Configuration Tool and Utilities Operation Manual Instruction Manual

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1.2 RAID Group Setup and Management

The ATTO Conﬁguration Tool enables you to conﬁgure disk storage

into RAID groups or Hot Spare drives.

Note: Even an individual JBOD disk is considered to be a RAID group.

Use the ATTO Conﬁguration Tool to set up RAID groups on your

Sonnet RAID controller in one of the following RAID levels:

• JBOD

• RAID Level 0

• RAID Level 1

• RAID Level 4

• RAID Level 5

• RAID Level 6

• RAID Level 10

• DVRAID™

DVRAID RAID groups may be set up automatically by the ATTO

Conﬁguration Tool. All other RAID conﬁgurations require

customized input; Sonnet recommends Custom RAID group

setup.

Each RAID group may be divided into one or more partitions;

each partition appears to the your computer as a virtual disk.

You may use the command line interface pane from the RAID

CLI tab in the ATTO Conﬁguration Tool to set up or modify

various parameters (Refer to Appendix A). However, using the

menu-based procedures listed in this chapter is the preferred

method for setting up RAID configurations for the Fusion

storage system.

Preliminary Configuration Steps

1. Launch the ATTO Conﬁguration Tool application.

2. The Conﬁguration Tool main screen appears. In the Device

Listing pane on the left side of the window, click ExpressSAS

Rxxx under localhost; a new set of tabs appears in the right

pane. See Figure 10 on page 14 for an overview.

3. Click the RAID tab; the application scans for drives.

Attached drives are displayed in the top pane, while RAID

groups and Hot Spares are displayed in the bottom pane.

Custom RAID Group Setup Steps

1. After completing Preliminary Conﬁguration Steps, select

RAID Management > Create Group > Customized from the

application menu.

2. Select the ﬁrst set of options to conﬁgure the new RAID

group. See Figure 11 on page 14.

• Name: name the RAID group or use the one assigned by the

Conﬁguration Tool. The name must be unique, contain no

spaces, and contain no more than 14 characters.

• Level: select a RAID group level from the drop-down menu.

• Interleave: select an interleave value. The default value

is 64KB or 128KB, depending on the OS used. Sonnet

recommends 1MB interleave size for maximum video

editing performance.

• Mirror Count: select the number of mirror groups when

RAID 1 or RAID 10 RAID groups are created.

Support Note: In the ATTO Configuration Tool’s Device

Listing pane, the Sonnet RAID controller is identified as

an ExpressSAS Rxxx.

Windows Support Note: In order to create RAID

volumes larger than 2TB under Windows, you must do one

of the following: Select the 4KB sector size when creating a

custom RAID group (not DVRAID) and select Simple Volume

as the formatting option in the Disk Management application.

-OR- Use the software configuration tools included with the

Fusion storage to create volumes up to 2TB, span (link together

in a virtual chain) the volumes, and then format as NTFS. - OR-

Use GPT formatting. Note that drives and volumes with GPT

formatting are not visible to the 32-bit version of Windows XP

Professional, nor to the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2003 SP1.

Support Note: DVRAID is a customized, protected

RAID 4 configuration. It is optimized for increased digital

video playback performance when compared to that obtained

from a RAID 5 configuration. DVRAID’s write performance is

decreased in order to accomplish this optimization.

Support Note: Descriptions of RAID levels can be found

on the Wikipedia.org Web site at the following addresses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_RAID_levels.

Support Note: Two RAID groups with the same name

may not be recognized. If you add another RAID group to

your setup, you must make sure it does not have the same name

as the existing one, and change it if it does.

Support Note: The interleave value chosen when

creating a RAID group makes a significant impact on

performance. Fusion RAID storage systems shipped from Sonnet

with pre-installed hard disk drives are now optimized for use

with video editing (larger files) applications, typically with an

interleave value of 512KB or 1MB selected. If you intend to

use your storage system primarily for storage of smaller files

(database, office documents, etc.), choose a smaller interleave

value of 64KB or 128KB.

Support Note: In Fusion RAID storage systems

shipped from Sonnet with hard drives installed, the

drives are formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled),

configured as a single RAID 5 or RAID 6 RAID group, and

ready for use with Mac OS X-based systems. If you need to

change the configuration, delete the existing RAID group (see

RAID Group Deletion on page 13), and use the Configuration

Tool and the operating system software tools to reformat

and reconfigure the drives. See page xiv for Drive Reformat

Instructions for Mac OS and Windows users.