RAID 0 40rmore 2ormore Yes Converting to a non redundant virtual disk and reclaiming disk space used for distributed parity data RAID 6 RAID 5 4ormore 3 ormore Yes Removing one set of parity data and reclaiming disk space used for it K NOTE The total number of physical disks in a disk group cannot exceed 32 K NOTE You cannot perform RAID level migration and expansion on RAID levels 10 50 and 60 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 35 Fault Tolerance Features Table 3 3 lists the features that provide fault tolerance to prevent data loss in case of a failed physical disk Table 3 3 Fault Tolerance Features Specifi
27. downward pressure on both ends or on the middle of the memory module until the retention clips fall into the allotted slots on either side of the memory module See Figure 4 6 Figure 4 6 displays the installation of a memory module on a PERC 6 E adapter Installing and Configuring Hardware 47 Figure 4 6 Installing a DIMM 1 PERC 6 E adapter 3 memory socket 2 retention clip 4 memory module 48 Installing and Configuring Hardware Transferring a TBBU Between Controllers The TBBU provides uninterrupted power supply to the memory module for up to 72 hours for a 256 MB of controller cache memory backup power and up to 48 hours for a 512 MB cache if power supply is unexpectedly interrupted while cached data is still present If the controller fails as a result of a power failure you can move the TBBU to a new controller and recover the data The controller that replaces the failed controller must be devoid of any prior configuration Perform the following steps to replace a failed controller with data in the TBBU 1 Perform a controlled shutdown on the system in which the PERC 6 E is installed as well as any attached storage enclosures 2 Remove the controller that has the TBBU currently installed from the system 3 Remove the TBBU from the controller 4 Insert the TBBU into the new controller See Replace the cover of the system For more information on closing the system see your system s Hardware Own
28. in your enclosure has two LEDs an activity LED green and a bicolor green amber status LED as shown in Figure 7 1 The activity LED flashes whenever the drive is accessed Figure 7 1 Drive Carrier LED Indicators 1 activity LED 2 status LED Table 7 10 lists the flash patterns for the status LED Table 7 10 Drive Carrier Status LEDs LED Description Off Slot is empty drive is not yet discovered by a system Steady green Drive is online Green flashing 250 Drive is being identified or is being prepared for milliseconds ms removal Green flashing Drive is rebuilding or undergoing a Replace Member On 400 ms operation Off 100 ms 128 Troubleshooting Table 7 10 Drive Carrier Status LEDs continued LED Description Amber flashing 125 ms Drive has failed Green amber flashing Predicted failure reported by drive Green On 500 ms Amber On 500 ms Off 1000 ms Green flashing Drive being spun down by user request or other Green On 3000 ms non failure condition Off 3000 ms Amber On 3000 ms Off 3000 ms Troubleshooting 129 130 Troubleshooting Regulatory Notices For additional regulatory information please go to the Regulatory Compliance Homepage on www dell com at the following location www dell com regulatory_compliance HEAR RoHS HU PEAR Ca Be ahs AS IED CP AGE RoHS AFAA T Dell HARP ARES MA Al RAEN AT BR PEAH RoHS ROER Ze FA fe PE MCV bats ABP fie AP
29. is highlighted Press lt F2 gt to expand the list of allowed operations on this disk Select Replace and then Start Press the down arrow to highlight a replacement disk and then press the spacebar to select the disk Select OK to start the replacement NOTE The replacement disk must be a hot spare or an unconfigured disk without a foreign configuration It must have the same or greater capacity and should be of the same type SAS SATA as the disk it is replacing Configuring and Managing RAID Restrictions and Limitations The following restrictions and limitations apply to the Replace Member operation e The Replace Member functions are restricted to one per array for RAID 0 RAID 1 and RAID 5 and two per array for RAID 6 e The Replace Member function and rebuild cannot run simultaneously on a RAID 6 virtual disk The rebuild operation has a higher priority and the Replace Member operation is aborted if a rebuild begins Stopping Background Initialization Background initialization is the automated operation in which parity is created and written BGI does not run on RAID 0 virtual disks Under certain conditions the BIOS Configuration Utility displays a message if you want to stop BGI in progress An alert message displays if BGI is in progress and you start any of the following actions e A full initialization on the virtual disk e A fast initialization on the virtual disk e A consistency check on the virtual di
30. is placed in the slot where the failed drive resided or when an applicable hot spare is present Automatic rebuilds can be performed transparently with hot spares If you have configured hot spares the controllers automatically try to use them to rebuild failed physical disks Redundant Path With Load Balancing Support The PERC 6 E adapter can detect and use redundant paths to drives contained in enclosures This provides the ability to connect two SAS cables between a controller and an enclosure for path redundancy The controller is able to tolerate the failure of a cable or enclosure management module EMM by utilizing the remaining path When redundant paths exist the controller automatically balances I O load through both paths to each disk drive This load balancing feature increases throughput to each drive and is automatically turned on when redundant paths are detected To set up your hardware to support redundant paths see Setting up Redundant Path Support on the PERC 6 E Adapter on page 56 K NOTE This support for redundant paths refers to path redundancy only and not to controller redundancy Using Replace Member and Revertible Hot Spares The Replace Member functionality allows a previously commissioned hot spare to be reverted back to a usable hot spare When a drive failure occurs within a virtual disk an assigned hot spare dedicated or global is commissioned and begins rebuilding until the virtual disk is optimal
31. m PARA IY RER P Dell FMF RZ FRRERMBRS ABLAEMRALK R Hg Cd ANA Crvi SIME PBB SAKES PBDE HLS A EPRI Gus ABLE PCA EER HER Wah aS rer CD DVD 4 EENE KREZ HE E RMSD tA EE SETE m HER HURREE PU Liab PE Mrih ce HURREE EHL HAR We ea ith E CRITE iei WEST ith a Ap fis VET LR Regulatory Notices 131 132 CDSS aH AISA a EN mee PCB RHSAA MRA IC RER O RAMBAS A A SS RF MCV HEEN YL K RAAB S ASMA SRS RSF MCV HERA MFA BA X AIR Dell 394 EU ROHS AT Sit we Rit R TEP RARE EI As Bri CRIP Aba AA Cee PS RES PR EER te HEM ESP ERE WR CEPUP 8 Dell ah AT ACA EPUP te CASAS RTA ANNs aA TARE i EPA CPP OR A tHE Regulatory Notices Corporate Contact Details Taiwan Only Pursuant to Article 11 of the Commodity Inspection Act Dell provides the following corporate contact details for the certified entity in Taiwan for the products addressed by this document Dell B V Taiwan Branch 20 E No 218 Sec 2 Tung Hwa S Road Taipei Taiwan Regulatory Notices 133 134 Regulatory Notices Glossary A Adapter An adapter enables the computer system to access peripheral devices by converting the protocol of one bus or interface to another An adapter may also provide specialized function For example a RAID controller is a type of adapter that provides RAID functions Adapters may reside on the system board or
32. of the virtual disk and the I O throughput are not affected by this message The cache policy settings for the PERC6 SAS RAID system remain the settings you have already chosen Troubleshooting 125 Table 7 8 Linux Operating System Errors continued Error Message Suggested Solution Driver does not This error is a generic problem for DKMS and auto build into new applies to all DKMS enabled driver packages kernel after customer This issue occurs when you perform the updates following steps 1 Install a DKMS enabled driver package 2 Run up2date or a similar tool to upgrade the kernel into the latest version 3 Reboot into the new kernel The driver running in the new kernel is the native driver in the new kernel The driver package you installed previously in the new kernel does not take effect in the new kernel Perform the following procedure to make the driver auto build into the new kernel 1 Type dkms build m lt module_name gt v lt module version gt k lt kernel version gt 2 Type dkms install m lt module_name gt v lt module version gt k lt kernel version gt 3 Type the following to check whether the driver is successfully installed in the new kernel DKMS The following details appear lt driver name gt lt driver version gt lt new kernel version gt installed 126 Troubleshooting Table 7 8 Linux Operating System Errors continued Error Message Suggested Solution
33. successful completion of the rebuild process the virtual disk state changes from degraded to optimal For the rebuild procedure see Performing a Manual Rebuild of an Individual Physical Disk on page 107 Troubleshooting 117 Memory Errors Memory errors can corrupt cached data so the controllers are designed to detect and attempt to recover from these memory errors Single bit memory errors can be handled by the controller and do not disrupt normal operation A notification is sent if the number of single bit errors exceeds a threshold value Multi bit errors are more serious as they result in corrupted data and data loss The following are the actions that occur in the case of multi bit errors e Ifan access to data in cache memory causes a multi bit error when the controller is started with dirty cache the controller discards the cache contents The controller generates a warning message to the system console to indicate that the cache was discarded and generates an event e fa multi bit error occurs at run time either in code data or in the cache the controller stops The controller logs an event to the controller internal event log and logs a message during POST indicating that a multi bit error has occurred K NOTE In case of a multi bit error contact Dell Technical Support Pinned Cache State If a virtual disk becomes offline or is deleted because of missing physical disks the controller preserves the dirty cache
34. supplies sequential data faster but is not as effective when accessing random data Rebuild The regeneration of all data to a replacement disk in a redundant virtual disk RAID level 1 5 6 10 50 or 60 after a physical disk failure A disk rebuild normally occurs without interrupting normal operations on the affected virtual disk though some degradation of performance of the disk subsystem can occur Rebuild Rate The percentage of central processing unit CPU resources devoted to rebuilding Reconstruct The act of remaking a virtual disk after changing RAID levels or adding a physical disk to an existing virtual disk Redundancy The provision of multiple interchangeable components to perform a single function to cope with failures and errors Common forms of hardware redundancy are disk mirroring implementations of parity disks or distributed parity Redundant Virtual Disk A redundant virtual disk is one which has redundant data on physical disks in the disk group that can be used to rebuild a failed physical disk A virtual disk can use disk striping across the physical disks disk mirroring or parity to provide redundancy This offers protection in case of a physical disk failure Replace Member The procedure used to copy data from a source physical disk of a virtual disk to a target physical disk that is not a part of the virtual disk The Replace Member operation is often used to create or restore a specific physic
35. the cursor to the Read Policy to change it if desired f Press lt Enter gt to display the options No Read Ahead Read Ahead or Adaptive Read Ahead then press the down arrow key to highlight an option and press lt Enter gt g Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Write Policy to change it if desired h Press lt Enter gt to display the options Write Through or Write Back and then press the down arrow key to highlight an option and press lt Enter gt i Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to Force WB with no battery and press lt Enter gt If you chose Write Through as the write policy then this option is not available Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to Initialize and press lt Enter gt NOTICE Do not initialize virtual disks when attempting to recreate an existing configuration K NOTE The initialization performed at this stage is fast initialization k Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to Configure HotSpare and press lt Enter gt K NOTE The hot spare created at this stage is a dedicated hot spare Configuring and Managing RAID 87 1 If you have chosen to create hot spares in the earlier steps a pop up window appears where drives with appropriate sizes are displayed Press the spacebar to select the drive size Select the check box to enable the enclosure affinity setting for the hot spare m After you select the drive size click OK to finalize the selection or click Cancel to forfeit
36. the rest of the disk space to create another virtual disk or disks K NOTE The minimum virtual disk size is 100 MB Press lt Tab gt to access the VD Size field and type a virtual disk name Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to Advanced Settings Press the spacebar to make the settings active so that you can change them An X displays beside Advanced Settings The settings are the stripe element size read policy and write policy You can also choose advanced options such as forcing the cache policy to be Write Back initializing the virtual disk and configuring a dedicated hot spare The defaults for these parameters display when the window displays You can accept the defaults or change them For detailed information about the virtual disk parameters see Virtual Disk Parameters and Descriptions on page 84 Configuring and Managing RAID 15 Perform the following steps to select the virtual disk parameters a Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the parameters you want to change b Press the down arrow key to open the parameters and scroll down the list of settings c To change the stripe element size press lt Tab gt to highlight Stripe Element Size d Press lt Enter gt to display the list of stripe element sizes 8 KB 16 KB 32 KB 64 KB 128 KB 256 KB 512 KB and 1024 KB then press the down arrow key to highlight an option and press lt Enter gt The default is 64 KB e Press lt Tab gt to move
37. the selection n Select OK to accept the settings and press lt Enter gt to exit this window or select Cancel and press lt Enter gt to exit if you do not want to change any virtual disk parameters Initializing Virtual Disks NOTICE A full initialization permanently destroys any data that already exists Perform the following steps to initialize virtual disks 1 On the VD Mgmt screen select Virtual Disk and press lt F2 gt to display the menu of available actions Select Initialization and press the right arrow key to display the Initialization submenu options Select Start Init to begin a regular initialization or select Fast Init to begin a fast initialization A pop up windows appears indicating that the virtual disk has been initialized Repeat the procedures in this section to configure another virtual disk The PERC 6 controllers support up to 64 virtual disks per controller The currently configured virtual disks display on the screen Checking Data Consistency Select the Consistency Check CC option in the configuration utility to verify the redundancy data in virtual disks that use RAID levels 1 5 6 10 50 and 60 RAID 0 does not provide data redundancy Configuring and Managing RAID If you attempt to run a Consistency Check on a virtual disk that has not been initialized the following error message displays The virtual disk has not been initialized Running a consistency check may resul
38. the system If a single physical disk fails it can be rebuilt from the parity and the data on the remaining physical disks RAID level 5 combines distributed parity with disk striping as shown in Figure 2 3 Parity provides redundancy for one physical disk failure without duplicating the contents of entire physical disks RAID level 6 combines dual distributed parity with disk striping This level of parity allows for two disk failures without duplicating the contents of entire physical disks Overview 19 Figure 2 3 Example of Distributed Parity RAID 5 PPP Stripe element 1 Stripe element 2 Stripe element 3 Stripe element 4 Stripe element5 Parity 1 5 Stripe element 7 Stripe element 8 Stripe element 9 Stripe element 10 Parity 6 10 Stripe element 6 Stripe element 13 Stripe element 14 Stripe element 15 Parity 11 15 Stripe element 11 Stripe element 12 Stripe element 19 Stripe element 20 Parity 16 20 Stripe element 16 Stripe element 17 Stripe element 18 Stripe element 25 Parity 21 25 Stripe element 21 Stripe element 22 Stripe element 23 Stripe element 24 Parity 26 30 Stripe element 26 Stripe element 27 Stripe element 28 Stripe element 29 Stripe element 30 K NOTE Parity is distributed across multiple physical disks in the disk group Figure 2 4 Example of Dual Distributed Parity RAID 6 LLELLE Stripe element 1 Stripe element2 Stripe element3 Stripe element4 Parity 1 4 Parity 1 4 Stripe element5 Stripe element
39. to the following one on the screen to confirm installation lt driver name gt lt driver version gt lt new kernel version gt installed 3 If the previous device driver is in use you must reboot the system for the updated driver to take effect Installing Solaris Driver Use the procedures in this section to install the driver for Solaris 10 To ensure that you have the current version of the driver download the updated Solaris driver from the Dell Support website at support dell com The package is a gzipped tar file Download the package to a Solaris system and perform the following steps 1 Extract the package contents gunzip c lt driver_package tgz gt tar xvf 2 Use the dd command to create a driver update disk Use the appropriate image for the purpose Type dd if mega_sas img of lt diskette drive device node gt bs 32k K NOTE If you are uncertain which device node corresponds to your diskette drive execute the rmformat command and search for the correct Logical Node K NOTE You can create a DUD on a system running the Windows operating system using the program dcopynt 3 If you prefer you may use the cdrecord command to create a CDROM instead of a floppy image Type cdrecord dev lt bus gt lt target gt lt lun gt mega_sas_cd iso K NOTE To identify the correct location of the bus Target and logical unit number LUN combination execute the following command cdrecord scanb
40. two enclosures Figure 4 12 Redundant Path Support Configuration With Two Enclosures SERVER SERVER PERC 6 E PERC 6 E Ra Installing and Configuring Hardware 57 Figure 4 13 displays Redundant path Storage Configuration with three enclosures Figure 4 13 Redundant Path Support Configuration With Three Enclosures SERVER SERVER PERC 6 E A PERC 6 E A single PERC 6 E adapter can support up to three disk storage enclosures in a redundant path configuration K NOTE Ensure that the latest firmware version is installed on your storage controller You can download the latest firmware from the Dell Support website at support dell com and flash it to the firmware on the controller For the latest firmware installation instructions see the system documentation located on the Dell Support website at support dell com 58 Installing and Configuring Hardware Perform the following steps to configure the hardware to utilize redundantpaths on the PERC 6 E adapter 1 Set up an enclosure on the PERC 6 E adapter 2 Connect two SAS cables from the OUT ports on your PERC 6 E adapter to the IN ports of the external enclosure See Figure 4 3 to view the connection of the cables from the external enclosure to the PERC 6 E adapter K NOTE For information on Unified Mode see the enclosure documentation that was shipped with the system To add multiple enclosures cable both OUT ports of the first enc
41. virtual disk during an initialization NOTE Warning messages are displayed stating the effect of deleting a virtual disk Click OK twice to complete the virtual disk deletion Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the VD Mgmt screen 2 Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to a virtual disk under the Virtual Disks heading 3 Press lt F2 gt The action menu appears Select Delete VD and press lt Enter gt 5 On the VD Mgmt screen select Space Allocation to display the amount of free space available after you delete the virtual disk Deleting Disk Groups You can delete disk groups using the BIOS Configuration Utility When you delete a disk group the utility also removes the virtual disks in that disk group To delete disk groups perform the following steps in the BIOS Configuration Utility 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the VD Mgmt screen 2 Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to a disk group under the Virtual Disks heading 3 Press lt F2 gt The action menu displays Select Delete Disk Group and press lt Enter gt This deletes the disk group When you delete a disk group the remaining disk groups with higher numbers are automatically renumbered For example if you delete disk group 2 disk group 3 is then automatically renumbered as disk group 2 Configuring and Managing RAID 95 Resetting the Configuration You can delete all virtual disks on the RAID controller by performing this operation
42. were removed If the disks were not removed they are no longer accessible The SAS cables for your system might be improperly connected Check the cable connections and fix any problems Restart the system If there are no cable problems press any key or lt C gt to continue Troubleshooting 115 Table 7 1 BIOS Errors and Warnings continued Message Meaning Physical disk removed Physical Disk x x x Controller x Connector x Device failed Physical Disk x x x Controller x Connector x These two messages appear in the event log when you remove a drive The first message indicates that the disk was removed and the second message indicates that the device has failed This feature is working as designed A storage component such as a physical disk or an enclosure has failed The failed component might have been identified by the controller while performing a task such as a rescan or a check consistency Replace the failed component You can identify the failed dsik as its status displays a red X Perform a rescan after replacing the disk Battery is missing or the battery could be fully discharged If battery is connected and has been allowed to charge for 30 minutes and this message continues to appear then contact Technical Support for assistance e The controller battery is missing or damaged e The controller battery is completely discharged and needs to be charged for it t
43. 6 Parity 5 8 Parity 5 8 Stripe element 7 Stripe element 8 Parity 9 12 Parity 9 12 Stripe element 9 Stripe element 10 Stripe element 11 Stripe element 12 Stripe element 13 Stripe element 14 Parity 13 16 Parity 13 16 Stripe element 15 Stripe element 16 K NOTE Parity is distributed across all drives in the array 20 Overview About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers This section describes the features of the Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller PERC 6 and Dell Cost Effective RAID Controller CERC 6 i family of controllers such as the configuration options disk array performance redundant array of independent disks RAID management utilities and operating system software drivers PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controller Features Table 3 1 compares the hardware configurations for the PERC 6 and CERC 6 i controllers Table 3 1 PERC 6 and CERC 6 i Controller Comparisons Specification PERC 6 E PERC 6 i Adapter PERC 6 i CERC 6 i Adapter Integrated Integrated RAID Levels 0 1 5 6 10 0 1 5 6 10 50 0 1 5 6 10 50 OQOand1 50 60 60 60 Enclosures Up to 3 N A N A N A per Port enclosures Ports 2x4external 2 x4 internal 2 x4 internal 1 x4 wide port wide port wide port internal wide port Processor LSI adapter LSI adapter SAS LSI adapter SAS LSI adapter SAS RAID on RAID on Chip RAID on Chip SAS RAID Chip 8 port 8 port with 1078 8 port with 1078 on Chip with 1078 8 port with 1078 Battery Yes
44. AID Terminology Disk Striping Disk striping allows you to write data across multiple physical disks instead of just one physical disk Disk striping involves partitioning each physical disk storage space into stripes of the following sizes 8 KB 16 KB 32 KB 64 KB 128 KB 256KB 512KB and 1024KB These stripes are interleaved in a repeated sequential manner The part of the stripe on a single physical disk is called a stripe element For example in a four disk system using only disk striping used in RAID level 0 segment 1 is written to disk 1 segment 2 is written to disk 2 and so on Disk striping enhances performance because multiple physical disks are accessed simultaneously but disk striping does not provide data redundancy Figure 2 1 shows an example of disk striping Figure 2 1 Example of Disk Striping RAID 0 Stripe element 1 Stripe element 2 Stripe element 3 Stripe element 4 Stripe element 5 Stripe element 6 Stripe element 7 Stripe element 8 Stripe element 9 Stripe element 10 Stripe element 11 Stripe element 12 Disk Mirroring With mirroring used in RAID 1 data written to one disk is simultaneously written to another disk If one disk fails the contents of the other disk can be used to run the system and rebuild the failed physical disk The primary advantage of disk mirroring is that it provides 100 percent data redundancy Because the contents of the disk are completely written to a second disk it does not ma
45. DController 67 Updating an Existing Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Windows XP or Windows Vista Driver 68 Installing Linux Driver 69 Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux Operating Systems using the Driver Update Diskette 71 Installing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Using the Driver Update Diskette 71 Installing the RPM Package With DKMS Support 72 Installing Solaris Driver 73 Installing Solaris 10 on a PowerEdge System Booting From a PERC 6 and CERC 6iController 74 Adding Updating the Driver to an Existing System 2 74 Installing NetWare Driver 75 Installing the NetWare Driver in a New NetWare System 75 Installing or Updating the NetWare Driver in an Existing NetWare System 76 5 Configuring and Managing RAID 77 Dell OpenManage Storage Management 77 Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager 71 RAID Configuration Functions 78 BIOS Configuration Utiliy 79 Entering the BIOS Configuration Utility 79 Exiting the Configuration Utility 80 Menu Navigation Controls 80 Setting Up Virtual Disks 83 Virtual Disk Management 85 Creating Virtual Disks 85 Initializing Virtual Disks 88 Checking Data Consistency
46. Dell PERC 6 1 PERC 6 E and CERC 6 1 User s Guide Notes Notices and Cautions K NOTE A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your system NOTICE A NOTICE warns against either potential damage to hardware or of data and tells you how to avoid the problem A CAUTION A CAUTION indicates a potential for property damage personal injury or death K NOTE Refer to the Product Information Guide that came with your system for complete information about U S Terms and Conditions of Sale Limited Warranties and Returns Export Regulations Software License Agreement Safety Environmental and Ergonomic Instructions Regulatory Notices and Recycling Information Information in this document is subject to change without notice 2007 2008 Dell Inc All rights reserved Reproduction of these materials in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc is strictly forbidden Trademarks used in this text Dell the DELL logo PowerEdge PowerVault Dell Precision and OpenManage are trademarks of Dell Inc MegaRAID is a registered trademark of LSI Corporation Microsoft MS DOS Windows Server Windows and Windows Vista are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and or other countries Citrix XenServer is a trademark of Citrix Systems Inc and or one or more of its subsidiaries and may be registered in the U S Patent and Tradem
47. ERC 6 i adapter 4 filler brackets 7 Tighten the bracket screw if any or use the system s retention clips to secure the controller to the system s chassis 8 For PERC 6 E adapter replace the cover of the system For more information on closing the system refer to your system s Hardware Owner s Manual Installing and Configuring Hardware 43 9 Connect the cable from the external enclosure to the controller See Figure 4 3 Figure 4 3 Connecting the Cable From the External Enclosure mie Wy o ax ee Pa 1 connector on the controller 3 cable from the external enclosure 2 system 4 memory module 10 For PERC 6 i adapter connect the cables from the backplane of the system to the controller The primary SAS connector is white and the secondary SAS connector is black See Figure 4 4 44 Installing and Configuring Hardware Figure 4 4 Connecting Cables to the Controller 1 cable 3 PERC 6 i adapter 2 connectory 4 memory module 11 Replace the cover of the system For more information on closing the system see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual 12 Reconnect the power cables s and network cables and turn on the system Installing the Transportable Battery Backup Unit TBBU for PERC 6 E This section describes the installation of the transportable battery backup unit TBBU on the PERC 6 E A CAUTION The following procedure must be performed at an Electrostatic Discharge ESD sa
48. Installaing and Configuring configured properly Hardware on page 41 for procedures to configure the 3 The controller BIOS is virtual disks disabled Troubleshooting 119 Physical Disk Related Issues Table 7 4 describes physical disk related problems you might encounter and the suggested solutions Table 7 4 Physical Disk Issues Problem Suggested Solution One of the physical Perform the following actions to resolve this problem disks in the disk array e Check the backplane for d is in the failed state ia RE Ge og e Check the SAS cables e Reseat the physical disk e Contact Dell Technical Support if the problem persists Cannot rebuild a fault This could result from any of the following tolerant virtual disk The replacement disk is too small or not compatible with NOTE For more the virtual disk Replace the failed disk with a compatible information see the good physical disk with sufficient capacity alert log for virtual disks Fatal errors or data Contact Dell Technical Support corruption are reported when accessing virtual disks 120 Troubleshooting Physical Disk Failures and Rebuilds Table 7 5 describes issues related to physical disk failures and rebuilds Table 7 5 Physical Disk Failure and Rebuild Issues Issue Suggested Solution Rebuilding the Multiple physical disk errors in a single array typically physical disks after indicate a failure in cabling or
49. O operation for every five host I O operations You cannot add a second virtual disk to a disk group while the virtual disk in that disk group is undergoing a rebuild 122 The firmware does not allow you to create a virtual disk using the free space available in a disk group if a physical disk in a virtual disk in the disk group is undergoing a rebuild operation Troubleshooting SMART Errors Table 7 6 describes issues related to the Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology SMART SMART monitors the internal performance of all motors heads and physical disk electronics and detects predictable physical disk failures K NOTE For information about where to find reports of SMART errors that could indicate hardware failure see the Dell OpenManage Storage Management documentation Table 7 6 SMART Errors Problem Suggested Solution A SMART error is Perform the following steps detected on a physical 4 Force the physical disk offline disk Me redimid nt NOTE If a hot spare is present the rebuild starts with the hot virtual disk spare after the drive is forced offline 2 Replace it with a new physical disk of equal or higher capacity 3 Perform the Replace Member operation The Replace Member operation allows you to copy data from a source physical disk of a virtual disk to a target physical disk that is not a part of the virtual disk See Using the SMART Feature on page 24 for more inform
50. Serial SCSI Protocol SSP enables communication with other SAS devices Each PHY on the SAS controller can function as an SSP initiator or SSP target Storport The Storport driver has been designed to replace SCSI port and work with Windows 2003 and beyond In addition it offers better performance for RAID controller newer protocols like SAS providing higher I O throughput rates improved manageability and an upgraded miniport interface For example while SCSIport allows a maximum of 254 commands per controller Storport allows 254 command per logical unit number LUN STP Acronym for Serial Tunneling Protocol STP enables communication with a Dell qualified SATA device through an attached expander Each PHY on the SAS controller can function as an STP initiator Stripe Element A stripe element is the portion of a stripe that resides on a single physical disk See also striping Glossary 151 Stripe Element Size The total disk space consumed by a stripe not including a parity disk For example consider a stripe that contains 64 KB of disk space and has 16 KB of data residing on each disk in the stripe In this case the stripe element size is 16 KB and the stripe size is 64 KB Striping Disk striping writes data across all physical disks in a virtual disk Each stripe consists of consecutive virtual disk data addresses that are mapped in fixed size units to each physical disk in the virtual disk using a sequential patte
51. a throughput at double the rate of conventional SDRAM It uses a bursting technique to predict the address of the next memory location to be accessed and allows two data transfers on each clock cycle Disk A non volatile randomly addressable rewriteable mass storage device including both rotating magnetic and optical storage devices and solid state storage devices or non volatile electronic storage elements Glossary 137 Disk Array A collection of disks from one or more disk subsystems combined using a configuration utility The utility controls the disks and presents them to the array operating environment as one or more logical drives Disk Group A logical grouping of disks attached to a RAID controller on which one or more virtual disks can be created such that all virtual disks in the disk group use all of the physical disks in the disk group Disk Migration Moving a virtual disk or a hot spare from one controller to another by detaching the physical disks and re attaching them to the new controller Disk Roaming Moving disks from one slot to another on a controller Disk Subsystem A collection of disks and the hardware that controls them and connects them to one or more controllers The hardware can include an intelligent controller or the disks can attach directly to a system I O bus controller Distributed Parity Parity involves an extra bit added to a byte or word to reveal errors in storage in RAM or d
52. ails 39 configuration 39 modes 39 PCI architecture 16 PERC features 21 overview 15 PERC 6 controller descriptions 15 physical disk actions 101 physical disks actions 101 management 101 post error messages 111 RAID 141 configuration 77 configuration and management 77 configuration functions 83 configuration information 34 definition 17 147 description 17 level migration 147 levels 17 100 147 management 77 parity 145 summary of levels 17 RAID level 84 RAID levels 147 read policy 85 rebuild 102 manual 107 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 63 creating a driver diskette 69 installing with the driver update diskette 71 replacement disk 149 S safety instructions for preventing ESD 12 SAS 149 cables 120 controller descriptions 15 devices 15 overview 15 SATA 150 SCSIport 150 SMART technology 24 spare 151 Storport 151 stripe element size 84 T troubleshooting 111 general problems 119 physical disk issues 120 post error messages 111 SMART error 123 124 V virtual disks degraded 117 deleting 95 management 97 menu options 100 103 parameters 84 setting up 102 104 Index 155 Ww Windows 63 drivers 63 updating drivers 68 Windows XP Driver Installation on an Existing System 76 write policy 84 Index 156
53. al configuration for an array for example a specific arrangement of array members on the device I O buses The Replace Member operation can be run automatically or manually 148 Glossary Typically a physical disk fails or is expected to fail and the data is rebuilt on a hot spare The failed physical disk is replaced with a new disk Then the data is copied from the hot spare to the new physical disk and the hot spare reverts from a rebuild drive to its original hot spare status The Replace Member operation runs as a background activity and the virtual disk is still available online to the host Replacement Disk A physical disk replacing a failed member disk in a virtual disk Replacement Unit A component or collection of components in a system or subsystem that is always replaced as a unit when any part of the collection fails Typical replacement units in a disk subsystem include disks controller logic boards power supplies and cables Revertible Hot Spare When you use the Replace Member procedure after data is copied from a hot spare to a new physical disk the hot spare reverts from a rebuild drive to its original hot spare status RPM Acronym for Red Hat Package Manager RPM is a software manager used to install remove query and verify the software on your system RPMs are used in the driver update procedures for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server SLES S SAS Acronym for Serial A
54. applicable to your selection are displayed From the available list download the drivers that you require to a diskette drive USB drive CD or DVD During the operating system installation described in Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP Operating System Installation on page 66 and Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP Operating System Installation on page 66 use the media that you created with the Load Driver option to load mass storage drivers Installing the Drivers 65 Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP Operating System Installation Perform the following steps to install the driver during operating system installation 1 Boot the system using the Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Windows Server 2003 media When the message Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver appears press the lt F6 gt key immediately Within a few minutes a screen appears that asks for additional controllers in the system Press the lt S gt key The system prompts for the driver media to be inserted K NOTE The driver can be provided using a properly formatted USB key For additional details on the driver go the Dell Support website at support dell com Insert the driver media in the media drive and press lt Enter gt A list of PERC 6 and CERC 6i controllers appears Select the right driver for the installed controller a
55. ark Office and in other countries VMware is a registered trademark of VMware Inc in the United States and or other jurisdictions Solaris is a trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries Novell and NetWare are registered trademarks and SUSE is a registered trademark of Novell Inc in the United States and other countries Red Hat and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are registered trademarks of Red Hat Inc Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products Dell Inc disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and trade names other than its own Model UCP 60 UCP 61 and UCC 60 July 2008 P N P412J Rev A00 Contents A CAUTION Safety Instructions 11 SAFETY General 0 04 11 SAFETY When Working Inside Your System 12 Protecting Against Electrostatic Discharge 12 SAFETY Battery Disposal 13 1 Overview oa dete yee Baty ae ee 15 Scope ofthe User sGuide 15 PERC 6 and CERC 6 i Controller Descriptions 15 PCI Architecture 000 16 Operating System Support 16 RAID Description 17 Summary of RAID Levels 17 RAID Terminology 18 2 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 423 6 ue Poe p
56. ata available to users RAID Levels A set of techniques applied to disk groups to deliver higher data availability and or performance characteristics to host environments Each virtual disk must have a RAID level assigned to it RAID Management Utility A RAID management utility is used to configure physical disks into disk groups and virtual disks The BIOS Configuration Utility is also known as Ctrl R Use the BIOS Configuration Utility if no operating system has been installed yet on the controller The BIOS Configuration Utility is built on elements called controls Each control performs a function The functions include procedures you can use to configure physical disks and virtual disks The Dell OpenManage Storage Management configures the disks after you have installed the operating system Storage Management enables you to perform controller and enclosure functions for all supported RAID and non RAID controllers and enclosures from a single graphical or command line interface without requiring the use of the controller BIOS utilities SAS RAID Storage Manager configures monitors and maintains the PERC 6 controllers battery backup units and other devices running on a system Glossary 147 Read Ahead A memory caching capability in some controllers that allows them to read sequentially ahead of requested data and store the additional data in cache memory anticipating that the additional data is required soon Read Ahead
57. ation about the Replace Member feature A SMART error is Perform the following steps detected on a physical 1 Back up your data disk in a 1 non redundant virtual disk 2 Use Replace Member or set up a global hot spare to replace the disk automatically See Replacing an Online Physical Disk on page 106 for information about the Replace Member feature 3 Replace the affected physical disk with a new physical disk of equal or higher capacity 4 Restore from the backup Troubleshooting 123 Table 7 6 SMART Errors continued Problem Suggested Solution ASMART error occurs during a Consistency Check CC Specify how the Consistency Check operation should perform when a SMART error is encountered There are two settings Yes and No No is the default setting and allows CC to continue when the first error is encountered The Yes setting halts CC when the first error is encountered Events are generated in the Event Log when errors are encountered during CC Replace Member Errors Table 7 7 describes issues related to the Replace Member feature K NOTE For more information about the Replace Member features see Replacing an Online Physical Disk on page 106 Table 7 7 Replace Member Operation Errors Problem Suggested Solution The source drive fails during the Replace Member operation If the source data is available from other drives in the virtual disk the rebuild begi
58. be an add in card Other examples of adapters include network and SCSI adapters Adaptive Read Ahead Adaptive read ahead is a read policy that specifies that the controller begins using Read Ahead caching if the two most recent disk accesses occurred in sequential sectors If all read requests are random the algorithm reverts to Non read ahead however all requests are still evaluated for possible sequential operation Array A grouping of physical disks that combines the storage space on the physical disks into a single segment of contiguous storage space The RAID controller can group physical disks on one or more channels into an array A hot spare drive does not participate in an array Background Initialization Background initialization is the automatic check for media errors on physical disks It ensures that striped data segments are the same on all physical disks in a virtual disk The difference between a background initialization and a consistency check is that a background initialization is automatic for new virtual disks The operation starts within five minutes after you create the disk Baseport Base register of the memory address range provided by the host Glossary 135 Battery Backup Unit BBU The battery backup unit protects the integrity of the cached data on the controller by providing backup power if there is a complete AC power failure or a brief power outage BIOS Acronym for basic input output sys
59. bility refer to the Dell Support website at support dell com The two methods for installing a driver that are discussed in this chapter are During operating system installation Use this method if you are performing a new installation of the operating system and want to include the drivers Updating existing drivers Use this method if the operating system and PERC 6 and CERC 6i family of controllers are already installed and you want to update to the latest drivers Installing the Drivers 63 Installing Windows Driver This section documents the procedures used to install the Windows driver Creating the Driver Media Perform the following steps to create the driver media 1 Browse to the download section for the system from the Dell Support website at support dell com Locate and download the latest PERC 6 controller driver to the system Follow the instructions on the Dell Support website for extracting the driver to the media Pre Installation Requirements Before you install the operating system Read the Microsoft Getting Started document that ships with your operating system Ensure that your system has the latest BIOS firmware and driver updates If required download the latest BIOS firmware and driver updates from the Dell Support website at support dell com Create a device driver media diskette USB drive CD or DVD Creating the Device Driver Media Use one of the following two methods to c
60. cation PERC CERC Support for SMART Yes Yes Support for Patrol Read Yes Yes Redundant path support Yes N A Physical disk failure detection Automatic Automatic Physical disk rebuild using hot spares Automatic Automatic Parity generation and checking RAID 5 50 6 and Yes N A 60 only Battery backup of controller cache to protect data Yes N A Manual learn cycle mode for battery backup Yes N A Detection of batteries with low charge after Yes N A bootup Hot swap manual replacement of a physical disk Yes Yes without reboot a The PERC 6 i adapter supports a BBU on selected systems only For additional information see the documentation that was shipped with the system Physical Disk Hot Swapping Hot swapping is the manual substitution of a replacement unit in a disk subsystem for a defective one The manual substitution can be performed while the subsystem is performing its normal functions K NOTE The system backplane or enclosure must support hot swapping in order for the PERC 6 and CERC 6 i controllers to support hot swapping K NOTE Ensure that SAS drives are replaced with SAS drives and SATA drives are replaced with SATA drives K NOTE While swapping a disk ensure that the new disk is of equal or greater capacity than the disk that is being replaced 36 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Failed Physical Disk Detection The controller automatically detects and rebuilds failed physical disks when a new drive
61. ccess the Ctrl Mgmt menu screen Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Select Bootable VD in the Settings box Press the down arrow key to display a list of virtual disks Use the down arrow key to highlight a virtual disk Press lt Enter gt to select the virtual disk Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Apply button and then press lt Enter gt to apply the selection Boot support is enabled for the selected controller Enabling BIOS Stop on Error The option BIOS Stop on Error is used to stop the system from booting if there are BIOS errors Perform the following steps to enable BIOS Stop on Error 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the Ctrl Mgmt menu screen 2 Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to Enable BIOS Stop on Error in the Settings box 3 Press the spacebar to select Enable BIOS Stop on Error An X displays beside Enable BIOS Stop on Error 4 Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Apply button and then press lt Enter gt to apply the selection The controller BIOS is enabled To disable Enable BIOS Stop on Error use the spacebar to deselect Enable BIOS Stop on Error then select Apply and press lt Enter gt Configuring and Managing RAID 109 Restoring Factory Default Settings You can use the Ctrl Mgmt menu screen to restore the default settings for the options in the Settings box The settings are Enable Controller BIOS Enable Alarm and Enable BIOS Stop on Error Perform the fo
62. ching a metal grounded object such as an unpainted metal surface on your computer s I O panel before you interact with anything electronic When connecting a peripheral including handheld digital assistants to your computer you should always ground both yourself and the peripheral before connecting it to the computer In addition as you work inside the computer periodically touch an I O connector to remove any static charge your body may have accumulated 12 SAFETY General You can also take the following steps to prevent damage from electrostatic discharge e When unpacking a static sensitive component from its shipping carton do not remove the component from the antistatic packing material until you are ready to install the component Just before unwrapping the antistatic package be sure to discharge static electricity from your body e When transporting a sensitive component first place it in an antistatic container or packaging e Handle all electrostatic sensitive components in a static safe area If possible use antistatic floor pads and work bench pads SAFETY Battery Disposal Your system may use a nickel metal hydride NiMH lithium coin cell and or a lithium ion battery The NiMH lithium coin cell and lithium ion batteries are long life batteries and it is very possible that you will never need to replace them However should you need to replace them refer to the instructions included in the section Confi
63. connection and could involve multiple disks become the loss of data It is possible to recover the virtual disk after simultaneously multiple physical disks become simultaneously inaccessible inaccessible Perform the following steps to recover the virtual disk 1 Turn off the system check cable connections and reseat physical disks 2 Follow the safety precautions to prevent electrostatic discharge 3 Ensure that all the drives are present in the enclosure 4 Turn on the system and enter into the CTRL R utility and import the foreign configuration Press F at the prompt to import the configuration or press lt C gt to enter the BIOS configuration utility and either import or clear the foreign configuration If the VD is redundant and transitioned into DEGRADED state before going OFFLINE a rebuild operation starts automatically after the configuration is imported If the VD has gone directly into the OFFLINE state due to a cable pull or power loss situation the VD is imported in its OPTIMAL state without a rebuild occurring You can use the BIOS Configuration Utility or Dell OpenManage Storage Management application to perform a manual rebuild of multiple physical disks See the section Performing a Manual Rebuild of an Individual Physical Disk on page 107 for procedures to rebuild a single physical disk Troubleshooting 121 Table 7 5 Physical Disk Failure and Rebuild Issues continued Issue Suggested Solution
64. d a failed physical disk A RAID 0 virtual disk consists of data striped across the physical disks without disk mirroring or parity to provide redundancy This provides for high data throughput but offers no protection in case of a physical disk failure Glossary 143 Ns Acronym for nanosecond s one billionth of a second NVRAM Acronym for non volatile random access memory A storage system that does not lose the data stored on it when power is removed NVRAM is used to store configuration data on the RAID controller 0 Offline A physical disk is offline when it is part of a virtual disk but its data is not accessible to the virtual disk Online An online device is a device that is accessible Online Capacity Expansion Operation to add capacity to an existing virtual disk by adding an additional physical disk while the host system is active and without affecting data availability Operating Environment An operating environment can include the host system where physical disks are attached any I O buses and controllers the host operating system and any additional software required to manage the virtual disk For host based arrays the operating environment includes I O driver software for the member disks but does not include array management software which is regarded as part of the array itself P Parity An extra bit added to a byte or word to reveal errors in storage in RAM or disk or transmission Pa
65. d data as far as the RAID configuration is concerned e None A physical disk with the unsupported flag set An Un configured Good or Offline physical disk that has completed the prepare for removal operation Protocol A set of formal rules describing how to transmit data generally across a network or when communicating with storage subsystems Low level protocols define the electrical and physical standards to be observed bit and byte ordering and the transmission and error detection and correction of the bit stream High level protocols deal with the data formatting including the message syntax the terminal to system dialogue character sets sequencing of messages etc 146 Glossary RAID Acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks originally Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks It is an array of multiple independent physical disks managed together to yield higher reliability and or performance exceeding that of a single physical disk The virtual disk appears to the operating system as a single storage unit I O is expedited because several disks can be accessed simultaneously Redundant RAID levels RAID levels 1 5 6 10 50 and 60 provide data protection RAID Level Migration RAID level migration RLM changes the array from one RAID level to another It is used to move between optimal RAID levels You can perform a RLM while the system continues to run without having to reboot This avoids downtime and keeps d
66. d initialization 25 135 stopping 107 baseport 135 battery installing transportable battery backup 45 management 30 removing from PERC 5 E Adapter 53 BIOS 103 136 BIOS Configuration Utility 79 101 103 136 controller management 102 Foreign View menu 103 menu navigation controls 80 menu options 96 menus 96 physical disk management 101 rebuild menu 102 starting 79 virtual disk management 97 c cables SAS 120 cache 136 compatibility with existing RAID controllers 24 consistency check 88 100 137 controller 137 148 descriptions 15 controller management 102 D disk groups deleting 95 disk migration 27 disk mirroring 18 disk roaming 27 disk striping 18 display update parameters 100 distributed parity 138 driver diskette 64 driver installation 63 NetWare 75 drivers installation 63 Microsoft operating system installation 66 Index 153 E electrostatic discharge See ESD ESD 12 F fault tolerance 34 features 34 foreign configuration 103 Foreign Configuration View 103 hot swap 141 hot swapping 36 initialization 141 L LED behavior patterns 127 operation 27 manual rebuild 107 154 Index N NetWare driver installation 75 Novell NetWare drivers 63 Novell Netware 63 0 operating system support 16 operating systems 16 P parity 19 36 144 distributed 138 Patrol Read 38 behavior 38 behavior det
67. dirty cache is called pinned cache and is preserved until you import the virtual disk or discard the cache Use the Ctrl R utility to select whether to import the VD or discard the pinned cache For the steps used to manage preserved cache see Managing Preserved Cache on page 93 x Virtual Disk s Offline where x is the number of virtual disks failed When the BIOS detects virtual disks in the offline state it displays this warning You should check to determine why the virtual disks failed and correct the problem BIOS does not take any action x Virtual Disk s Degraded where x is the number of virtual disks degraded When the BIOS detects virtual disks in a degraded state it displays this warning You should try to make the virtual disks optimal BIOS does not take any action x Virtual Disk s Partially Degraded Troubleshooting When the BIOS detects a single disk failure in a RAID 6 or 60 it displays this warning You must check why the member disk is not present to correct the problem BIOS does not take any action Table 7 1 BIOS Errors and Warnings continued Message Meaning Memory Battery problems This message occurs under the following were detected Th conditions adapter has recovered but cached data was lost Press any key to continue e The adapter detects that the cache in the controller cache has not yet been written to the disk subsystem e The controller detect
68. disaster recovery You can set Advanced features through Dell OpenManage Storage Management and Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager The following sections provide information about using the BIOS Configuration Utility See the online help option by pressing lt F1 gt to obtain additional information about the ongoing operation K NOTE The PERC 6 controller configuration utility refreshes the screen to show changes to information on the screen The refresh occurs when you press a key or every 15 seconds if you do not press a key Entering the BIOS Configuration Utility The BIOS Configuration Utility configures physical disk groups and virtual disks Because the utility resides in the controller BIOS its operation is independent of the operating systems on your system Perform the following steps to enter the BIOS Configuration Utility when you boot the system 1 Turn on and boot the system A BIOS banner displays information about the controller and configuration 2 During bootup press lt Ctrl gt lt R gt when prompted by the BIOS banner After you press lt Ctrl gt lt R gt if there is only one controller the Virtual Disk Management screen for that controller displays If there is more than one controller the main menu screen displays first This screen lists the RAID controllers Use the arrow keys to select the RAID controller you want to configure and press lt Enter gt to access the management menus for the controlle
69. dles writes to that virtual disk Write Back and Write Through are the two write cache policies and can be set on a virtual disk basis Write Back and Write Through In Write hrough caching the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host system when the disk subsystem has received all the data in a transaction In Write Back caching the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has received all the data in a transaction The controller then writes the cached data to the storage device in the background The risk of using Write Back cache is that the cached data can be lost if there is a power failure before it is written to the storage device This risk is mitigated by using a BBU on selected PERC 6 controllers For information on which controllers support a BBU see Table 3 1 Write Back caching has a performance advantage over Write hrough caching K NOTE The default cache setting for virtual disks is Write Back caching K NOTE Certain data patterns and configurations perform better with a Write Through cache policy 32 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Conditions Under Which Write Back is Employed Write Back caching is used under all conditions in which the battery is present and in good condition Conditions Under Which Write Through is Employed Write lhrough caching is used under all conditions in which the battery is missing or in a low charge stat
70. e files in an environment that requires no data redundancy RAID 1 uses disk mirroring so that data written to one physical disk is simultaneously written to another physical disk RAID 1 is good for small databases or other applications that require small capacity but also require complete data redundancy RAID 5 uses disk striping and parity data across all physical disks distributed parity to provide high data throughput and data redundancy especially for small random access RAID 6 is an extension of RAID 5 and uses an additional parity block RAID 6 uses block level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks RAID 6 provides protection against double disk failures and failures while a single disk is rebuilding If you are using only one array deploying RAID 6 is more effective than deploying a hot spare disk RAID 10 a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1 uses disk striping across murrored disks It provides high data throughput and complete data redundancy RAID 10 can support up to eight spans and up to 32 physical disks per span RAID 50 a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 5 uses distributed data parity and disk striping and works best with data that requires high system availability high request rates high data transfers and medium to large capacity RAID 60 is a combination of RAID 6 and RAID 0 a RAID 0 array is striped across RAID 6 elements RAID 60 requires at least 8 disks Overview 17 R
71. e Low charge state is when the battery is not capable of maintaining data for at least 24 hours in the case of a power loss Conditions Under Which Forced Write Back With No Battery is Employed Write Back mode is available when the user selects Force WB with no battery When Forced Write Back mode is selected the virtual disk is in Write Back mode even if the battery is not present A CAUTION It is recommended that you use a power backup system when forcing Write Back to ensure that there is no loss of data if the system suddenly loses power Virtual Disk Read Policies The read policy of a virtual disk determines how the controller handles reads to that virtual disk Some read policies are e Always Read Ahead Read Ahead capability allows the controller to read sequentially ahead of requested data and to store the additional data in cache memory anticipating that the data is required soon This speeds up reads for sequential data but there is little improvement when accessing random data e No Read Ahead Disables the Read Ahead capability e Adaptive Read Ahead When selected the controller begins using Read Ahead if the two most recent disk accesses occurred in sequential sectors If the read requests are random the controller reverts to No read ahead About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 33 Reconfiguring Virtual Disks There are two different methods to reconfigure RAID virtual disks RAID Level Migration and O
72. e following steps to create virtual disks 1 During host system bootup press lt Ctrl gt lt R gt when the BIOS banner displays The Virtual Disk Management screen displays If there is more than one controller the main menu screen displays Select a controller and press lt Enter gt The Virtual Disk Management screen displays for the selected controller K NOTE This procedure describes the BIOS Configuration Utility screens in Tree View 2 Use the arrow keys to highlight Controller or Disk Group Configuring and Managing RAID 85 86 10 11 12 13 14 Press lt F2 gt to display the actions you can perform Select Create New VD and press lt Enter gt The Create New VD screen displays The cursor is on the RAID Levels option Press lt Enter gt to display the possible RAID levels based on the physical disks available Press the down arrow key to select a RAID level and press lt Enter gt Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the list of physical disks Use the arrow key to highlight a physical disk and press the spacebar lt Alt gt or lt Enter gt to select the disk Select additional disks if desired Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the box Basic Settings Set the virtual disk size in the VD Size field The virtual disk size displays in megabyte MB format K NOTE For RAID levels 0 1 5 and 6 only you can use part of the available disk space to create one virtual disk and then use
73. e grouped together to create virtual disks Enclosure Management Intelligent monitoring of the disk subsystem by software and or hardware The disk subsystem can be part of the host system or can reside in an external disk enclosure Enclosure management helps you stay informed of events in the disk subsystem such as a physical disk or power supply failure Enclosure management increases the fault tolerance of the disk subsystem Exclusive OR A Boolean operation used to create a parity bit that can be used to restore data affected by a damaged file or failed physical disk The management utility compares data from two physical disks and creates a parity bit that is stored on a third physical disk This operation is used for RAID levels that use parity bits such as RAID 5 which used distributed parity Also known as X OR F Failed Physical Disk A physical disk that has ceased to function that consistently functions improperly or that is inaccessible Glossary 139 Fault Tolerance Fault tolerance is the capability of the disk subsystem to undergo a single drive failure per disk group without compromising data integrity and processing capability The PERC 6 controllers provide this support through redundant virtual disks in RAID levels 1 5 6 10 50 and 60 Fault tolerance is often associated with system availability because it allows the system to be available during drive failures In case a disk fails the PERC 6 contr
74. e physical disks are inserted properly Turn on the system The controller detects the RAID configuration from the configuration data on the physical disks Disk Migration The PERC 6 and CERC 6 i controllers support migration of virtual disks from one controller to another without taking the target controller offline However the source controller must be offline prior to performing the disk migration The controller can import RAID virtual disks in optimal degraded or partially degraded states You cannot import a virtual disk that is in an offline state K NOTE The PERC 6 controllers are not backward compatible with previous Small Computer System Interface SCSI PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller PERC and Redundant Array of Independent Disks RAID controllers About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 27 When a controller detects a physical disk with a pre existing configuration it flags the physical disk as foreign and it generates an alert indicating that a foreign disk was detected A CAUTION Do not attempt disk roaming during RLM or CE This causes loss of the virtual disk Perform the following steps to use disk migration 1 Turn off the system that contains the source controller 2 Move the appropriate physical disks from the source controller to the target controller The system with the target controller can be running while inserting the physical disks The controller flags the inserted disks as foreign dis
75. einstalling the Modular blade system into the Modular blade system chassis see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual or the User s Guide NOTE The CERC 6 i Modular does not provide support for a battery backup unit NOTE For the latest list of firmware and driver installation instructions see the system documentation located at the Dell Support website at support dell com Installing and Configuring Hardware 61 62 Installing and Configuring Hardware Installing the Drivers The Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller PERC 6 and Dell Cost Effective RAID Controller CERC 6 1 family of controllers require software drivers to operate with the supported operating systems This chapter contains the procedures for installing the drivers for the following operating systems Citrix XenServer Dell Edition Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Windows Vista Microsoft Windows Server 2008 including Hyper V virtualization Novell NetWare 6 5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 4 Update 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 5 Solaris 10 Update 5 64 bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Version 9 SP4 64 bit and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Version 10 64 bit VMware ESX 3 5 and 3 5 NOTE For more information on Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX drivers refer to the Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX documentation respectively NOTE To check operating system compati
76. er s Manual on page 45 5 Insert the new controller into the system See the relevant sections on installing controllers under Installing the PERC 6 E and PERC 6 i Adapters on page 41 6 Turn on the system The controller flushes the cache data to the virtual disks Installing and Configuring Hardware 49 Removing the PERC 6 E and PERC 6 i Adapters K NOTE In the event that the SAS cable is accidentally pulled when the system is operational reconnect the cable and see the online help of your Open Manage storage management application for the required recovery steps K NOTE Some PERC 6 i adapters installed on a Dell workstation or Dell SC systems do not have a BBU 1 Perform a controlled shutdown on the system in which the PERC 6 E is installed as well as any attached storage enclosures 2 Disconnect the system from the electrical outlet and remove the system cover i A CAUTION Running a system without the system cover installed may cause damage due to improper cooling K NOTE For more information on removing and reinstalling the system cover refer to the Hardware Owner s Manual that shipped with the system 3 For removing a PERC 6 E adapter locate the PERC 6 E in the system and disconnect the external cables from the PERC 6 E 4 Remove any retention mechanism such as a bracket screw that may be holding the PERC 6 E in the system and gently lift the controller from the system s PCI E slot See Figure 4 7 50 Ins
77. er import or clear the foreign configuration Troubleshooting 113 Table 7 1 BIOS Errors and Warnings continued Message Meaning The foreign configuration Clear the foreign configuration using CTRL R message is always present or Dell OpenManage Server Administrator during POST but no Storage Management foreign configurations NOTE The physical disk goes to Ready state are present in the when you clear the foreign configuration and this foreign view page in may lead to data loss CTRL R and all virtual disks are in an optimal state If a physical disk is inserted into the system that was previously a member of a virtual disk and that disk s previous location has been taken by a replacement disk through a rebuild the newly inserted disk that was previously a member of the virtual disk must have its foreign configuration flag manually removed Previous configuration s The message indicates that the controller and cleared or missing physical disks have different configurations Importing configuration You can use the BIOS Configuration Utility to created on XX XX XX XX clear the foreign configuration Press any key to continue or C to load the configuration utility Invalid SAS topology The SAS cables for your system are improperly detected Please check connected Check the cable connections and your cable fix problems if any Restart the system configurations repair the problem
78. er LED Indicators 128 B Regulatory Notices 131 C Corporate Contact Details Taiwan Only 133 Contents 10 Contents A CAUTION Safety Instructions Use the following safety guidelines to help ensure your own personal safety and to help protect your system and working environment from potential damage A CAUTION There is a danger of a new battery exploding if it is incorrectly installed Replace the battery only with the same or equivalent type recommended by the manufacturer Refer to SAFETY Battery Disposal on page 13 K NOTE Refer to the safety regulations and warnings stated in the documentation that ships with your Dell workstation SAFETY General Observe and follow service markings Do not service any product except as explained in your user documentation Opening or removing covers that are marked with the triangular symbol with a lightning bolt may expose you to electrical shock Components inside these compartments should be serviced only by a trained service technician e If any of the following conditions occur unplug the product from the electrical outlet and replace the part or contact your trained service provider The power cable extension cable or plug is damaged An object has fallen into the product The product has been exposed to water The product has been dropped or damaged The product does not operate correct
79. er the virtual disk is RAID 0 1 5 6 10 50 and 60 The RAID level you select depends on the number of disks disk capacity and the requirements for fault tolerance and performance See Summary of RAID Levels on page 17 for more information Stripe Element Size Stripe Element Size specifies the size of the segments written to each physical disk in a RAID 0 1 5 6 10 and 50 virtual disk You can set the stripe element size to 8 KB 16 KB 32 KB 64 KB 128 KB 256 KB 512 KB or 1024 KB The default and recommended stripe element size is 64 KB A larger stripe element size provides better read performance if your system does mostly sequential reads Write Policy Write Policy specifies the controller write policy You can set the write policy to Write Back or Write hrough In Write Back caching the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has received all the data in a transaction NOTE If a BBU is present the default cache setting is Write Back cache If no BBU is present the default cache policy default setting is Write Through NOTICE If Write Back is enabled and the system is quickly turned off and then on the controller may pause as the system flushes cache memory Controllers that contain a battery backup default to Write Back caching In Write Through caching the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the disk subsystem has received
80. ew drive added for the Replace Member operation as the target drive the hot spare reverts to the hot spare state after a successful Replace Member operation K NOTE To enable the automatic Replace Member use the Dell OpenManage Storage Management For more information on automatic Replace Member see Dell OpenManage Storage Management on page 77 K NOTE For information on manual Replace Member see Replacing an Online Physical Disk on page 106 Patrol Read The Patrol Read feature is designed as a preventative measure to ensure physical disk health and data integrity Patrol Read scans for and resolves potential problems on configured physical disks The Open Manage storage management application can be used to start Patrol Read and change its behavior Patrol Read Feature The following is an overview of Patrol Read behavior 1 Patrol Read runs on all disks on the controller that are configured as part of a virtual disk including hot spares 2 Patrol Read does not run on unconfigured physical disks Unconfigured disks are those that are not part of a virtual disk or are in Ready state 38 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Patrol Read adjusts the amount of controller resources dedicated to Patrol Read operations based on outstanding disk I O For example if the system is busy processing I O operation then Patrol Read uses fewer resources to allow the I O to take a higher priority Patrol Read does not run on any di
81. f both controllers is the latest revision Also ensure that you use the SAS 6 firmware version 00 25 41 00 06 22 01 00 or later version Migrating Virtual Disks from SAS 6 iR to PERC 6 and CERC 6i K NOTE The supported operating systems listed above contain a driver for the PERC 6 and CERC 6i controller family No additional drivers are needed during the migration process If virtual disks with one of the supported Linux operating systems listed above are being migrated open a command prompt and type the following commands modprobe megaraid_sas mkinitrd f preload megaraid_sas boot initrd uname r img uname r Turn off the system Move the appropriate physical disks from the SAS 6 iR controller to the PERC 6 and CERC 6i If you are replacing your SAS 6 iR controller with a PERC 6 see the Hardware Owner s Manual that came with your system CAUTION After you have imported the foreign configuration on the PERC 6 or CERC 6i storage controllers you cannot migrate the storage disks back to the SAS 6 iR controller as it may result in the loss of data About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 29 4 Boot the system and import the foreign configuration that is detected You can do this in two ways as described below e Press lt F gt to automatically import the foreign configuration e Enter the BIOS Configuration Utility and navigate to the Foreign Configuration View K NOTE For more information on BIOS Configuration U
82. fe workstation to meet the requirements of EIA 625 Requirements For Handling Electrostatic Discharge Sensitive Devices The following procedure must be performed following the IPC A 610 latest revision ESD recommended practices Installing and Configuring Hardware 45 1 Unpack the TBBU and follow all antistatic procedures NOTICE When transporting a sensitive component first place it in an antistatic 46 container or packaging K NOTE Handle all sensitive components in a static safe area If possible use antistatic floor pads and work bench pads With the DIMM removed from the controller insert one end of the battery pack harness the red white yellow and green wires into the connector on the memory module and the other end into the connector on the battery Place the top edge of the battery over the top edge of the memory module so that the arms on the side of the battery fit into their sockets on the memory module See Figure 4 5 Figure 4 5 Installing a TBBU battery 4 connector on the memory module connector on the battery 5 memory module battery pack harness Place the PERC 6 E adapter on a flat clean static free surface Installing and Configuring Hardware 5 Mount the memory module in the controller memory socket like a standard DIMM For more information see Installing the DIMM on a PERC 6 E Adapter on page 47 The memory module is mounted flush with the board so that the memory
83. from the virtual disk This preserved dirty cache is called pinned cache and is preserved until you import the virtual disk or discard the cache Use the Ctrl R utility to select whether to import the virtual disk or discard the pinned cache In the VD Mgmt menu select Manage Preserved Cache and follow the steps on the screen 118 Troubleshooting General Problems Table 7 3 describes general problems you might encounter along with suggested solutions Table 7 3 General Problems Problem Suggested Solution The device displays in Reinstall the driver See the driver installation Device Manager but has a procedures in the section Installing the Drivers on yellow bang exclamation page 63 point The device does not appear Turn off the system and reseat the controller in Device Manager No Hard Drives The corresponding solutions to the three causes of the Found message appears message are during a CD installation of 1 Press lt F6 gt to install the RAID Device Driver during Microsoft Windows installation Server 2003 or Windows XP f 2 Enter the BIOS Configuration Utility to configure the because of the following virtual disks See the section Configuring and causes Managing RAID on page 77 for procedures to 1 The driver is not native in configure the virtual disks the operating system 3 Enter the BIOS Configuration Utility to enable the 2 The virtual disks are not BIOS See the section
84. ge lt Shift gt Press lt Shift gt lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Press lt Tab gt previous control on a dialog or page lt Shift gt lt Tab gt to move the cursor from Virtual Disk to Disk Group lt Ctrl gt Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to move to the next menu screen Press lt N gt among the main menu screens VD Mgmt PD lt Ctrl gt lt N gt on Mgmt Ctrl Mgmt and Foreign View the VD Mgmt When you return to the original menu the cursor is chee lone on the same menu item it was on before you pressed the PD Mgmt lt Ctrl gt lt N gt screen lt Ctrl gt Press lt Ctrl gt lt P gt to move to the previous menu Press lt P gt screen among the main menu screens VD Mgmt PD lt Ctrl gt lt P gt on Mgmt Ctrl Mgmt and Foreign View the PD Mgmt When you return to the previous screen the cursor is es toreturh on the same menu item it was on before you pressed to the VD Mgmt lt Ctrl gt lt P gt Screen lt Fl gt Press lt F1 gt to access Help information The Help lt F1 gt screens display a glossary of topics you can use to access information about navigation RAID levels and general topics lt F2 gt Press lt F2 gt to access the context menu which lt F2 gt displays the list of options lt F5 gt Press lt F5 gt to refresh the information on the lt F5 gt screen 82 Configuring and Managing RAID Table 6 1 Menu Navigation Keys continued Notation Meaning
85. guring and Managing RAID on page 77 Do not dispose of the battery along with household waste Contact your local waste disposal agency for the address of the nearest battery deposit site K NOTE Your system may also include circuit cards or other components that contain batteries These batteries must also be disposed of in a battery deposit site For information about such batteries refer to the documentation for the specific card or component Taiwan Battery Recycling Mark P iba yE SAFETY General 13 14 SAFETY General Overview The Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller PERC 6 family of controllers and the Dell Cost Effective RAID Controller CERC 6 i offer redundant array of independent disks RAID control capabilities The PERC 6 and CERC 6 i Serial Attached SCSI SAS RAID controllers support Dell qualified SAS and SATA devices The controllers are designed to provide reliability high performance and fault tolerant disk subsystem management Scope of the User s Guide This user s guide for the PERC 6 and CERC 6 i controllers documents the following topics e Overview e About PERC 6 and CERC 6 i controllers e Hardware installation and configuration e Driver installation e RAID configuration and management e Troubleshooting PERC 6 and CERC 6 i Controller Descriptions The following list describes each type of controller e The PERC 6 E adapter with two external x4 SAS ports and a trans
86. irtual disks disks per disks per virtual disks per per controller controller controller per Controller controller 22 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Table 3 1 PERC 6 and CERC 6 i Controller Comparisons continued Specification PERC 6 E PERC 6 i Adapter PERC 6 i CERC 6 i Adapter Integrated Integrated Support for Yes Yes Yes Yes x8 PCI Express host interface Online Yes Yes Yes Yes Capacity Expansion Dedicated Yes Yes Yes Yes and Global Hot Spares Hot Swap Yes Yes Yes Yes Devices Supported Non Disk No No No No Devices Supported Enclosure Yes N A N A N A Hot Add Mixed Yes Yes Yes Yes Capacity Physical Disks Supported Hardware Yes Yes Yes Yes Exclusive OR XOR Assistance About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 23 Table 3 1 PERC 6 and CERC 6 i Controller Comparisons continued Specification PERC 6 E PERC 6 i Adapter PERC 6 i CERC 6 i Adapter Integrated Integrated Revertible Yes Yes Yes N A Hot Spares Supported Redundant Yes N A N A N A Path Support a The PERC 6 i adapter supports a battery backup unit BBU on selected systems only For additional information see the documentation that shipped with the system R Using the enclosure Hot Add feature you can hot plug enclosures to the PERC 6 E adapter without rebooting the system K NOTE The maximum array size is limited by the maximum number of drives per disk group 32 the maximum
87. is occurs you can resume the rebuild operation manually using a storage management application To avoid interruption ensure that none of the virtual disks are deleted until the rebuild is complete Controller Management Enabling Boot Support K NOTE Refer to your system documentation to ensure the proper boot order is selected in the system BIOS In a multiple controller environment you can enable BIOS on multiple controllers However if you want to boot from a specific controller then enable the BIOS on that controller and disable it on the other controllers The system can then boot from the BIOS enabled controller Perform the following steps to enable the controller BIOS 1 2 108 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the Ctrl Mgmt menu screen Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to Enable Controller BIOS in the Settings box Press the spacebar to select Enable Controller BIOS An X displays beside Enable Controller BIOS Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Apply button and then press lt Enter gt to apply the selection The controller BIOS is enabled To disable the controller BIOS use the spacebar to deselect the Enable Controller BIOS control and then select Apply and press lt Enter gt Configuring and Managing RAID After you enable the BIOS for a controller perform the following steps to enable the boot support for that controller 1 2 ao oo Aa Ww Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to a
88. isk or transmission Parity is used to generate a set of redundancy data from two or more parent data sets The redundancy data can be used to rebuild one of the parent data sets In distributed parity the parity data are distributed among all the physical disks in the system If a single physical disk fails it can be rebuilt from the parity of the applicable data on the remaining physical disks DKMS Acronym for Dynamic Kernel Module Support Designed by Dell DKMS creates a framework in which kernel dependent module source can reside so that it is easy to rebuild modules as you upgrade kernels DKMS is used in the upgrade process for drivers for Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 138 Glossary DUD Acronym for driver update diskette A DUD is an image of a diskette stored as a regular file To use it you have to create the content to a real diskette from this file The steps used to create the diskette depend on how the image is supplied E ECC Errors Acronym for error correcting code ECC errors occur in the memory and can corrupt cached data so that it must be discarded Single bit ECC errors can be handled by the firmware and do not disrupt normal operation A notification is sent if the number of single bit errors exceeds a threshold value ECC double bit errors are more serious as they result in corrupted data and data loss Enclosure A structure such as a system which contains physical disks that ar
89. isk rebuild see Performing a Manual Rebuild of an Individual Physical Disk on page 107 If no workload is placed on the storage subsystem the controller rebuilds SAS drives at a rate of approximately 200 GB hour and SATA drives at a rate of approximately 100 GB hour Several of the controller configuration settings and the virtual disk settings affect the actual rate of rebuild These factors include the rebuild rate setting virtual disk stripe size virtual disk Read Policy virtual disk Write Policy and the amount of workload placed on the storage subsystem For information on getting the best rebuild performance from your RAID controller see the documentation on Dell Support website at support dell com Controller Management Ctrl Mgmt The Controller Management screen Ctrl Mgmt displays the product name package BIOS version firmware version BIOS Configuration Utility version and boot block Use this screen to perform actions on the controller and BIOS You can use this screen to enable or disable the controller BIOS and the BIOS during bootup in event of BIOS errors In addition you can select a virtual disk from which to boot select default settings and reset the configuration 102 Configuring and Managing RAID Controller Management Actions Table 6 6 describes the actions you can perform on the Ctrl Mgmt screen Table 6 6 Controller Management Options Option Description Enable Controller Select this opti
90. ives Handled by BIOS the ROM option in the configuration utility When the ROM option is disabled the BIOS cannot boot Int13h and cannot provide the ability to boot from the virtual disk Int13h is an interrupt signal that supports numerous commands that are sent to the BIOS then passed to the physical disk The commands include actions you can perform with a physical disk such as reading writing and formatting Press lt Ctrl gt lt R gt to When the BIOS is disabled you are given the Enable BIOS option to enable it by entering the configuration utility You can change the setting to Enabled in the configuration utility Troubleshooting 111 112 Table 7 1 BIOS Errors and Warnings continued Message Meaning Adapter at Baseport xxxx is not responding where xxxx is the baseport of the controller If the controller does not respond for any reason but is detected by the BIOS it displays this warning and continues Turn off the system and try to reseat the controller If this message is still displayed contact Dell Technical Support There are offline or missing virtual drives with preserved cache Please check th cables and ensure that all drives are present Press any key to enter the configuration utility If a virtual disk becomes offline or is deleted because of missing physical disks the controller preserves the dirty cache from the virtual disk This preserved
91. ks 3 Use the Open Manage storage management application to import the detected foreign configuration K NOTE Ensure that all physical disks that are part of the virtual disk are migrated K NOTE You can also use the controller BIOS configuration utility to migrate disks Compatibility With Virtual Disks Created on PERC 5 Controllers Virtual disks that were created on the PERC 5 family of controllers can be migrated to the PERC 6 and CERC 6i controllers without risking data or configuration loss Migrating virtual disks from PERC 6 and CERC 6i controllers to PERC 5 is not supported K NOTE For more information about compatibility contact your Dell Technical Support Representative Virtual disks that were created on the CERC 6 i controller or the PERC 5 family of controllers can be migrated to PERC 6 28 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Compatibility With Virtual Disks Created on SAS 6 iR Controllers The migration of virtual disks created on the SAS 6 iR family of controllers can be migrated to PERC 6 and CERC 61 However only virtual disks with boot volumes of the following Linux operating systems successfully boot after migration Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update 5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 64 bit NOTE The migration of virtual disks with Microsoft Windows operating systems is not supported NOTICE Before migrating virtual disks back up your data and ensure that the firmware o
92. llowing steps to restore default settings 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the Ctrl Mgmt menu screen Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Settings box Use the spacebar to deselect the settings for the options in the Settings box 4 Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the Factory Default box and press the lt Alt gt lt Enter gt or the spacebar A dialog box displays for you to confirm your choice 5 Select lt OK gt and press lt Enter gt The defaults are automatically selected for the controller settings and are displayed in Settings 110 Configuring and Managing RAID Troubleshooting To get help with your Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller PERC 6 and Dell Cost Effective RAID Controller CERC 6 i controller you can contact your Dell Technical Service representative or access the Dell Support website at support dell com Post Error Messages The controller BIOS read only memory ROM provides INT 13h functionality disk I O for the virtual disks connected to the controller so that you can boot from or access the physical disks without the need of a driver Table 7 1 describes the error messages and warning messages that display for the BIOS Table 7 2 describes the error messages that display for displays the battery backup unit BBU Table 7 1 BIOS Errors and Warnings Message Meaning BIOS Disabled No Logical This warning message displays after you disable Dr
93. losure to both IN ports of the next enclosure After you set up the hardware the controller detects the redundant paths and automatically utilizes them to balance the I O load Removing and Installing the CERC 6 i Modular Storage Controller Card Service Only Procedure The Modular Storage Controller Card is located below the hard drive bays of the Dell Modular Blade system To remove the Modular Storage Controller Card 1 Remove the Dell Modular Blade system from the Modular blade system chassis For more information on removing the blade system from the Modular Blade system chassis see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual or the User s Guide Remove the system cover of the Modular blade system For more information on opening the top cover of the Modular blade system see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual or the User s Guide Remove the system board and place it on a stable flat work surface For more information on removing the system board see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual or the User s Guide Installing and Configuring Hardware 59 4 Open the release lever to disconnect the Modular Storage Controller Card edge connector from the system board connector as illustrated in Figure 4 14 5 Lift the Modular Storage Controller Card straight up from the system board as illustrated in Figure 4 14 NOTICE Do not apply pressure to the internal SAS port connectors as they could be damaged
94. ly when you follow the operating instructions e Use the product only with approved equipment e Operate the product only from the type of external power source indicated on the electrical ratings label If you are not sure of the type of power source required consult your service provider or local power company e Handle batteries carefully Do not disassemble crush puncture short external contacts dispose of in fire or water or expose batteries to temperatures higher than 60 degrees Celsius 140 degrees Fahrenheit Do not attempt to open or service batteries replace batteries only with batteries designated for the product SAFETY General 11 SAFETY When Working Inside Your System Before you remove the system covers perform the following steps in the sequence indicated A CAUTION Except as expressly otherwise instructed in Dell documentation only trained service technicians are authorized to remove the system cover and access any of the components inside the system NOTICE To help avoid possible damage to the system board wait 5 seconds after turning off the system before removing a component from the system board or disconnecting a peripheral device 1 Turn off the system and any devices 2 Ground yourself by touching an unpainted metal surface on the chassis before touching anything inside the system 3 While you work periodically touch an unpainted metal surface on the chassis to dissipate any static electricit
95. module is parallel to the board when installed 6 Press the memory module firmly into the memory socket As you press the memory module into the socket the TBBU clicks into place indicating that the controller is firmly seated in the socket and the arms on the socket fit into the notches to hold the memory module securely Installing the DIMM on a PERC 6 E Adapter This section describes how to install the memory module on a PERC 6 E adapter NOTICE PERC 6 cards support Dell qualified 512 MB and 256 MB DDRII 667MHz ECC registered DIMMs with x16 DRAM components Installing unsupported memory causes the system to hang at POST 1 Remove the memory module in an antistatic environment K NOTE When unpacking a static sensitive component from its shipping carton do not remove the component from the antistatic packing material until you are ready to install the component Before unwrapping the antistatic package ensure to discharge static electricity from your body K NOTE Handle all sensitive components in a static safe area If possible use antistatic floor pads and work bench pads K NOTE Do not touch the gold leads and do not bend the memory module 2 Align the memory module so that the keyed edge of the memory module is placed exactly on top of the physical divider on the memory socket of the controller to avoid damage to the DIMM 3 Insert the memory module on the memory socket of the controller and apply a smooth
96. n to install the driver for Novell NetWare 6 5 To ensure that you have the current version of the driver download the updated NetWare driver from the Dell Support website at support dell com Installing the NetWare Driver in a New NetWare System Follow the instructions in the Novell NetWare Installation Guide to install Novell NetWare in the system Perform the following steps to install Novell NetWare using the SAS RAID controller as a primary adapter 1 2 10 11 12 Boot from the Novell NetWare media Follow the instructions on the screen until you reach the Device Driver screen which is used to modify drivers Select Modify and press lt Enter gt From the screen that displays go to the Storage Adapter screen to install the MegaRAID SAS driver Delete any existing RAID adapter listings Press lt Insert gt to add unlisted drivers Press lt Insert gt again A path is displayed Press lt F3 gt Insert the driver diskette into the diskette drive and press lt Enter gt The system finds the HAM driver Press lt Tab gt Select the Driver Summary screen and press lt Enter gt Continue the Novell NetWare installation procedure Installing the Drivers 75 Installing or Updating the NetWare Driver in an Existing NetWare System Perform the following steps to add the Novell NetWare driver to an existing installation 1 10 76 At the root prompt type hdetect and press lt Enter gt The Co
97. nagement screen VD Mgmt is the first screen that displays when you access a RAID controller from the main menu screen on the BIOS Configuration Utility In the Tree View the left panel displays the menus for the virtual disk management which are e Controller e Disk Group e Virtual Disks displayed in descending numerical order e Physical Disks individual physical disks are displayed in enclosure slot format e Space Allocation virtual disk size and free space you can use to create a virtual disk e Hot Spares global and dedicated In the Tree View the right panel displays detailed information for the selected controllers disk groups virtual disks physical disks space allocation and hot spares as shown in Table 6 3 Table 6 3 Information on the Virtual Disk Management Screen Menu Item Selected Information That Displays in Right Panel in Left Panel Controller Controller Properties e Number of disk groups DG e Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD Disk Group Disk Group Properties e Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD e Space available on the physical disks e Number of free segments e Number of dedicated hot spares Configuring and Managing RAID 97 Table 6 3 Information on the Virtual Disk Management Screen continued Menu Item Selected Information That Displays in Right Panel in Left Panel Virtual Disks Disk Group
98. nal performance of all motors heads and drive electronics to detect predictable drive failures This feature helps monitor drive performance and reliability and protects the data on the drive When problems are detected on a drive you can replace or repair the drive without losing any data SMART compliant disks have attributes for which data values can be monitored to identify changes in values and determine whether the values are within threshold limits Many mechanical failures and some electrical failures display some degradation in performance before failure SMP Acronym for Serial Management Protocol SMP communicates topology management information directly with an attached SAS expander device Each PHY on the controller can function as an SMP initiator 150 Glossary Spanning The method by which nested RAID levels such as RAID 10 50 and 60 are constructed from multiple sets of basic or single RAID levels For example a RAID 10 is made up of multiple sets of RAID 1 arrays where each RAID 1 set is considered a span Data is then striped RAID 0 across the RAID 1 spans to create a RAID 10 virtual disk The same concept holds true for RAID 50 and 60 where multiple sets of RAID 5 or RAID 6 can be combined together with striping Spanning is generally used when referencing these three nested RAID levels Spare A physical disk available to replace another physical disk in case that physical disk fails SSP Acronym for
99. nd press lt Enter gt to load the driver K NOTE For Windows Server 2003 a message may appear that states that the driver that you provided is older or newer than the existing Windows driver Press lt S gt to use the driver that is on the media Press lt Enter gt again to continue the installation process as usual Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista Installation Perform the following steps to install the driver during operating system installation 1 Boot the system using the Microsoft Windows Vista Microsoft Windows Server 2008 media 2 Follow on screen instructions until you reach Where do you want to install 66 Vista 2008 and select Load driver Installing the Drivers 3 The system prompts for the media to be inserted Insert the installation media and browse to the proper location 4 Select the appropriate PERC 6 controller from the list click Next and continue installation K NOTE Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista operating systems include native support for the PERC 6 and CERC 6i RAID controller The driver is automatically installed For driver updates see the Drivers and Downloads section on the Dell Support website at support dell com Installing a Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Windows Vista or Windows XP Driver for a New RAID Controller K NOTE PERC 5 and PERC 6 use the same driver and do not require separate driver installations Perfo
100. ndows Server 2008 DUP is and executable application that updates drivers for specific devices DUP supports command line interface and silent execution For more information go to the Dell Support website at support dell com Installing Linux Driver Use the procedures in this section to install the driver for Linux The driver is updated frequently To ensure that you have the current version of the driver download the updated Linux driver from the Dell Support website at support dell com Creating a Driver Diskette Before beginning the installation copy the drivers from the Service and Diagnostic Utilities media or download the driver appropriate for Linux from the Dell Support website at support dell com This file includes two Red Hat Package Managers RPMs and driver update disk files The package also contains the Dynamic Kernel Module Support DKMS Red Hat Package Manager RPM file source code and release notes For more information on DKMS see the Dell Support website at support dell com The package is a gzipped tar file After downloading the package to a Linux system perform the following steps 1 Unzip the package using gunzip 2 Untar the file using tar xvf Installing the Drivers 69 3 Use the dd command to create a driver update disk Use the appropriate image for the purpose dd if lt name of the dd image file gt of dev fd0 K NOTE You can create a driver update disk on a Windows system using the
101. nection on the controller and disconnect the battery Installing and Configuring Hardware 55 Setting up Redundant Path Support on the PERC 6 E Adapter The PERC 6 E adapter can detect and use redundant paths to drives contained in enclosures With redundant paths to the same port of a device if one path fails another path can be used to communicate between the controller and the device For more information about redundant paths see Redundant Path With Load Balancing Support on page 37 To set up a configuration with redundant paths both ports on a controller must be cabled to the IN ports of a single enclosure To add multiple enclosures both OUT ports of the first enclosure must be cabled to the IN ports of the next enclosure If the connection between an OUT port on the controller and an IN port on an enclosure fails an alternate path exists through the second OUT port on the controller and the second In port on the enclosure For more information see Figure 4 11 Figure 4 12 and Figure 4 13 K NOTE The PERC 6 E adapter supports redundant paths when used with Dell PowerVault MD1000 and Dell PowerVault MD1120 disk storage enclosures Figure 4 11 displays Redundant path Storage Configuration with one enclosure Figure 4 11 Redundant Path Support Configuration With One Enclosure SERVER SERVER PERC 6 E 56 Installing and Configuring Hardware Figure 4 12 displays Redundant path Storage Configuration with
102. nfiguration Options screen is displayed From the screen that displays go to the Storage Adapter screen to install the MegaRAID SAS driver Delete any existing RAID adapter listings Press lt Insert gt to add unlisted drivers Press lt Insert gt again A path is displayed Press lt F3 gt Insert the driver diskette into the diskette drive and press lt Enter gt The system finds the HAM driver Press lt Tab gt Select the Driver Summary screen and press lt Enter gt Continue the Novell NetWare installation procedure Installing the Drivers Configuring and Managing RAID Dell Open Manage storage management applications enable you to manage and configure the RAID system create and manage multiple disk groups control and monitor multiple RAID systems and provide online maintenance The applications for Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller PERC 6 controllers include Dell OpenManage Storage Management e Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager e BIOS Configuration Utility Ctrl R Dell OpenManage Storage Management Dell OpenManage Storage Management is a storage management application for Dell systems that provides enhanced features for configuring a system s locally attached RAID and non RAID disk storage Dell OpenManage Storage Management enables you to perform controller and enclosure functions for all supported RAID controllers and enclosures from a single graphical or command line interface
103. nline Capacity Expansion RAID Level Migrations RLM involve the conversion of a virtual disk to a different RAID level and Online Capacity Expansions OCE refer to increasing the capacity of a virtual disk by adding drives and or migrating to a different RAID level When a RLM OCE operation is complete and reboot is not necessary For a list of possible RAID level migrations and whether or not a capacity expansion is possible in that scenario see Table 3 2 The source RAID level column indicates the virtual disk level before the RAID level migration and the target RAID level column indicates the RAID level after the operation is complete K NOTE If you configure 64 virtual disks on a controller you cannot perform a RAID level migration or capacity expansion on any of the virtual disks K NOTE The controller changes the write cache policy of all virtual disks undergoing a RLM OCE to Write Through until the RLM OCE is complete Table 3 2 RAID Level Migration Source Target Required Numberof Capacity Description RAID RAID Numberof Physical Expansion Level Level Physical Disks Possible Disks End Beginning RAID 0 RAID 1 1 2 No Converting non redundant virtual disk into a mirrored virtual disk by adding one drive RAID 0 RAIDS lormore 3ormore Yes At least one drive needs to be added for distributed parity data RAID 0 RAID 6 lormore 4ormore Yes At least two drives need to be added for dual distributed parity
104. nnot be imported If a physical disk in a virtual disk is rebuilding the physical disk s state is set to Rebuild For the virtual disks the text Importable or Not Importable displays next to each virtual disk No virtual disk target ID displays for virtual disks that cannot be imported Configuring and Managing RAID 103 The section Importing or Clearing Foreign Configurations Using the Foreign Configuration View Screen on page 90 contains the procedures you can use to manage the foreign configurations K NOTE The BIOS Configuration Utility reports error codes for failed imports of foreign configurations Physical Disk Management Setting LED Blinking The LED blinking option indicates when physical disks are being used to create a virtual disk You can choose to start or stop the LED blinking Perform the following steps to start or stop this option 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the PD Mgmt screen A list of physical disks appears The status of the each disk displays under the heading State Press the down arrow key to highlight a physical disk Press lt F2 gt to display the menu of available actions Press the down arrow key to highlight LED Blinking Press the right arrow key to display the available actions Start and Stop Select Start to begin LED blinking or Stop to end LED blinking ao oo Aa Ww N Creating Global Hot Spares A global hot spare can be used to replace a failed physical disk in any red
105. ns automatically on the target drive using the data from the other drives to generate that data Target drive fails If the target drive fails the Replace Member operation aborts Other drives fail If the target drive fails and the Replace Member operation aborts but the source data is still available then the Replace Member operation should continue as Replace Member 124 Troubleshooting Linux Operating System Errors Table 7 8 describes issues related to the Linux operating system Table 7 8 Linux Operating System Errors Error Message Suggested Solution lt Date Time gt lt HostName gt kernel sdb asking for cache data failed lt Date Time gt lt HostName gt kernel sdb assuming drive cach through writ This error message displays when the Linux Small Computer System Interface SCSI mid layer asks for physical disk cache settings Because the controller firmware manages the virtual disk cache settings on a per controller and a per virtual disk basis the firmware does not respond to this command Thus the Linux SCSI mid layer assumes that the virtual disk s cache policy is Write Through SDB is the device node for a virtual disk This value changes for each virtual disk See the section Physical Disk Management on page 104 for more information about Write Through cache Except for this message there is no side effect to this behavior The cache policy
106. number of spans per disk group 8 and the size of the physical drives K NOTE The number of physical disks on a controller is limited by the number of slots in the backplane on which the card is attached Using the SMART Feature The Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology SMART feature monitors the internal performance of all motors heads and physical disk electronics to detect predictable physical disk failures The SMART feature helps monitor physical disk performance and reliability SMART compliant physical disks have attributes for which data values can be monitored to identify changes in values and determine whether the values are within threshold limits Many mechanical and electrical failures display some degradation in performance before failure 24 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers A SMART failure is also referred to as a predicted failure There are numerous factors that relate to predicted physical disk failures such as a bearing failure a broken read write head and changes in spin up rate In addition there are factors related to read write surface failure such as seek error rate and excessive bad sectors For information on physical disk status see Disk Roaming on page 27 K NOTE For detailed information on Small Computer System Interface SCSI interface specifications see www t10 org and for detailed information on for Serial Attached ATA SATA interface specifications see www t13 org
107. o become active The battery must first be charged and then it is found by the system several minutes later 116 Troubleshooting Table 7 2 describes the BBU related error messages and warnings that display for the BIOS Table 7 2 Backup Battery Unit Errors and Warnings Message Meaning Memory Battery problems This message occurs under the following were detected Th conditions adapter has recovered but cached data was lost Press any key to continue e The adapter detects that the cache in the controller cache has not yet been written to the disk subsystem e The controller detects an error correcting code ECC error while performing its cache checking routine during initialization e The controller then discards the cache rather than sending it to the disk subsystem because the data integrity cannot be guaranteed To resolve this problem allow the battery to charge fully If the problem persists the battery or adapter DIMM might be faulty In that case contact Dell Technical Support Virtual Disks Degraded A redundant virtual disk is in a degraded state when one or more physical disks has failed or is inaccessible For example a RAID 1 virtual disk consisting of two physical disks can sustain one physical disk in a failed or inaccessible state failure and become a degraded virtual disk To recover from a degraded state the failed physical disk must be replaced and allowed to rebuild Upon
108. ollers support hot spare disks and the auto rebuild feature Firmware Software stored in read only memory ROM or Programmable ROM PROM Firmware is often responsible for the behavior of a system when it is first turned on A typical example would be a monitor program in a system that loads the full operating system from disk or from a network and then passes control to the operating system Foreign Configuration A RAID configuration that already exists on a replacement physical disk that you install in a system You can import the existing configuration to the RAID controller or clear it so you can create a new one Format The process of writing a specific value to all data fields on a physical disk to map out unreadable or bad sectors Because most physical disks are formatted when manufactured formatting is usually done only if a physical disk generates many media errors G GB Acronym for gigabyte s A gigabyte equals 1 024 megabytes or 1 073 741 824 bytes 2 30 bytes 140 Glossary Host System Any system on which the RAID controller is installed Mainframes workstations and personal systems can all be considered host systems Hot Spare An idle powered on stand by physical disk ready for immediate use in case of disk failure It does not contain any user data A hot spare can be dedicated to a single redundant virtual disk or it can be part of the global hot spare pool for all virtual disks controlled by
109. omatically correct any differences found in the data Display or update Displays the properties of the selected virtual disk You can virtual disk modify the cache write policy read policy and the input output parameters I O policy from this menu Manage preserved Preserves the dirty cache from a virtual disk if it becomes offline cache or is deleted The dirty cache is preserved until you import the virtual disk or discard the cache Delete a virtual disk Deletes the virtual disk and frees up disk space to create another virtual disk Delete a disk group Deletes a disk group which is a collection of disks from one or more disk subsystems controlled by management software 100 Configuring and Managing RAID Physical Disk Management PD Mgmt The Physical Disk Management screen PD Mgmt displays physical disk information and action menus The screen displays physical disk IDs vendor names disk size type state and disk group DG You can sort the list of physical disks based on these headings You can perform several actions on the physical disks including the following e Rebuilding physical disks e Performing the Replace Member operation Setting the LED to blink e Making a disk online or offline unaffiliated with a disk group e Creating global hot spares e Removing dedicated hot spares or global hot spares Physical Disk Actions Table 6 5 describes the actions you can perform on physical disk
110. on to enable the controller BIOS If the boot BIOS device is on the RAID controller the BIOS must be enabled Disable the BIOS to use other boot devices Ina multiple controller environment you can enable BIOS on multiple controllers However if you want to boot from a specific controller then enable the BIOS on that controller and disable it on the other controllers The system can then boot from the BIOS enabled controller Enable Alarm Select this option to enable or disable the audible alarm on the controller if alarm hardware is present The alarm sounds to warn you of any problems with the physical disks or the virtual disks Enable BIOS Stop Select this option to stop the system BIOS during bootup if On Error there are BIOS errors This option enables you to enter the configuration utility to resolve the problem Select Bootable VD Select this option to specify a virtual disk as the boot disk on the controller This option displays if you have built virtual disks Factory Default Select this option to restore the default settings for the options in the Settings box Foreign Configuration View When a foreign configuration is present you can select Foreign Configuration View to display the configuration This screen shows the foreign configuration as it would be if you import it You can preview the foreign configuration before you decide whether to import it or clear it In some cases a foreign configuration ca
111. onfiguration Confirm whether you want to continue The Manage Preserved Cache screen displays the affected virtual disks 4 On the Manage Preserved Cache screen choose whether to discard the cache You can discard the cache or press Cancel to display the Preserved Cache Retained dialog box If you choose to discard the cache you are prompted to confirm your choice If you choose to retain the cache a message displays to notify you that you cannot perform certain operations while the cache exists Click OK to continue Some operations such as creating a new virtual disk are not allowed if preserved cache exists A message warns you that you cannot perform the operation while preserved cache exists If you choose to clear a configuration and preserved cache exists a message warns you that all data on all virtual drives is lost and the preserved cache is discarded Configuring and Managing RAID 93 Managing Dedicated Hot Spares A dedicated hot spare automatically replaces a failed physical disk only in the selected disk group which the hot spare is part of A dedicated hot spare is used before a global hot spare is used You can create dedicated hot spares or delete them on the VD Mgmt screen Perform the following steps to create or delete dedicated hot spares 1 94 On the VD Mgmt screen select Disk Group and press lt F2 gt to display the menu of available actions The available menu options appear Select Manage Ded
112. onfiguration such as disk groups virtual disks physical disks space allocation and hot spares The foreign configuration data appears in the same format as configurations on the VD Mgmt screen You can use this screen to view the foreign configuration before you decide whether to import it After you view the foreign configuration you can either import it to the RAID controller or clear it K NOTE Before you import review the configuration on the screen to ensure that it is the desired end result 90 Configuring and Managing RAID You can use the Foreign Configuration View screen to manage foreign configurations in the following cases e All the physical disks in a configuration are removed and re inserted e Some of the physical disks in a configuration are removed and re inserted e All the physical disks in a virtual disk are removed but at different times and then re inserted e The physical disks in a non redundant virtual disk are removed The following constraints apply to the physical disks that are considered for import The drive state of a physical disk can change from the time the foreign configuration is scanned to when the actual import occurs The foreign import occurs only on drives that are in the Unconfigured Good state e Drives in the failed or offline state cannot be imported e The firmware does not allow you to import more than eight foreign configurations Perform the following procedures on the
113. onfiguring and Managing RAID 89 Perform the following steps to import or clear foreign configurations 1 During bootup press lt Ctrl gt lt R gt when prompted by the BIOS banner The VD Mgmt screen appears by default 2 On the VD Mgmt screen highlight the Controller The controller number is the only item that appears until you import the foreign configuration 3 Press lt F2 gt to display the available actions 4 Press the right arrow key to display the available actions Import and Clear K NOTE Ensure that your virtual disk has all the physical disks by verifying that there are no physical disks marked as Missing in the foreign view page and that all the disks appear as expected before importing them 5 Select Import to import the foreign configuration or Clear to delete the foreign configuration and then press lt Enter gt If you import the configuration the VD Mgmt displays detailed configuration information This includes information about the disk groups virtual disks physical disks space allocation and hot spares Importing or Clearing Foreign Configurations Using the Foreign Configuration View Screen If one or more physical disks are removed from a configuration for example by a cable pull or physical disk removal the configuration on those disks is considered a foreign configuration by the RAID controller You can use the Foreign Configuration View screen to view information about the foreign c
114. or damage K NOTE Contact Dell Technical support if the controller is damaged 2 Tur off the system and attached peripherals and disconnect the system from the electrical outlet For more information on power supplies refer to your system s Hardware Owner s Manual 3 Disconnect the system from the network and remove the system cover For more information on opening the system refer to your system s Hardware Owner s Manual 4 Select an empty PCI Express PCI E slot Remove the blank filler bracket on the back of the system aligned with the PCI E slot you have selected 5 Align the PERC 6 E adapter to the PCI E slot you have selected A CAUTION Never apply pressure to the memory module while inserting the controller into the PCI E slot Applying pressure could break the module 6 Insert the controller gently but firmly until the controller is firmly seated in the PCI E slot For more information on PERC 6 adapter see Figure 4 1 For more information on PERC 6 1 adapter see Figure 4 2 K NOTE For a list of compatible controllers see the documentation that shipped with the system Installing and Configuring Hardware 41 Figure 4 1 Installing a PERC 6 E Adapter 1 bracket screw 3 PCI e slot 2 PERC 6 i adapter 4 filler brackets 42 Installing and Configuring Hardware Figure 4 2 Installing a PERC 6 i Adapter 4 3 1 bracket screw 3 PCI e slot 2 P
115. ponse time In the PERC 6 controllers the balancing service is performed by the firmware You can choose between a single path for load balancing and a round robin load balancing scheme In single path the firmware can detect multiple paths to a device and use only a single path for I O activity to that device The secondary path is used if a failure is detected on the primary path In a simple round robin scheme if load balancing is enabled for the controller the firmware implements a round robin scheme to issue I Os to the redundant path device The round robin scheme issues one I O down one path and the other I O down the second path and so on There is no restriction on firmware regarding which path to choose first If load balancing is disabled the firmware can use any one of the available paths to issue I Os and it should continue to use the same path for all further I O activity On reboot or path failure the firmware again chooses any available path Logical Disk A set of contiguous chunks on a physical disk Logical disks are used in array implementations as constituents of logical volumes or partitions Logical disks are normally transparent to the host environment except when the array containing them is being configured Acronym for megabyte s The term megabyte means 1 048 576 bytes 2 20 bytes however when referring to hard drive storage the term is often rounded to mean 1 000 000 bytes 142 Glossary
116. portable battery backup unit TBBU e The PERC 6 i adapter with two internal x4 SAS ports with or without a battery backup unit depending on the system e The PERC 6 i Integrated controller with two internal x4 SAS ports and a battery backup unit e The CERC 6 i modular storage controller with one internal x4 SAS port and no battery backup unit K NOTE The CERC 6 i modular storage controller is a custom form factor card for PowerEdge M Series Modular systems Overview 15 Each controller supports up to 64 virtual disks K NOTE The number of virtual disks supported by the PERC 6 i and the CERC 6 i cards is limited by the configuration supported by the system PCI Architecture PERC 6 controllers support a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PCI E x8 host interface CERC 6 i Modular controller supports a PCI E x4 host PCI E is a high performance input output I O bus architecture designed to increase data transfers without slowing down the Central Processing Unit CPU Operating System Support The PERC 6 and CERC 6 i controllers support the following operating systems e Citrix XenServer Dell Edition e Microsoft Windows Server 2003 e Microsoft Windows XP e Microsoft Windows Vista e Microsoft Windows Server 2008 including Hyper V virtualization Novell NetWare 6 5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 4 Update 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 5 Solaris 10 64 bit SUSE
117. previously existed on the virtual disk A full initialization eliminates the need for that virtual disk to undergo a background initialization and can be performed directly after the creation of a virtual disk During full initialization the host is not be able to access the virtual disk You can start a full initialization on a virtual disk by using the Slow Initialize option in the Dell OpenManage Storage Management application To use the BIOS Configuration Utility to perform a full initialization see Initializing Virtual Disks on page 88 K NOTE If the system is rebooted during a full initialization the operation aborts and a BGI begins on the virtual disk Fast Inititialization of Virtual Disks A fast initialization on a virtual disk overwrites the first and last 8 MB of the virtual disk clearing any boot records or partition information This operation takes only 2 3 seconds to complete and is recommended when recreating virtual disks To perform a fast initialization using the BIOS Configuration Utility see Initializing Virtual Disks on page 88 Consistency Checks Consistency Check is a background operation that verifies and corrects the mirror or parity data for fault tolerant virtual disks It is recommended that you periodically run a consistency check on virtual disks You can manually start a consistency check using the BIOS Configuration Utility or a Open Manage storage management application To start a consistenc
118. r The virtual disks physical disks free space hot spares and other items displays in the other menu screens The information can display in a list view or in an expandable tree directory similar to that of Microsoft Windows Explorer Configuring and Managing RAID 79 K NOTE You can access multiple controllers through the BIOS Configuration Utility by pressing lt F12 gt NOTE You can access PERC 5 and PERC 6 adapters from the same BIOS if the PERC 5 firmware version is 5 1 1 0040 or later You need to verify if you are currently set to edit the PERC 5 or PERC 6 adapter Exiting the Configuration Utility To exit the BIOS Configuration Utility press lt Esc gt at any menu screen If there is only one controller then a dialog box displays to confirm your choice Select OK to exit and press lt Enter gt If multiple controllers are present then the lt Esc gt key brings you to the Controller Selection screen Press lt Esc gt again to reach the exit screen A dialog box displays to confirm your choice Select OK to exit and press lt Enter gt Menu Navigation Controls Table 6 1 displays the menu keys you can use to move between the different screens in the BIOS Configuration Utility Table 6 1 Menu Navigation Keys Notation Meaning and Use Example Use the right arrow key to open a submenu move Start i from a menu heading to the first submenu or move gt Programs to the first item in that submenu If yo
119. reate the device driver media Downloading Drivers From the Dell Systems Service and Diagnostic Tools Media 64 1 Insert the Dell Systems Service and Diagnostics Tools media into a system The Welcome to Dell Service and Diagnostic Utilities screen is displayed Select your system model and operating system Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Click Continue Installing the Drivers 4 From the list of drivers displayed select the driver that you require Select the self extracting zip file and click Run Copy the driver to a diskette drive CD DVD or USB drive Repeat this step for all the drivers that you require During the operating system installation described in Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP Operating System Installation on page 66 Installing the Driver During a Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista Installation on page 66 and Installing a Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Windows Vista or Windows XP Driver for a New RAID Controller on page 67 use the media that you created with the Load Driver option to load mass storage drivers Downloading Drivers From the Dell Support Site 1 2 3 Go to support dell com Click Drivers and Downloads Enter the service tag of your system in the Choose by Service Tag field or select your system s model Select the System Type Operating System Driver Language and Category from the drop down list The drivers that are
120. rity is used to generate a set of redundancy data from two or more parent data sets The redundancy data can be used to rebuild one of the parent data sets However parity data does not fully duplicate the parent data 144 Glossary sets In RAID this method is applied to entire physical disks or stripe elements across all physical disks in a virtual disk Parity consists of dedicated parity in which the parity of the data on two or more physical disks is stored on an additional physical disk and distributed parity in which the parity data are distributed among all the physical disks in the system If a single physical disk fails it can be rebuilt from the parity of the applicable data on the remaining physical disks Partition A logical structure on a contiguous segment of storage on a physical disk or virtual disk recognized by an operating system Patrol Read A preventive measure that includes review of your system for possible physical disk errors that could lead to drive failure and damage data integrity The Patrol Read operation can find and possibly resolve any potential problem with physical disks prior to host access This can enhance overall system performance because error recovery during a normal I O operation may not be necessary PHY The interface required to transmit and receive data packets transferred across the serial bus Each PHY can form one side of the physical link in a connection with a PHY on a differen
121. rm the following steps to configure the driver for the RAID controller on a system that already has Windows installed 1 Tum off the system 2 Install the new RAID controller in the system For detailed instructions on installing and cabling the RAID controller in the system see Installaing and Configuring Hardware on page 41 3 Turm on the system The Windows operating system detects the new controller and displays a message to inform the user 4 The Found New Hardware Wizard screen pops up and displays the detected hardware device K NOTE Windows 2008 and Vista include a device driver to support the PERC adapters The system automatically detects the new controller and installs the driver Check the version of the driver installed by Windows and update if required Click Next On the Locate device driver screen select Search for a suitable driver for my device and click Next 7 Make the Driver Files available and browse to the proper location from the Locate Driver Files screen Installing the Drivers 67 10 11 Click Next The wizard detects and installs the appropriate device drivers for the new RAID controller Click Finish to complete the installation Reboot the system when prompted Updating an Existing Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Windows XP or Windows Vista Driver Perform the following steps to update the Microsoft Windows driver for the PERC 6 controller already installed on your sy
122. rn For example if the virtual disk includes five physical disks the stripe writes data to physical disks one through five without repeating any of the physical disks The amount of space consumed by a stripe is the same on each physical disk The portion of a stripe that resides on a physical disk is a stripe element Striping by itself does not provide data redundancy Striping in combination with parity does provide data redundancy V Virtual Disk A virtual disk refers to storage created by a RAID controller from one or more physical disks Although a virtual disk may be created from several physical disks it is seen by the operating system as a single disk Depending on the RAID level used the virtual disk may retain redundant data in case of a disk failure w Write Back In Write Back caching mode the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has received all the data in a disk write transaction Data is written to the disk subsystem in accordance with policies set up by the controller These policies include the amount of dirty clean cache lines the number of cache lines available elapsed time from the last cache flush and others Write Through In Write hrough caching mode the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the disk subsystem has received all the data and has completed the write transaction to the disk 152 Glossary Index backgroun
123. rt a manual learn cycle You can put the learn cycle in Warning Only mode In the Warning mode a warning event is generated to prompt you to start the learn cycle manually when it is time to perform the learn cycle operation You can select the schedule for initiating the learn cycle When in Warning mode the controller continues to prompt you to start the learn cycle every seven days until it is performed K NOTE Virtual disks automatically switch to Write Through mode when the battery charge is low because of a learn cycle About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 31 Learn Cycle Completion Time Frame The time frame for completion of a learn cycle is a function of the battery charge capacity and the discharge charge currents used For PERC 6 the expected time frame for completion of a learn cycle is approximately seven hours and consists of the following parts e Learn cycle discharge cycle approximately three hours e Learn cycle charge cycle approximately four hours Learn cycles shorten as the battery capacity deteriorates over time K NOTE For additional information see the OpenManage storage management application During the discharge phase of a learn cycle the PERC 6 battery charger is disabled and remains disabled until the battery is discharged After the battery is discharged the charger is re enabled Virtual Disk Write Cache Policies The write cache policy of a virtual disk determines how the controller han
124. ry and saved in cache memory 136 Glossary Caching The process of utilizing a high speed memory buffer referred to as a cache in order to speed up the overall read or write performance This cache can be accessed at a higher speed than a disk subsystem To improve read performance the cache usually contains the most recently accessed data as well as data from adjacent disk sectors To improve write performance the cache may temporarily store data in accordance with its write back policies See the definition of Write Back for more information Consistency Check An operation to verify that all stripes in a virtual disk with a redundant RAID level are consistent and automatically fix any errors For RAID 5 6 50 and 60 arrays consistency check verifies correct parity data for each stripe For RAID 1 and RAID 10 arrays this operation verifies correct mirror data for each stripe Controller A chip that controls the transfer of data between the microprocessor and memory or between the microprocessor and a peripheral device such as a physical disk or the keyboard In Storage Management the hardware or logic that interacts with storage devices to write and retrieve data and perform storage management RAID controllers perform RAID functions such as striping and mirroring to provide data protection D DDR SDRAM Acronym for Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory This is a type of SDRAM that provides dat
125. s For procedures that can be used to perform these actions see Physical Disk Management on page 104 Table 6 5 Physical Disk Actions Action Description Rebuild Regenerates all data to a replacement disk in a redundant virtual disk RAID level 1 5 6 10 50 or 60 after a disk failure A disk rebuild normally occurs without interrupting normal operations on the affected virtual disk Replace Member Replaces the drive in the virtual disk with another drive that can be selected LED Blinking Indicates when physical disks are being used to create a virtual disk You can choose to start or stop the LED blinking Force Online Changes the state of the selected physical disk to online Force Offline Changes the state of the selected physical disk so that it is no longer part of a virtual disk Configuring and Managing RAID 101 Table 6 5 Physical Disk Actions continued Action Description Make Global HS Designates the selected physical disk as a global hot spare A global hot spare is part of a pool for all virtual disks controlled by the controller Designates the selected physical disk as a global hot spare You can select the hot spare to have enclosure affinity Remove HS Removes a dedicated hot spare from its disk group or a global hot spare from the global pool of hot spares Rebuild Select Rebuild to rebuild one or more failed physical disks For information on performing a physical d
126. s an error correcting code ECC error while performing its cache checking routine during initialization e The controller then discards the cache rather than sending it to the disk subsystem because the data integrity cannot be guaranteed To resolve this problem allow the battery to charge fully If the problem persists the battery or adapter DIMM might be faulty In that case contact Dell Technical Support Firmware is in Fault Contact Dell Technical Support State Firmware version New firmware has been flashed that is inconsistency was incompatible with the previous version detected The adapter has The cache contains data that has not been written to the physical disks and that cannot be recovered Check data integrity You may need to restore the data from a backup recovered but cached data was lost Press any key to continue Foreign configuration s Whenacontroller firmware detects a physical found on adapter Press disk with existing foreign metadata it flags the any key to continue or _ physical disk as foreign and generates an alert C to load the indicating that a foreign disk was detected configuration utility or F to import foreign configuration s and continue Press lt F gt at this prompt to import the configuration if all member drives of the virtual disk are present without loading the BIOS configuration utility Or press lt C gt to enter the BIOS configuration utility and eith
127. sed when a menu is active the menu bar Underlined Indicates a shortcut you can use to expand a menu Virtual Disk 1 letterina by pressing lt Alt gt lt menu underlined letter gt menuitem Pressing lt Alt gt again closes the menu Menu shortcuts are allowed but cannot be used when a menu is active lt gt Key presses are enclosed in angle brackets lt FI1 gt lt Esc gt lt Enter gt lt Enter gt After you highlight a menu item press lt Enter gt to Select Add New select that item This opens an options menu for the VD and press menu item This applies to only certain menu items lt Enter gt to such as Virtual Disk In a list of options for that create a new item such as the write policy for a virtual disk virtual disk highlight a setting such as Write Through and press lt Enter gt to select it In the right panel you can press lt Enter gt to select Tree View or List View under the View Type heading lt Esc gt After you expand a pop up window press lt Esc gt to Press lt Esc gt to close the window You can continue to press lt Esc gt return to the VD to exit the BIOS Configuration Utility Mgmt screen Configuring and Managing RAID 81 Table 6 1 Menu Navigation Keys continued Notation Meaning and Use Example lt Tab gt Press lt Tab gt to move the cursor to the next control Press lt Tab gt to on a Dialog or page move the cursor to the next parameter you want to chan
128. sk The following alert message displays The virtual disk is undergoing a background initialization process Would you like to stop the operation and proceed with the lt full initialization quick initialization consistency check gt instead Click Yes to stop the BGI and start the requested operation or No to allow the BGI to continue Performing a Manual Rebuild of an Individual Physical Disk Use the following procedures to rebuild one failed physical disk manually 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the PD Mgmt screen A list of physical disks appears The status of each disk appears under the heading State 2 Press the down arrow key to highlight a physical disk that has a failed state Configuring and Managing RAID 107 3 4 5 K Press lt F2 gt to display a menu of available actions The Rebuild option is highlighted at the top of the menu Press the right arrow key to display the rebuild options and select Start After you start the rebuild press lt Esc gt to display the previous menu NOTE You can also use the VD Mgmt screen to perform a manual rebuild Use the arrow key to highlight physical disk in the tree view and press lt F2 gt In the menu that displays select the Rebuild option NOTICE If a physical disk is a member of a disk group that contains multiple virtual disks and one of the virtual disks is deleted when a rebuild operation is in progress the rebuild operation stops If th
129. sks e Number of free segments e Number of dedicated hot spares Hot Spares Physical disk properties e Vendor name e Physical disk size Physical disk state Disk group properties e Number of virtuals disks VD e Number of physical disks PD e Space available on the physical disks e Number of free segments e Number of dedicated hot spares K NOTE The List View of the Virtual Disk Management screen displays different options from the Tree View Configuring and Managing RAID 99 Virtual Disk Actions Table 6 4 describes the actions you can perform on virtual disks For procedures you can use to perform these actions See Physical Disk Management on page 104 Table 6 4 Virtual Disk Actions Action Description Create a new virtual Creates a new virtual disk from one or more physical disks disk You can configure hot spares when you create a virtual disk Manage dedicated Creates or deletes a hot spare that can be dedicated to a single hot spares redundant virtual disks Initialize a virtual Initializes the selected virtual disk Every virtual disk that is disk configured must be initialized You can perform a fast initialization or a full initialization Check data Verifies the correctness of the redundancy data in the selected consistency on a virtual disk This option is available only if RAID level 1 5 6 virtual disk 10 50 or 60 is used The PERC 6 controllers aut
130. sks that are involved in any of the following operations e Rebuild e Replace Member e Full or Background Initializations e Consistency Check e RAID Level Migration or Online Capacity Expansion Patrol Read Modes The following describes each of the modes Patrol Read can be set to Auto default Patrol Read is set to the Auto mode by default This means that it is enabled to run automatically and start every seven days You can start and stop Patrol Read as well Manual Patrol Read does not run automatically You must start the Patrol Read manually when the Manual mode is set Disabled Patrol Read is not allowed to start on the controller About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers 39 40 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Installaing and Configuring Hardware A CAUTION Only trained service technicians are authorized to remove the system cover and access any of the components inside the system Before performing any procedure refer to the safety and warranty information that shipped with your system for complete information about safety precautions working inside the computer and protecting against electrostatic discharge A CAUTION Electrostatic discharge can damage sensitive components Always use proper antistatic protection when handling components Touching components without using a proper ground can damage the equipment Installing the PERC 6 E and PERC 6 i Adapters 1 Unpack the PERC 6 E adapter and check f
131. stem K NOTE It is important that you close all applications on your system before you 1 68 update the driver Select Start Settings Control Panel System The System Properties screen appears K NOTE For systems running a Windows Server 2003 operating system click Start Control Panel System Click on the Hardware tab Click Device Manager The Device Manager screen appears K NOTE An alternative method is to open Device Manager In Windows Explorer right click My Computer Manage The Computer Management window launches Select Device Manager Double click on SCSI and RAID Controllers K NOTE In Windows 2008 and Windows Vista PERC is listed under Storage Controllers Double click the RAID controller for which you want to update the driver Click the Driver tab and click Update Driver The Upgrade Device Driver Wizard screen appears Make the driver files available with the USB key or other media Select Install from a list or specific location Click Next Installing the Drivers 10 Follow the steps in the wizard and browse to the location of the driver files 11 Select the INF file from the USB key or other media 12 Click Next and continue the installation steps in the Wizard 13 Click Finish to exit the wizard and reboot the system for the changes to take place K NOTE Dell provides the Dell Update Package DUP to update drivers on systems running Windows Server 2003 and Wi
132. t Dell qualified SATA device The physical link contains four wires that form two differential signal pairs One differential pair transmits signals while the other differential pair receives signals Both differential pairs operate simultaneously and allow concurrent data transmission in both the receive and the transmit directions Physical Disk A non volatile randomly addressable device for storing data Physical disks are rewritable and commonly referred to as disk drives Glossary 145 Physical Disk States A physical disk can be in one of the following states e Un configured Good A disk accessible to the RAID controller but not configured as a part of a virtual disk or as a hot spare e Hot Spare A physical disk that is configured as a hot spare e Online A physical disk can be accessed by the RAID controller and is a part of the virtual disk e Rebuild A physical disk to which data is being written to restore full redundancy for a virtual disk e Failed A physical disk that was originally configured as Online or Hot Spare but on which the firmware detects an unrecoverable error e Un configured Bad A physical disk on which the firmware detects an unrecoverable error the physical disk was Un configured Good or the physical disk could not be initialized e Missing A physical disk that was Online but which has been removed from its location e Offline A physical disk that is part of a virtual disk but which has invali
133. t in inconsistent messages in the log Are you sure you want to continue You can select Yes or No If you select Yes the CC operation continues If you select No the operation ends Perform the following steps to run a Consistency Check 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the VD Mgmt menu screen Press the down arrow key to highlight Virtual Disk 2 3 Press lt F2 gt to display the menu of available actions 4 Press the down arrow key to select Consistency Check 5 Press the right arrow key to display the menu of available actions Start and Stop 6 Select Start and press lt Enter gt to run a Consistency Check The Consistency Check runs and checks the redundancy data in the virtual disks 7 After you start the Consistency Check press lt Esc gt to display the previous menu Importing or Clearing Foreign Configurations Using the VD Mgmt Menu When a foreign configuration exists the BIOS banner displays the message Foreign configuration s found on adapter In addition a foreign configuration when present appears on the right side of the VD Mgmt screen You can use the VD Mgmt menu to import the existing configuration to the RAID controller or clear the existing configuration to create a new one In addition you can view the foreign drive data from the Foreign View tab without importing the configuration K NOTE The controller does not allow an import that results in more than 64 virtual disks C
134. t times and re inserted the controller considers the disks to have foreign configurations Perform the following steps Select Foreign Configuration View to display the complete virtual disk across different foreign configurations and allow foreign configurations to be imported Press lt F2 gt to display the options Import or Clear K NOTE You must have all the drives in the system before you perform the import operation Select Import to merge the foreign configurations with the existing configuration on the controller or Clear to delete the foreign configuration s from the re inserted disk s If you select Import all drives that were pulled before the virtual disk became offline are imported and then automatically rebuilt K NOTE Start a consistency check immediately after the rebuild is complete to ensure data integrity for the virtual disks For more information about checking data consistency see Checking Data Consistency on page 88 If the physical disks in a non redundant virtual disk are removed the controller considers the drives to have foreign configurations Perform the following steps Select Foreign Configuration View to display the complete foreign configuration information Press lt F2 gt to display the options Import or Clear Select Import to import the foreign configuration to the virtual disk or Clear to delete the foreign configuration s from the re inserted disk s No rebuilds occur
135. talling and Configuring Hardware Figure 4 7 Removing the PERC 6 E Adapter 1 battery 3 PERC 6 E adapter 2 memory module 4 bracket screw K NOTE For more information on removing peripherals installed in the system s PCI E slots see the Hardware Owner s Manualthat shipped with the system 5 For removing a PERC 6 i adapter determine whether the dirty cache LED on the controller is illuminated e Ifthe LED is illuminated replace the system cover reconnect the system to power turn on the system and repeat step and step 2 See Figure 4 8 K NOTE The location of the PERC 6 i varies from system to system For information on PERC 6 i card location see the Hardware Owner s Manual that shipped with the system Ifthe LED is not illuminated continue with the next step Installing and Configuring Hardware 51 Figure 4 8 Removing the PERC 6 i Adapter 1 bracket screw 3 Dirty Cache LED location 2 PERC 6 i 6 Disconnect the data cables and battery cable from the PERC 6 i Remove any retention mechanism such as a bracket screw that might be holding the PERC 6 i in the system and gently lift the controller from the system s PCI E slot K NOTE For more information on removing the PERC 6 i adapter from the system see your system s Hardware Owner s Manual 52 Installing and Configuring Hardware Removing the DIMM and Battery from a PERC 6 E Adapter
136. tem Your computer s BIOS contains programs stored on a flash memory chip The BIOS controls the following communications between the microprocessor and peripheral devices such as the keyboard and the video adapter and miscellaneous functions such as system messages BIOS Configuration Utility The BIOS Configuration Utility configures and maintains RAID disk groups and virtual disks and manages the RAID system Because the utility resides in the controller BIOS its operation is independent of the operating systems on your system The BIOS Configuration Utility also known as Ctrl R is built on elements called controls Each control performs a function The functions include procedures you can use to configure physical disks and virtual disks c Cache Fast memory that holds recently accessed data Using cache speeds subsequent access to the same data It is most often applied to processor memory access but also can be used to store a copy of data accessible over a network When data is read from or written to main memory a copy is also saved in cache memory with the associated main memory address The cache memory software monitors the addresses of subsequent reads to see if the required data is already stored in cache memory If it is already in cache memory a cache hit it is read from cache memory immediately and the main memory read is aborted or not started If the data is not cached a cache miss it is fetched from main memo
137. the controller When a disk fails the controllers firmware automatically replaces and rebuilds the data from the failed physical disk to the hot spare Data can be rebuilt only from virtual disks with redundancy RAID levels 1 5 10 or 50 not RAID 0 and the hot spare must have sufficient capacity If the hot spare is designated as having enclosure affinity it attempts to rebuild any failed disks on the backplane within which it resides prior to rebuilding any other on other backplanes Hot Swap Replacement of a failed component while the system is running and operating normally Initialization The process of writing zeros to the data fields of a virtual disk and in fault tolerant RAID levels generating the corresponding parity to put the virtual disk in a Ready state Initializing erases previous data and generates parity so that the virtual disk passes a consistency check Virtual disks can work without initializing but they can fail a consistency check because the parity fields have not been generated Glossary 141 Inter IC Inter IC also known as PC is a multi master bus meaning that more than one chip can be connected to the same bus Each chip can act as a master and initiate a data transfer Load balancing Load balancing is a method of spreading work between two or more computers network links CPUs physical disk drives or other resources Load balancing is used to maximize resource use throughput or res
138. tility see Entering the BIOS Configuration Utility on page 79 K NOTE For more information on Foreign Configuration View see Foreign Configuration View on page 103 5 Ifthe migrated virtual disk is the boot volume ensure that the virtual disk is selected as the bootable volume for the target PERC 6 and CERC 6i controller See Controller Management Actions on page 103 6 Exit the BIOS Configuration Utility and reboot the system 7 Ensure that all the latest drivers available on the Dell support website at support dell com for PERC 6 or CERC 6 i controller are installed For more information see Installing the Drivers on page 63 K NOTE For more information about compatibility contact your Dell Technical Support Representative Battery Management K NOTE Battery management is only applicable to PERC 6 family of controllers The Transportable Battery Backup Unit TBBU is a cache memory module with an integrated battery pack that enables you to transport the cache module with the battery into a new controller The TBBU protects the integrity of the cached data on the PERC 6 E adapter by providing backup power during a power outage The Battery Backup Unit BBU is a battery pack that protects the integrity of the cached data on the PERC 6 1 adapter and PERC 6 i Integrated controllers by providing backup power during a power outage The battery may provide up to 72 hours for a 256 MB controller cache memory backup po
139. ttached SCSI SAS is a serial point to point enterprise level device interface that leverages the proven Small Computer System Interface SCSI protocol set The SAS interface provides improved performance simplified cabling smaller connectors lower pin count and lower power requirements when compared to parallel SCSI PERC 6 controllers leverage a common electrical and physical connection interface that is compatible with Serial ATA technology Glossary 149 SATA Acronym for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment A physical storage interface standard is a serial link that provides point to point connections between devices The thinner serial cables allow for better airflow within the system and permit smaller chassis designs SCSIport The SCSIport driver is a feature of the Microsoft Windows storage architecture delivering SCSI commands to the storage targets The SCSIport driver works well with storage using parallel SCSI Single Bit ECC Errors ECC stands for error correcting code ECC errors are errors that occur in the memory which can corrupt cached data so that it has to be discarded Single bit ECC errors can be handled by the firmware and do not disrupt normal operation A notification is sent if the number of single bit errors exceeds a threshold value SMART Acronym for Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology The self monitoring analysis and reporting technology SMART feature monitors the inter
140. tter if one of the disks fails Both disks contain the same data at all times Either of the physical disks can act as the operational physical disk 18 Overview Disk mirroring provides 100 percent redundancy but is expensive because each physical disk in the system must be duplicated Figure 2 2 shows an example of disk mirroring K NOTE Mirrored physical disks improve read performance by read load balance Figure 2 2 Example of Disk Mirroring RAID 1 Stripe element 1 Stripe element 1 Duplicated Stripe element2 Stripe element 2 Duplicated Stripe element3 Stripe element 3 Duplicated Stripe element4 Stripe element 4 Duplicated Spanned RAID Levels Spanning is a term used to describe the way in which RAID levels 10 50 and 60 are constructed from multiple sets of basic or simple RAID levels For example a RAID 10 has multiple sets of RAID 1 arrays where each RAID 1 set is considered a span Data is then striped RAID 0 across the RAID 1 spans to create a RAID 10 virtual disk If you are using RAID 50 or RAID 60 you can combine multiple sets of RAID 5 and RAID 6 together with striping Parity Data Parity data is redundant data that has been generated to provide fault tolerance within certain RAID levels In the event of a drive failure the parity data can be used by the controller to regenerate user data Parity data is present for RAID 5 6 50 and 60 The parity data is distributed across all the physical disks in
141. u press the right arrow key at a menu heading the submenu expands Press it again to go to the first item in the submenu The right arrow key is also used to close a menu list in a popup window Word wrap is supported Use the left arrow key to close a submenu move Controller 0 from a menu item to the menu heading for that lt Disk Group 1 item or move from a submenu to a higher level menu If you press the left arrow key at a menu heading the submenu collapses Press it again to go to the higher level menu Word wrap is supported 80 Configuring and Managing RAID Table 6 1 Menu Navigation Keys continued Notation Meaning and Use Example Use the up arrow key to move tothe upper menu Virtual Disk 1 Tt items within a menu or to a higher level menu You can also use the up arrow key to close a menu list in a popup window such as the stripe element size menu Word wrap is supported Virtual Disk 4 Use the down arrow key to move to the lower menu Virtual Disks 4 items within a menu or to a lower level menu You 4 can also use the down arrow key to open a menu list in a popup window such as the stripe element size menu and select a setting Word wrap is supported Virtual Disk 1 Underlined Indicates a shortcut you can use by pressing Adapter letterina lt Alt gt lt underlined letter gt To use this feature the menu menu must be activated Menu shortcuts are allowed headingon but cannot be u
142. undant array as long as the capacity of the global hot spare is equal to or larger than the coerced capacity of the failed physical disk You can designate the hot spare to have enclosure affinity meaning that if there are drive failures present on a split backplane configuration then the hot spare is first used on the backplane that it resides in 104 Configuring and Managing RAID Perform the following steps to create global hot spares 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt to access the PD Mgmt screen A list of physical disks displays The status of the each disk displays under the heading State Press the down arrow key to highlight a physical disk to change to a global hot spare Press lt F2 gt to display the menu of available actions Press the down arrow key to highlight Make Global HS and press lt Enter gt The physical disk is changed to a global hot spare The status of the physical disk as a global hot spare displays under the heading State K NOTE To replace a failed physical disk global hot spares must use the same drive technology and must be equal or greater in size Select additional physical disks if desired and follow the previous steps to change them to global hot spares Removing Global or Dedicated Hot Spares You can remove one global or dedicated hot spare at a time on the PD Mgmt screen Perform the following steps to remove a global hot spare or dedicated hot spare 1 Press lt Ctrl gt lt N gt
143. us Installing the Drivers 73 Installing Solaris 10 on a PowerEdge System Booting From a PERC 6 and CERC Gi Controller To install the driver during Solaris 10 operating system installation 1 Boot the system from the Solaris installation media and select the preferred console After Solaris finishes configuring devices a menu appears Select Apply Driver Updates Select 1 if you created a CD from the mega_sas_cd iso file Select 2 if you created a diskette from the mega_sas img file and you are using a traditional diskette drive Select 3 if you created a diskette from the mega_sas img file and you are using a removable USB diskette drive Follow instructions presented by Driver Update installer The Installation of lt megasas gt was successful message appears Select e to end Follow the instructions on the screen to complete installation Adding Updating the Driver to an Existing System 74 1 3 To add the mega_sas driver to an existing system or to upgrade to a newer version of the driver you must unarchive the driver package and execute the installation script tar xvf x86_64 tar cd x86_64 install sh Restart your Solaris system to start using the new driver To confirm the mega_sas driver is loaded run the following command modinfo grep mega_sas Ensure that the driver version is correct Installing the Drivers Installing NetWare Driver Use the procedures in this sectio
144. utter be lle ae 21 PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controller Features 21 Using the SMART Feature 24 Contents Initializing Virtual Disks 25 Background Initialization 25 Full Inititialization of Virtual Disks 26 Fast Inititialization of Virtual Disks 26 Consistency Checks 26 Disk Roaming aaa aaa aaa 27 Disk Migration naaa aaa 27 Compatibility With Virtual Disks Created on PERC 5Controllers 28 Compatibility With Virtual Disks Created on SAS 6 iR Controllers aaa aaa 29 Migrating Virtual Disks from SAS 6 iR toPERC6andCERC6i 29 Battery Management 30 Battery Warranty Information 31 BatteryLearnCycle 31 Virtual Disk Write Cache Policies 32 Write Back and Write Through 32 Conditions Under Which Write Back is Employed 33 Conditions Under Which Write Through is Employed 33 Conditions Under Which Forced Write Back With No Battery is Employed 33 Virtual Disk Read Policies 33 Reconfiguring Virtual Disks 34 Fault Tolerance Features 36 Physical Disk Hot Swapping 36 Failed Physical Disk Detection 37 Redundant Path With Load Balancing Support 37 Using Replace Member and Revertible Hot Spares
145. wer and up to 48 hours for a 512 MB cache when new 30 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers Battery Warranty Information The BBU offers an inexpensive way to protect the data in cache memory The lithium ion battery provides a way to store more power in a smaller form factor than previous batteries The BBU shelf life has been preset to last six months from the time of shipment without power To prolong battery life e Deploy the BBU within six months of ship date Do not store or operate the BBU above 60 C e Disconnect the BBU if the system is going to be turned off power disconnected for longer than one week Your PERC 6 battery may provide up to 24 hours of controller cache memory backup power when new Under the 1 year limited warranty we warrant that the battery will provide at least 24 hours of backup coverage during the 1 year limited warranty period Battery Learn Cycle Learn cycle is a battery calibration operation performed by the controller periodically to determine the condition of the battery This operation cannot be disabled You can start battery learn cycles manually or automatically In addition you can enable or disable automatic learn cycles in the software utility If you enable automatic learn cycles you can delay the start of the learn cycles for up to 168 hours 7 days If you disable automatic learn cycles you can start the learn cycles manually and you can choose to receive a reminder to sta
146. without requiring the use of the controller BIOS utilities The graphical user interface GUI is wizard driven with features for novice and advanced users and detailed online help Using Dell OpenManage Storage Management you can protect your data by configuring data redundancy assigning hot spares or rebuilding failed physical disks The command line interface available on selected operating systems to perform RAID management tasks is fully featured and scriptable Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager SAS RAID Storage Manager is a storage management application for Dell SC systems and Dell Precision workstations SAS RAID Storage Manager configures virtual disks and monitors and maintains PERC 6 controllers battery backup units and other devices running on systems and workstations It offers a graphical user interface GUI you can use to perform these tasks Configuring and Managing RAID 77 RAID Configuration Functions K NOTE Dell OpenManage Storage Management can perform all the same tasks as and more tasks than the BIOS Configuration Utility After you attach physical disks use a configuration utility to organize your SAS drives and SATA drives into virtual disks If the operating system is not yet installed use the BIOS Configuration Utility to perform this procedure K NOTE The PERC 6 controllers support Dell qualified SATA physical disks Use the configuration utilities to perform the following tasks e Access controllers
147. y check using the BIOS Configuration Utility see Checking Data Consistency on page 88 Consistency checks can be scheduled to run on virtual disks using a Open Manage storage management application 26 About PERC 6 and CERC 6i Controllers By default consistency check automatically corrects mirror or parity inconsistencies However you can enable the Abort Consistency Check on Error feature on the controller using Dell OpenManage Storage Management With the Abort Consistency Check on Error setting enabled consistency check notifies if any inconsistency is found and aborts instead of automatically correcting the error Disk Roaming The PERC 6 and CERC 6 i adapters support moving physical disks from one cable connection or backplane slot to another on the same controller The controller automatically recognizes the relocated physical disks and logically places them in the proper virtual disks that are part of the disk group You can perform disk roaming only when the system is turned off A CAUTION Do not attempt disk roaming during RAID level migration RLM or capacity expansion CE This causes loss of the virtual disk Perform the following steps to use disk roaming 1 Tum off the power to the system physical disks enclosures and system components and then disconnect the power cords from the system 2 Move the physical disks to different positions on the backplane or the enclosure 3 Perform a safety check Make sure th
148. y that might harm internal components 4 Disconnect your system and devices from their power sources To reduce the potential of personal injury or shock disconnect any telecommunication lines from the system In addition take note of these safety guidelines when appropriate e When you disconnect a cable pull on its connector or on its strain relief loop not on the cable itself Some cables have a connector with locking tabs if you are disconnecting this type of cable press in on the locking tabs before disconnecting the cable As you pull connectors apart keep them evenly aligned to avoid bending any connector pins Also before you connect a cable make sure that both connectors are correctly oriented and aligned e Handle components and cards with care Do not touch the components or contacts on a card Hold a card by its edges or by its metal mounting bracket Hold a component such as a microprocessor chip by its edges not by its pins Protecting Against Electrostatic Discharge Electrostatic discharge ESD events can harm electronic components inside your computer Under certain conditions ESD may build up on your body or an object such as a peripheral and then discharge into another object such as your computer To prevent ESD damage you should discharge static electricity from your body before you interact with any of your computer s internal electronic components such as a memory module You can protect against ESD by tou

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