User guide
Table Of Contents
- Title Page
- Table of Contents
- About this User Guide
- Introducing the 3ware® SATA RAID Controller
- Getting Started with Your 3ware RAID Controller
- First-Time RAID Configuration Using 3BM
- Driver Installation
- Driver Installation Under Windows
- Driver Installation Under Linux
- Obtaining 3ware Linux Drivers
- Driver Installation Under Red Hat Linux or Fedora Core 5
- Materials required
- Creating a Red Hat Linux Driver Diskette
- Installing the 3ware Kernel Driver Module while Installing Red Hat Linux on a New Unit
- Installing the 3ware Kernel Driver Module on a Red Hat or Fedora Core Linux System that Boots From a Different Device
- About Variables In the Kernel Driver Module Installation Instructions
- Driver Installation Under SuSE Linux
- Compiling a 3ware Driver for Linux
- Driver Installation Under FreeBSD
- 3ware BIOS Manager 2 (3BM 2) Introduction
- 3DM 2 (3ware Disk Manager) Introduction
- Configuring Your Controller
- Configuring Units
- Configuring a New Unit
- Creating a Hot Spare
- Naming a Unit
- Setting Unit Policies
- Changing An Existing Configuration by Migrating
- Deleting a Unit
- Removing a Unit
- Moving a Unit from One Controller to Another
- Adding a Drive
- Removing a Drive
- Rescanning the Controller
- Maintaining Units
- Checking Unit and Drive Status through 3DM
- About Degraded Units
- About Inoperable Units
- Alarms, Errors, and Other Events
- Background Tasks
- Scheduling Background Tasks
- Locating a Drive by Blinking Its LED
- Maintaining Your Controller
- Determining the Current Version of Your 3ware Driver
- Updating the Firmware and Driver
- Downloading the Driver and Firmware
- Updating the Firmware Through 3DM 2
- Updating the 3ware Driver and Firmware Under Windows
- Using the Update Utility With Multiple Controllers
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under Windows XP
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under Red Hat or Fedora Core
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under SuSE
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under FreeBSD
- Updating the Firmware Under Linux and FreeBSD
- Viewing Battery Information
- Testing Battery Capacity
- 3DM 2 Reference
- Troubleshooting
- Appendices
- Index
Appendix A. Glossary
270 3ware Serial ATA RAID Controller User Guide
to delete the original unit. For example, converting a single disk to a
mirrored disk or converting a RAID 0 unit to a RAID 5 unit.
•
Self-test. A test that can be performed on a scheduled basis. Available
self-tests include Upgrade UDMA mode and Check SMART Thresholds.
•
Stagger time. The delay between drive groups that will spin up, at one
time, on a particular controller.
•
Stripe size. The size of the data written to each disk drive in RAID unit
levels that support striping. The size of stripes can be set for a given unit
during configuration. In general, smaller stripe sizes are better for
sequential I/O, such as video, and larger strip sizes are better for random
I/O (such as databases). The stripe size is user-configurable at 64KB,
128KB, or 256KB.
This stripe size is sometimes referred as a “minor” stripe size. A major
stripe size is equal to the minor stripe size times the number of disks in the
unit.
•
Striping. The process of breaking up files into smaller sizes and
distributing the data amongst two or more drives. Since smaller amounts
of data are written to multiple disk drives simultaneously, this results in
an increase in performance. Striping occurs in RAID 0, 5, 6, 10 and 50.
•
Subunit. A logical unit of storage that is part of another unit. For
example, the mirrored pairs (RAID 1) in a RAID 10 unit are subunits of
the RAID 10 unit.
•
UDMA mode. UDMA mode is a protocol that supports bursting data up to
133 MB/sec with PATA disk drives and 1.5Gb/sec and 3.0 Gb/sec with
SATA disk drives.
•
Unit ID. A unique identifier for a specific unit in a system.
•
Unit Number. The SCSI number, or channel number, of a particular unit.
•
Unit. A logical unit of storage, which the operating system treats as a
single drive. A unit may consist of a single drive or several drives. Also
known as an array.
•
Verify. A process that confirms the validity of the redundant data in a
redundant unit. For a RAID 1 and RAID 10 unit, a verify will compare the
data of one mirror with the other. For RAID 5, RAID 6, and RAID 50, a
verify will calculate RAID 5 parity and compare it to what is written on
the disk drive.