Administrator Guide

iDRAC9 enhancements — Deep dive into storage and networking
9 In-band or out-of-band: Advantages of iDRAC and iSM compared to OMSA | ID 423
3 iDRAC9 enhancements — Deep dive into storage and
networking
The Dell EMC engineers continue to add and expand the various features and functionality for iDRAC9. Two
key areas of focus are storage and network management. The end goal is full functionality without the use of
an agent in the operating system or hypervisor. This section explores in detail these two topics.
3.1 Enhancements for real-time storage management
PowerEdge servers that are equipped with PERC10 and iDRAC9 allow users to configure the storage without
any agent. Also, does not require reboot of server for storage configuration. The following storage
configurations are added to make the storage configuration more comprehensive:
• Online Capacity Expansion: Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) allows the increase of storage
capacity of selected RAID levels (all RAID levels except RAID 50 and RAID 60.) This expansion is
possible either using available disk capacity or by adding a new disk.
• RAID Level Migration: RAID Level Migration (RLM) provides changing a virtual disk RAID level.
• Instant Erase Secured Physical Disk: This feature is the ability to securely erase the contents on the
physical Self-Encrypting Drives.
• Rebuild Physical Device: This feature is the ability to reconstruct the contents of failed disk. This
option is only available when auto rebuild option is set to “false.”
• Manage Preserved Cache: The Manage Preserved Cache feature provides user the option to discard
the controller cache data.
• Cancel Initialization: User can cancel background initialization of virtual disk. On PERC controllers,
the background initialization of redundant virtual disk begins automatically after a virtual disk is
created. The background initialization of redundant virtual disk prepares the virtual disk for parity
information and improves write performance. Background initialization must be complete. However,
some processes such as creating a virtual disk cannot be run while the background initialization is in
progress. This feature can cancel the background initialization manually. But if canceled, the
background initialization automatically restarts within 0 to 5 minutes.
• Rename VD: The administrator can rename any virtual disk.
• Set Enclosure Asset Tag: This feature is the ability to configure Asset Tag of storage enclosure. The
user can change the Asset Tag property of the enclosure to help them identify enclosures.
• Set Enclosure Asset name: This feature is the ability to configure Asset Name of storage enclosure.
The user can change the Asset Name property of the enclosure to help them identify enclosures.
As part of storage inventory iDRAC9 collects the information about storage controllers, hard drives, virtual
drives, Enclosures, Fans, EMMs, and batteries. For more information about the inventory details, see
screenshots in Appendix.