User's Manual

8
Controllers
This chapter provides information about the supported controllers and controller features in Storage
Management.
Related Links
RAID Controller Technology: SCSI, SATA, ATA, And SAS
Which Controllers Do I Have?
Non-RAID Controller Description
What Is A Controller?
Most operating systems do not read and write data directly from the disks, but instead send read and
write instructions to a controller. The controller is the hardware in your system that interacts directly with
the disks to write and retrieve data. A controller has connectors (channels or ports) which are attached to
one or more physical disks or an enclosure containing physical disks. RAID controllers can span the
boundaries of the disks to create an extended amount of storage space — or a virtual disk — using the
capacity of more than one disk.
Controllers also perform other tasks, such as initiating rebuilds, initializing disks, and more. To complete
their tasks, controllers require special software known as firmware and drivers. In order to function
properly, the controller must have the minimum required version of the firmware and drivers installed.
Storage Management supports different types of controllers. If your system has a supported controller,
the controller is displayed by expanding the Storage object in the System tree view in the GUI. You can
select the controller to display tabs for executing controller tasks and viewing controller properties.
Different controllers have different characteristics in the way they read and write data and execute tasks.
It is helpful to understand these features to most efficiently manage the storage. The following sections
describe the supported controllers and their features.
RAID Controller Technology: SCSI, SATA, ATA, And SAS
Storage Management supports RAID controllers using SCSI, SATA, ATA, and SAS technology. This section
indicates which technology the supported RAID controllers use. For more information on these
controllers, see Supported Features and the controller hardware documentation.
SAS RAID Controllers
The following RAID controllers use Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology.
• PERC 5/E
• PERC 5/i Integrated
• PERC 5/i Adapter
• SAS 5/iR Integrated
• SAS 5/iR Adapter
61