Users Guide

Figure 2. Features of Shared PERC 8 External card
1 external cable connectors 2 Shared PERC External card
3 heat sink 4 battery cable
5 battery
Topics:
• Congurations of the Shared PERC 8 card
• Specications of a Shared PERC 8 card
• Supported operating systems
• Best practices for Shared PERC 8
• Documentation matrix
Congurations of the Shared PERC 8 card
The Shared PERC 8 Internal and External cards are two separate SAS domains. The PowerEdge VRTX system is available in the following
congurations for both Internal and External cards:
Single Non-Fault Shared PERC 8 Card Conguration — In this conguration, the controllers do not mirror their cache. The default cache
policy for virtual disks created in this conguration is write-back. In this mode, the write completion information is returned to the host after
the data is written to the Shared PERC 8 controller’s cache.
Dual Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8 Card Conguration — In this conguration, there are two Shared PERC 8 cards congured in an
active-passive cluster. Both controllers can access the same storage subsystem. However, only the active controller provides the data
access. If one of the Shared PERC 8 cards fails, the other Shared PERC 8 card takes control in a seamless transition. The default cache
policy for virtual disks created in this conguration is write-back.
NOTE
: For Shared PERC 8 External controllers, the Fault Tolerance option must be set by the user and the required cabling
topology must be used.
The following conguration is only available for External cards:
Dual Non-Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8 External Cards Conguration — In this conguration, the PowerEdge VRTX system contains
two Shared PERC 8 External cards where both are cabled to separate JBODs creating separate SAS domains. If one Shared PERC 8
About the Shared PERC 8 card
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