Users Guide

Back to Contents Page
 Overview
Dell OpenManage Server Administrator Storage Management User's Guide
What's New in this Release?
Installation Considerations for Storage Management
Supported Controllers
Supported Enclosures
Support for Disk and Volume Management
Support for Security Key Management
Dell OpenManage Server Administrator Storage Management provides enhanced features for configuring a system's locally-attached RAID and non-RAID disk
storage. Storage Management enables you to perform controller and enclosure functions for all supported RAID and non-RAID controllers and enclosures from
a single graphical or command-line interface without requiring use of the controller BIOS utilities. The graphical interface is wizard-driven with features for
novice and advanced users. The command-line interface is fully-featured and scriptable. Using Storage Management, you can protect your data by configuring
data-redundancy, assigning hot spares, or rebuilding failed physical disks. You can also perform data-destructive tasks. All users of Storage Management
should be familiar with their storage environment and storage management.
Storage Management supports SCSI, SATA, ATA, and SAS but not fibre channel.
For more information, see the following:
l "Getting Started"
l "Understanding RAID Concepts"
l "Quick Access to Storage Status and Tasks"
For information on Storage Management alerts, see the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator Messages Reference Guide on the Dell Support website at
support.dell.com/manuals.
What's New in this Release?
This release of Storage Management provides the following new features:
l For PERC controllers with firmware 6.1 and above, you can create a single span virtual disk with 22 or 26 physical drives for RAID level 10.
l For RAID level 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60, you can create a maximum of 16 virtual disks per disk group for H700 and H800 controllers. Previously, the limit
was one.
l For PERC H700 and PERC H800 controllers, you can assign persistent drive slots for hot spare.
l ForPERCH700andPERCH800controllerswiththefirmwareversion7.1andabove,youcanmanagethepowerconsumedbyphysicaldisksbyspinning
down the hot spares and unconfigured disks.
l For PERC H700 and PERC H800 controllers, while creating a security key, you can save the passphrase to a file on the system where Distributed Web
Server is running.
l For PERC H700 and PERC H800 controllers, without adding an additional physical disk, you can re-configure the virtual disk to expand the capacity if free
space is available in the disk group.
l You can view the Patrol Read report, Check Consistency report, and Slot Occupancy report in the storage dash board and in the controller information
page.
l You can view the Slot Occupancy report in the enclosure information page.
This version of Storage Management User's Guide no longer carries information on Alert Messages and Command Line Interface.
For information on Alert Messages, see the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator Messages Reference Guide and for information on Command Line Interface, see
Dell OpenManage Server Administrator Command Line Interface User's Guide, on the Dell Support website at support.dell.com/manuals.
Installation Considerations for Storage Management
The following sections describe considerations for installing Storage Management.

PERC Console and FAST Compatibility Issues When Installing Storage Management
To maintain the integrity of storage device configuration, installing Storage Management on a system that has File and Storage Technologies (FAST) or the
PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) Console installed is an unsupported configuration. It is highly recommended that you uninstall FAST and the PERC Console
before installing Storage Management. In particular, you may find that Storage Management or the FAST features are disabled at run time when using Storage
Management on a system that also has FAST installed.
Storage Management replaces all storage management features provided by FAST and the PERC Console. In addition, Storage Management has features not
provided by FAST and the PERC Console.
NOTE: For PERC 700 and PERC 800 controllers, intelligent mirroring allows to create only one virtual disk per disk group for RAID 10.