Accepted Solutions
Assuming you have CIMC version 1.5 navigate to the storage tab in CIMC and then click on the controller. Under the controller click on the hyperlink for "Create Virtual Drive from Unused Physical Drive"
Next select RAID Level 10. Select the first two drives for the RAID 1 Group (e.g. Drives 1 and 2) and click the >> button to add them to the drive group section.
Then add the next two drives (e.g. 3 and 4) and add them to the drive groups by clicking the >> button. After you do this click "Create Virtual Drive" This button will remain greyed out until you have the appropriate number of drives/drive groups for a valid RAID 10 configuation.
Steve McQuerry
UCS - Technical Marketing
Hello,
Really cant advise on which RAID level is best cause it depends on what you looking for, best write performance, more reliability, fault tolerance or if you dont mind setting a disk as hot spare (will have no info at all and just wait for a disk to fail so it can takes its place); in other words there is a variaty of options and all may or may not be good depending on your needs.
In this case, to configure RAID 10 with that controller, you will need to reboot the server and access the PCIe controller with "Ctrl+H" when prompted during the boot process. You will be prompted with a screen that will ask you to select the controller you want to access, since there is only one just select it.
Next screen will be something like the below (but will ALL disks unconfigured), select "Configuration Wizard" and configure manually
In the next screen, choose
1-"New Configuration"
2-"Manual Configuration"
3-Select 2 disk and click on "Add To Array", do this steps for the remaining 2 disk so you can form 2 groups
4-Click on "Accept DG"
5-Click on "Next"
6-Next screen will show you both of the arrays you created in step 3, select the first and click "Add to SPAN" (repeat for the other array you created)
7-Click on "Next"
8-You will now see an screen like this one where you will be able to select RAID 10 (if it does not show up, the arrays were either not properly created or not added to SPAN like in step 6 above)
Note: The other options are:
-strip size: portion of a stripe that resides on a single drive in the drive group. The stripe consists of the data segments that the RAID controller writes across multiple drives, not including parity drives.
-Access Policy:
*RW—Allows read/write access. This is the default.
*Read Only—Allows read-only access.
*Blocked—Does not allow access.
Read Policy
*Normal—Disables the read-ahead capability. This is the default.
*Ahead—Enables read-ahead capability, which allows the controller to read sequentially ahead of requested data and to store the additional data in cache memory, anticipating that the data will be needed soon. This speeds up reads for sequential data but there is little improvement when accessing random data.
Write Policy
*WBack—(Writeback) the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has received all of the data in a transaction. This setting is recommended in Standard mode.
*WThru—(Writethrough) the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the drive subsystem has received all of the data in a transaction. This is the default.
*Bad BBU—Choose this mode if you want the controller to use Writeback mode but the controller has no BBU or the BBU is bad. If you do not choose this option, the controller firmware automatically switches to Writethrough mode if it detects a bad or missing BBU.
With the new version 1.5, this can also be done with CIMC without having to reboot the server.
I hope this helps but let me know if there is any doubt.
-Rate all helpful answers.
Kenny
Assuming you have CIMC version 1.5 navigate to the storage tab in CIMC and then click on the controller. Under the controller click on the hyperlink for "Create Virtual Drive from Unused Physical Drive"
Next select RAID Level 10. Select the first two drives for the RAID 1 Group (e.g. Drives 1 and 2) and click the >> button to add them to the drive group section.
Then add the next two drives (e.g. 3 and 4) and add them to the drive groups by clicking the >> button. After you do this click "Create Virtual Drive" This button will remain greyed out until you have the appropriate number of drives/drive groups for a valid RAID 10 configuation.
Steve McQuerry
UCS - Technical Marketing
Hello,
Really cant advise on which RAID level is best cause it depends on what you looking for, best write performance, more reliability, fault tolerance or if you dont mind setting a disk as hot spare (will have no info at all and just wait for a disk to fail so it can takes its place); in other words there is a variaty of options and all may or may not be good depending on your needs.
In this case, to configure RAID 10 with that controller, you will need to reboot the server and access the PCIe controller with "Ctrl+H" when prompted during the boot process. You will be prompted with a screen that will ask you to select the controller you want to access, since there is only one just select it.
Next screen will be something like the below (but will ALL disks unconfigured), select "Configuration Wizard" and configure manually
In the next screen, choose
1-"New Configuration"
2-"Manual Configuration"
3-Select 2 disk and click on "Add To Array", do this steps for the remaining 2 disk so you can form 2 groups
4-Click on "Accept DG"
5-Click on "Next"
6-Next screen will show you both of the arrays you created in step 3, select the first and click "Add to SPAN" (repeat for the other array you created)
7-Click on "Next"
8-You will now see an screen like this one where you will be able to select RAID 10 (if it does not show up, the arrays were either not properly created or not added to SPAN like in step 6 above)
Note: The other options are:
-strip size: portion of a stripe that resides on a single drive in the drive group. The stripe consists of the data segments that the RAID controller writes across multiple drives, not including parity drives.
-Access Policy:
*RW—Allows read/write access. This is the default.
*Read Only—Allows read-only access.
*Blocked—Does not allow access.
Read Policy
*Normal—Disables the read-ahead capability. This is the default.
*Ahead—Enables read-ahead capability, which allows the controller to read sequentially ahead of requested data and to store the additional data in cache memory, anticipating that the data will be needed soon. This speeds up reads for sequential data but there is little improvement when accessing random data.
Write Policy
*WBack—(Writeback) the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has received all of the data in a transaction. This setting is recommended in Standard mode.
*WThru—(Writethrough) the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the drive subsystem has received all of the data in a transaction. This is the default.
*Bad BBU—Choose this mode if you want the controller to use Writeback mode but the controller has no BBU or the BBU is bad. If you do not choose this option, the controller firmware automatically switches to Writethrough mode if it detects a bad or missing BBU.
With the new version 1.5, this can also be done with CIMC without having to reboot the server.
I hope this helps but let me know if there is any doubt.
-Rate all helpful answers.
Kenny
