User's Manual

Minimum Disk Requirement for Different RAID Levels
Table 4. : RAID Level and Number of Disks
RAID Level Minimum Number of Disks
0 1*
1 2
5 3
6 4
10 4
50 6
60 8
* For S110 RAID controller, a minimum of 2 disks are required.
Selecting Physical Disks
Use the Select Physical Disks screen to select the physical disks to be used for the virtual drive and select the physical
disk drive-related properties.
The number of physical disks required for the virtual disk varies depending on the RAID level. The minimum and
maximum numbers of physical disks required for the RAID level are displayed on the screen.
• Protocol — Select the protocol for the disk pool: Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA (SATA). SAS drives
are used for high performance, while SATA drives provide a more cost-effective solution. A disk pool is a logical
grouping of physical disk drives on which one or more virtual drives can be created. The protocol is the type of
technology used to implement RAID.
• Media Type — Select the media type for the disk pool: Hard Disk Drives (HDD) or Solid State Disks (SSD). HDDs
use traditional rotational magnetic media for data storage and SSDs implement flash memory for data storage.
• Encryption Capability — Select Yes to enable encryption capability
• Select Span Length — Select the span length. The span length value refers to the number of physical disk drives
included in each span. Span length applies only to RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60. The Select Span Length
drop‑down list is active only if the user has selected RAID-10, RAID-50, or RAID 60.
• Drives remaining for current span — Displays the number of physical disk drives available based on the span
length value.
• Select the physical disk drives using the check boxes at the bottom of the screen. The physical disk drive
selection must meet the requirements of the RAID level and span length. To select all the physical disk drives,
click Select All. After you select the option, the option changes to Deselect.
Setting Virtual Disk Attributes
Use this page to specify the values for the following virtual drive attributes:
• Size — Specify the size of the virtual drive.
• Stripe Element Size — Select the stripe element size. The stripe element size is the amount of drive space a
stripe consumes on each physical disk drive in the stripe. The Stripe Element Size list may contain more options
than initially displayed on the screen. Use the UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW keys to view all available options.
• Read Policy — Select the read policy:
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