Users Guide

7
Controllers
This chapter provides information about the supported controllers and controller features in Storage Management.
Related links
RAID Controller Technology: SATA 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 rmware and drivers. In order to function properly, the controller must have the minimum required version
of the rmware and drivers installed.
Storage Management supports dierent 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.
Dierent controllers have dierent characteristics in the way they read and write data and execute tasks. It is helpful to understand
these features to most eciently manage the storage. The following sections describe the supported controllers and their features.
RAID Controller Technology: SATA And SAS
Storage Management supports RAID controllers using SATA 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 6/E
• PERC 6/I controller family
• SAS 6/iR controller family
• PERC S100, S110, S130, and S300 controllers
• PERC H200, H700, and H800 controllers
• PERC H310 Adapter, PERC H310 Mini Monolithic, PERC H310 Mini Blades, PERC H710 Adapter, PERC H710 Mini Blades, PERC
H710 Mini Monolithic, PERC H710P Adapter, PERC H710P Mini Blades, PERC H710P Mini Monolithic, and PERC H810 Adapter
controllers
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