User guide

LSI Corporation
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LSI Nytro MegaRAID Application Acceleration Card User Guide
August 2012
Nytro MegaRAID SAS Hardware Installation
Requirements
Chapter 2: Nytro MegaRAID SAS Hardware Installation
2.1 Requirements
The following items are required to install a Nytro MegaRAID card:
 A Nytro MegaRAID card
 A host server with an available x8 PCI Express 2.0 slot
 The Nytro MegaRAID USB thumb drive, which contains links to the drivers and documentation
 The necessary cables
 SAS drives or SATA drives
 RAID Cache Protection Kit (Optional)
 A Phillips screwdriver
2.2 Installation and Configuration Overview
The Nytro MegaRAID card contains an Auto Configuration utility in the onboard firmware. When the card is powered
up for the first time, the Nytro Flash module are automatically configurated as a Nytro Cache Drive Group 0, RAID 1,
write back configuration. If this configuration is what you want, the card is ready to be used after you install the
operating system drivers. If you want to change the configuration, there are different way and utilities to use to
configure your system. Figure 3, Installation Flowchart provides a quick overview of the different setup configurations
and utilities. This chapter of this document explains how to install the card into your system. For software setup and
configuration, see the Nytro MegaRAID Software User Guide.
NOTE This card also work in PCI Express first generation slots. The PCI Express software is backward
compatible with previous revisions of the PCI bus and the PCI-X bus. This card will have reduced
performance if you use it in the first or second generation PCI bus.