User Manual
Table Of Contents
- ROMB User Manual
- Contents
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: Installation
- Chapter 3: Installing Drivers
- Chapter 4: RAID Management Utility
- Chapter 5: WebPAM
- Logging into WebPAM
- Logging out of WebPAM
- Managing Users
- Viewing Host Management
- Making Utility Configuration Settings
- Managing the Controller
- Managing Physical Drives
- Managing Logical Drives
- Viewing All Logical Drives
- Creating a Logical Drive
- Creating a JBOD Disk
- Deleting a Logical Drive or JBOD Disk
- Viewing Logical Drive Information
- Making Logical Drive Settings
- Migrating a Logical Drive
- Rebuilding a Logical Drive
- Synchronizing a Logical Drive
- Viewing Logical Drive Initialization
- Activating a Logical Drive
- Responding to a Critical or Offline Logical Drive
- Managing Spare Drives
- Chapter 6: Technology
- Chapter 7: Support
- Appendix A: Partition and Format
- Appendix B: Upgrades
- Index
Software ROMB User Manual
106
SPAN
Recommended Applications for SPAN:
• Any application requiring multiple physical drives but where read/write speed
or fault-tolerance are not important
• Applications were low-cost operation critical
Other Logical Drive Features
Stripe Block Size
You set the stripe block size, also called block size, when you create a logical
drive. The choices are 64 KB or 128 KB. 128 KB is the default.
Your choice will directly affect performance. There are two issues to consider
when choosing the stripe block size.
• Choose a stripe block size equal to or smaller than the smallest cache buffer
found on any physical drive in your logical drive.
A larger value slows the logical drive down because physical drives with
smaller cache buffers need more time for multiple accesses to fill their
buffers.
• If your data retrieval consists of fixed-size data blocks, such as some
database and video applications, choose that data block size as your stripe
block size.
Generally speaking, email, POS, and webservers prefer smaller stripe block
sizes. Video and database applications prefer larger stripe block sizes.
Initialization
Fast Initialization erases the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the logical drive
being created. Choose this option when one or more physical drives has been
used in a previous logical drive.
Initialization is recommended for ALL new logical drives. Fast initialization is
adequate for most applications.
Advantages Disadvantages
Enables you to access the capacity of
multiple physical drives as a single
drive
Uses full physical drive capacity
An alternative to RAID without any
RAID advantages
Do not be use in mission critical
environments