System information

Appendix
B-8
B.12 Extensive Supportive Tools
In addition to the fundamental storage functions, the RAID controller firmware also provides extensive supportive tools that
help the administrator to do a better job when managing the storage resources. These tools are aimed to offer full control to
the storage devices so as to make the most of the storage system as well as to simplify the management tasks. Most of these
features are derived from the feedback of our customers or users who are experts of storage and servers. They might not be
considered when doing specification comparison, but the administrator will definitely discover their usefulness when doing
the real-world jobs.
• Object names and creation time
Most of the major manageable logical objects, like disk groups, logical disks, or host groups, can be labeled with text as their
names or memos. The administrator is then freed from memorizing those identifiers. The creation time is also recorded so
that the administrator can easily trace the age of the objects.
• Augmented RAID parameters
In addition to frequently used RAID configurations, like RAID levels, the firmware provides also alignment offset and disk
group size truncation. The former is to improve IO performance by shifting the starting LBA so as to align the data stripes with
the data organization of file systems. And the later is to truncate the size of disk drives in a disk group such that disk drives of
slightly smaller size can still be used.
• Real time management with NTP
The controller is equipped with real-time clock (RTC) chip, so that controller can record events or conduct scheduled
maintenance tasks following the wall-clock time and calendar. The firmware also supports Network Time Protocol (NTP) to
synchronize its date and time with an external time server. This ensures that all the IT equipments have common time base to
act upon.
• Configuration management
The controller stores the configurations on either the disk drives or the NVRAM of the controller. The administrator can
download the configurations and save it as a file on his desktops, and he can restore the configurations later, if needed for
system recovery or apply the configuration files to other systems. The configurations can also be saved to disk drives such
that the configurations can be restored from the disk drives after the array roaming.
• Hardware parameters
Extensive user-configurable parameters are provided for configuring the system. The administrator can choose the speed of
connections of disk drives or host for better compatibility, or he can choose to set policies for IO processing, like maximum
number of retries, time-out value, SMART polling period, on-disk cache control, and so on. The firmware also provides
extensive hardware statistics that help the administrator to know the system better and to conduct integration diagnostics
more effectively.
• Management network interface
Using network to manage IT infrastructure and devices has been a common practices, so a storage system is required to be
easily adopted in a network environment. The firmware supports a variety of network protocols: HTTP, TELNET, SSH, SSL,
DHCP, NTP, DNS, SNMP, and SMTP such that the storage system can be easily managed.
B.13 Easy-To-Use User Interfaces
A storage system is valued not only by its functionalities but also how user-friendly it is. The storage systems with RAID
controller have been marketed as the most easy-to-use storage solutions in the market for years. The firmware provides
comprehensive features while keeps everything simple. The administrator can quickly understand each operation and
unleash the functions of the system more effectively. The storage system vendors can also benefit from that because the
efforts for educating users and supporting users to conduct maintenance tasks can be largely reduced, and the technical
support staff can focus on high-level planning or cultivating new business.
• Web-based GUI
The administrator can enjoy the friendly GUI by pervasive web browsers without installing any software. Because the GUI is
platform-independent, it eases the administration access to the storage systems and largely reduces the potential risk of
software interoperability. The RAIDGuard also features online help, by which the administrator can learn the system more
easily.
• Command line interface (CLI)
The command line interface provides shortcuts for power users who want to complete tasks by quickly entering a few lines of
text commands. People at testing labs can build the test configurations in seconds, and there is virtually no effort to repeat
the commands. IT staff can also leverage the command line interface to deploy single configuration over multiple storage
systems by replaying the CLI scripts predefined by the administrator.