User's Manual

Foreign Configuration Found

The Foreign Configuration Found page is displayed only if a foreign configuration disk drive resides on the selected RAID

controller.

NOTE: If you have selected an S110 RAID controller, the foreign disk drives are displayed as Non-RAID disk drives

in Lifecycle Controller. You must initialize them to create a virtual drive.

A foreign configuration is a set of physical disk drives containing a RAID configuration that has been introduced to the

system, but is not managed by the RAID controller to which it is attached. You may have a foreign configuration if

physical disk drives have been moved from a RAID controller on another system to a RAID controller on the current

system.

You have two options: Ignore Foreign Configuration and Clear Foreign Configuration.

• If the foreign configuration contains data that you require, select Ignore Foreign Configuration. If you select this

option, the disk drive space containing the foreign configuration is not available for use in a new virtual drive.

• To delete all data on the physical disk drives containing the foreign configuration, select Clear Foreign

Configuration. This option clears the disk drive space containing the foreign configuration and makes it available

for use in a new virtual drive.

After selecting one of the options, click Next .

Selecting RAID Levels

Select the RAID Level for the virtual disk:

• RAID 0 — Stripes data across the physical disks. RAID 0 does not maintain redundant data. When a physical

disk fails in a RAID 0 virtual disk, there is no method for rebuilding the data. RAID 0 offers good read and write

performance with zero data redundancy.

• RAID 1 — Mirrors or duplicates data from one physical disk to another. If a physical disk fails, data can be

rebuilt using the data from the other side of the mirror. RAID 1 offers good read performance and average write

performance with good data redundancy.

• RAID 5 — Stripes data across the physical disks, and uses parity information to maintain redundant data. If a

physical disk fails, the data can be rebuilt using the parity information. RAID 5 offers good read performance and

slower write performance with good data redundancy.

• RAID 6 — Stripes data across the physical disks, and uses two sets of parity information for additional data

redundancy. If one or two physical disks fail, the data can be rebuilt using the parity information. RAID 6 offers

good data redundancy and read performance but slower write performance.

• RAID 10 — Combines mirrored physical disks with data striping. If a physical disk fails, data can be rebuilt using

the mirrored data. RAID 10 offers good read and write performance with good data redundancy.

• RAID 50 — A dual-level array that uses multiple RAID 5 sets in a single array. A single physical disk failure can

occur in each of the RAID 5 without any loss of data on the entire array. Although the RAID 50 has increased

write performance, its performance decreases, data or program access gets slower, and transfer speeds on the

array are affected when a physical disk fails and reconstruction takes place.

• RAID 60 — Combines the straight block level striping of RAID 0 with the distributed double parity of RAID 6. The

system must have at least eight physical disks to use RAID 60. Failures while a single physical disk is rebuilding

in one RAID 6 set do not lead to data loss. RAID 60 has improved fault tolerance because more than two physical

disks on either span must fail for data loss to occur.