Users Guide
Table Of Contents
- Dell EMC PowerEdge RAID Controller S150 User’s Guide
- Overview
- Physical Disks
- Virtual Disks
- Cabling the drives for the S150
- BIOS Configuration Utility
- Entering the BIOS configuration utility
- Exiting the BIOS Configuration Utility
- Initializing the physical disks
- Creating the virtual disks
- Deleting the virtual disks
- Swapping two virtual disks
- Managing the hot spare disks
- Viewing the physical disks details
- Viewing the virtual disks details
- Rescan disks
- Controller Options
- Continue to boot
- UEFI RAID configuration utility
- Installing the drivers
- Troubleshooting your system
- Precautions for hot removal or hot insertion of NVMe drives
- Unable to configure Linux RAID using UEFI Configuration Utility
- Performance degradation after disabling SATA physical disk write cache policy
- Unable to modify any feature settings in UEFI or OPROM
- Extra reboot during OS installation
- OS installation failing on NVMe PCIe SSD with third-party driver
- Server performance is slow and crashes during OS installation on the SATA configuration
- Server performance is slow during OS installation on the NVMe configuration
- System startup issues
- System does not boot
- Controller mode is set incorrectly at System Setup
- Boot mode, boot sequence, and or boot sequence retry are set incorrectly
- Bootable virtual disk is in a failed state
- The boot order is incorrect for a bootable virtual disk
- A Non-RAID virtual disk is no longer in first position in the BIOS configuration utility list after a system reboot
- The BIOS configuration utility option does not display
- Configuring RAID using the Option ROM Utility is disabled
- Warning Messages
- Other errors appearing on the BIOS screen
- BSOD is observed while booting on the NVMe configuration server
- S150 controller lists M.2 drives
- Error in displaying the CD/DVD-ROM while in legacy mode
- Unavailable error under UEFI boot settings
- S150 does not display greater than ten virtual disks in the BIOS Configuration Utility or CTRL R
- Unable to delete virtual disks when there are more than 30 virtual disks present in the system
- Virtual disk rebuild status in the BIOS Configuration Utility (
) or in UEFI HII
- Physical disk - related errors
- The physical disk fails
- Cannot initialize a physical disk
- Status LED is not working
- Cannot update NVMe PCIe SSD firmware by using Dell Update Package or DUP
- NVMe drive error when inserted for the first time
- Third-party driver installation for NVMe PCIe SSD failing
- Unable to find the NVMe PCIe SSD for operating system installation
- Virtual disks - related errors
- Stale partitions are listed on creating a virtual disk for Linux
- Rebuilding a virtual disk the global hot spare is not listed as online in HII or iDRAC
- S150 displays 22 virtual disks on POST instead of 30 virtual disks
- S150 displays 43 virtual disks on POST instead of 30 virtual disks
- Display of failed virtual disk in HII
- Virtual disk size in decimals is not supported while creating a VD
- Cannot create a virtual disk
- A virtual disk is in a degraded state
- Cannot assign a dedicated hot spare to a virtual disk
- Cannot create a global hot spare
- A dedicated hot spare fails
- Failed or degraded virtual disk
- Cannot create a virtual disk on selected physical disks
- RAID disk created from the NVMe PCIe SSDs not appearing in operating system environment, showing as partitioned disks
- Cannot perform an Online Capacity Expansion or Reconfigure on a virtual disk
- Unable to configure RAID on NVMe PCIe SSD using a third party RAID configuration utility
- Getting help
Virtual disk cache policies
NOTE: Configuring virtual disk cache policies on NVMe PCIe SSD is not supported.
The PERC S150 uses part of system memory for cache. It supports the following cache options:
● Read Ahead/Write Back
● No Read Ahead/Write Back
● Read Ahead/Write Through
● No Read Ahead/Write Through
Table 6. Read, Write, and Cache Policy for the PERC S150
Category Supported by S150 controller
Cache settings Yes
Read Ahead/Write Back Yes
No Read Ahead/Write Back Yes
Read Ahead/Write Through Yes
No Read Ahead/Write Through Yes
NOTE: The current default for Write-Cache mode enablement is No Read Ahead, Write Through (NRA, WT). To enable
Write Back (WB), a UPS is recommended.
NOTE: For more information about the physical disk write cache policy behavior, see Troubleshooting your system.
Virtual disk migration
The PERC S150 supports automatic virtual disk migration from one PERC S150 to another.
CAUTION:
The virtual disk is lost if you perform a virtual disk migration during an Online Capacity Expansion
(OCE)/Reconfigure.
NOTE: Back up the virtual disk data before migrating virtual disks.
NOTE: Ensure that all physical disks that are part of the virtual disk are migrated. Virtual disks in optimal and degraded
states are automatically migrated. A virtual disk in an offline state should not be migrated.
NOTE: A bootable virtual disk cannot be migrated between dissimilar system models.
NOTE: When you migrate virtual disks, ensure that you verify that the number of virtual disks does not exceed 10.
Migrating a virtual disk
1. Turn off the system that contains the source controller.
2. Turn off the target system if the system does not support hot swap of physical disks.
3. Move the appropriate physical disks from the source controller to the target controller in the target system.
Physical disks do not have to be inserted into the same slots in the target system.
4. If the target system was turned off, turn on the system.
CAUTION:
The BIOS Configuration Utility pauses, and prompts for action, for the degraded virtual disk(s), if the
"pause if degraded" option is enabled in the BIOS Configuration Utility.
CAUTION: After the migration occurs, ensure that all of the physical disks have been migrated and are present
in the appropriate virtual disks.
16 Virtual Disks