STORAGE
DELL POWER SOLUTIONS | May 200892
Reprinted from
Dell Power Solutions,
May 2008. Copyright © 2008 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
The background initialization rate is
controlled by the BGI rate set using
Dell OpenManage
™
Server Administrator
(OMSA) Storage Management.
Other key data protection features
Other key data protection features of
PERC 6 controllers include the following:
SMART:
■■
The SMART feature monitors
the internal performance of motors,
heads, and physical disk electronics to
help detect predictable physical disk
failures.
Failed physical disk detection:
■■
The
controllers can automatically detect
and rebuild failed physical disks when
a new drive 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.
Hot spares:
■■
The controllers support
global hot spare, dedicated hot spare,
and affinity configurations, which
administrators can set up using the Dell
BIOS Configuration Utility as well as
OMSA Storage Management. Global hot
spares can typically be used in any
degraded RAID array when the hot
spare has sufficient capacity to fit into
the RAID container. Dedicated hot
spares are reserved for a particular disk
group. The affinity option prioritizes a
hot spare to the enclosure that it is
located in.
Transportable battery backup unit
■■
(TBBU): The TBBU is a cache memory
module with an integrated battery
pack that enables administrators to
transport the cache module with the
battery into a different controller. The
TBBU helps protect the integrity of
cached data by providing backup
power during a power outage. After
power is restored to the controller, the
cache is flushed and the protected
data is written to the disk drives.
Physical disk hot swapping:
■■
Administrators can manually substitute
a replacement unit in a disk subsystem
for a defective one while the subsystem
is performing its normal functions.
Heartbeat status LED and dirty cache
■■
LED: The heartbeat status LED on the
controllers indicates activity on the
chip, while the dirty cache LED indi-
cates that the cache has data that has
not yet been written to disk.
OPTIMIZED DEPLOYMENTS WITH
DELL POWERVAULT STORAGE
Dell PowerVault storage is engineered to
work optimally with Dell PowerEdge serv-
ers and PERC controllers. Combining the
PERC 6/E with the Dell PowerVault
MD1000 disk expansion enclosure can
provide a high-performance, enterprise-
class direct attach storage solution.
Administrators can use OMSA Storage
Management software to manage both
the external array and internal storage
within the server itself, helping streamline
and simplify storage management through
a single interface while helping reduce
resource load on the system.
Administrators can customize the
PowerVault MD1000 along with the PERC
6/E to meet different enterprise needs
and help increase storage provisioning
flexibility by using one of two backplane
modes (see Figure 4):
Unified mode:
■■
Unified mode allows
administrators to access all 15 hard
drives from a single controller, and
supports daisy-chaining up to two
additional enclosures per channel—
supporting a total of up to 90 hard
drives when using six enclosures and
two channels in each controller.
Split mode:
■■
Split mode allows two
controllers to share the same enclo-
sure, with one having access to eight
hard drives and one having access to
the other seven hard drives. This con-
figuration does not support daisy-
chaining additional enclosures.
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