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 dierent 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.
Dierent controllers have dierent characteristics in the way they read and write data and execute tasks. It is helpful to understand
these features to most eciently 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 S140 controllers
• PERC H330 Adapter, PERC H330 Mini Monolithic
• PERC H730 Adapter, PERC H730 Mini Monolithic
• PERC H730P Adapter, PERC H730P Mini Monolithic
• PERC H740P Adapter, PERC H740P Mini Monolithic
• PERC H840 Adapter
RAID Controller Features
Dierent controllers have dierent features. If you have more than one controller attached to your system, you may notice that the
tasks displayed on the Information/Conguration page of the controller are dierent for each controller.
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