Users Guide

Table Of Contents
Table 2. Auto configure behavior settings
Settings Description
Off Auto configure behavior is turned off
NonRAID Unconfigured drives are configured as nonRAID disk during boot or during hot insertion; all the
configured drives will remain unaffected
Off to NonRAID disk Unconfigured drives are converted to nonRAID disk; all the configured drives will remain unaffected
NonRAID disk to Off Unconfigured drives remain unconfigured good; all the configured drives will remain unaffected
Disk roaming
Disk roaming is when a physical disk is moved from one cable connection or backplane slot to another on the same controller.
The controller automatically recognizes the relocated physical disks and logically places them in the virtual disks that are part
of the disk group. If the physical disk is configured as a nonRAID disk, then the relocated physical disk is recognized as a
nonRAID disk by the controller.
CAUTION: It is recommended that you perform disk roaming when the system is turned off.
CAUTION: Do not attempt disk roaming during RAID level migration (RLM) or online capacity expansion (OCE).
This causes loss of the virtual disk.
Using disk roaming
About this task
Perform the following steps to use disk roaming:
Steps
1. Turn off the power to the system, physical disks, enclosures, and system components.
2. Disconnect power cables from the system.
3. Move the physical disks to desired positions on the backplane or the enclosure.
4. Perform a safety check. Make sure the physical disks are inserted properly.
5. Turn on the system.
Results
The controller detects the RAID configuration from the configuration data on the physical disks.
FastPath
FastPath is a feature that improves application performance by delivering high I/O per second (IOPs) for solid-state drives
(SSDs). The PERC 11 series of cards support FastPath.
To enable FastPath on a virtual disk, the cache policies of the RAID controller must be set to write-through and no read ahead.
This enables FastPath to use the proper data path through the controller based on command (read/write), I/O size, and RAID
type. For optimal solid-state drive performance, create virtual disks with strip size of 64 KB.
NonRAID disks
A nonRAID disk is a single disk to the host, and not a RAID volume. The only supported cache policy for nonRAID disks is
Write-Through.
Features of PowerEdge RAID Controller 11
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