Step 1 |
Choose Manual Configuration and click Next.
The Drive Group Definition window appears. Use this window to choose drives to create drive groups.
|
Step 2 |
Press and hold Ctrl while choosing two or more ready drives in the Drives pane.
Choose all of the drives for the drive group.
|
Step 3 |
Click Add To Array to move the drives to a proposed drive group configuration in the Drive Groups pane.
If you need to undo the changes, click Reclaim.
|
Step 4 |
If needed, finish adding drives to the Drive Groups pane and click Accept DG to create a RAID drive group.
An icon for the next drive group appears in the Drive Groups pane.
|
Step 5 |
Choose the drive group created in Step 4, and press and hold Ctrl while choosing more ready drives in the Drives pane to create a second RAID drive group.
|
Step 6 |
Click to add Arrayto move the drives to a second drive group configuration in the Drive Groups pane. If you need to undo the changes, click
Reclaim.
Note
|
RAID 00 supports a maximum of eight spans with a maximum of 32 drives per span.
|
Note
|
RAID 10 supports a maximum of eight spans with a maximum of 32 drives per span. You must use an even number of drives in each
RAID 10 drive group in the span.
|
|
Step 7 |
From the Encryption drop-down list, choose an encryption option.
|
Step 8 |
If needed, finish adding drives to the Drive Groups pane and click Accept DG to create a RAID 0 drive group.
|
Step 9 |
Repeat Step 4 through Step 6 until you have chosen all the drives you want for the drive groups.
|
Step 10 |
After you finish adding drives to the Drive Groups pane, choose each drive group, and click Accept DG after each drive group choice.
|
Step 11 |
Click Next.
The Span Definition window appears. This window shows the drive group holes that you can choose to add to the Span pane.
|
Step 12 |
Press and hold Ctrl while you choose a drive group in the Array With Free Space pane, and click Add to SPAN.
The drive group you chose appears in the Span pane.
|
Step 13 |
Press and hold Ctrl while you choose a second drive group, and click Add to SPAN.
|
Step 14 |
Repeat Step 12 and Step 13 until you have chosen all of the drive groups that you need.
|
Step 15 |
Click Next.
The Virtual Drive Definition window appears. This window lists the possible RAID levels for the drive group. Use this window to choose the RAID level,
strip size, read policy, and other attributes for the new virtual drives.
|
Step 16 |
Press and hold Ctrl to choose the drive group in the Configuration pane, and then choose the virtual drive options using the
drop-down lists in the left pane (the default values are shown):
-
From the RAID Level drop-down list, choose the desired RAID option (RAID 00, 10, 50, or 60).
All of the possible RAID levels for the virtual drive are listed.
-
From the Strip Size drop-down list, choose one of the following:
8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 KB. The default is 64 KB.
The strip size is the portion of a stripe that resides on a single drive in the drive group. The stripe consists of the data
segments that the RAID controller writes across multiple drives, not including parity drives.
For example, consider a stripe that contains 64 KB of drive space and has 16 KB of data residing on each drive in the stripe.
In this case, the stripe size is 64 KB and the strip size is 16 KB. A larger strip size produces higher read performance.
If your server regularly performs random read requests, choose a smaller strip size.
-
From the Access Policy drop-down list, choose one of the following:
– RW—Allows read/write access. This is the default.
– Read Only—Allows read-only access.
– Blocked—Does not allow access.
-
From the Read Policy drop-down list, choose one of the following:
– Normal—Disables the read-ahead capability. This is the default.
– Ahead—Enables read-ahead capability, which allows the controller to read sequentially ahead of requested data and to store the
additional data in cache memory, anticipating that the data will be needed soon. This option speeds up reads for sequential
data but there is little improvement when accessing random data.
-
From the Write Policy drop-down list, choose one of the following:
– WBack—In Writeback mode, the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has received
all of the data in a transaction. This setting is recommended in Standard mode.
– WThru—In Writethrough mode, the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the drive subsystem has received
all of the data in a transaction. This is the default.
– Bad BBU—Choose this mode if you want the controller to use Writeback mode, but the controller has no BBU or the BBU is bad. If you
do not choose this option, the controller firmware automatically switches to Writethrough mode if it detects a bad or missing
BBU.
Note
|
The LSI WebBIOS CU allows Writeback mode to be used with or without a battery. We recommend that you use either a battery
to protect the controller cache or an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) to protect the entire system. If you do not use a
battery or a UPS, and there is a power failure, you risk losing the data in the controller cache.
|
-
From the IO Policy drop-down list, choose one of the following:
– Direct—In direct I/O mode, reads are not buffered in the cache memory. Data is transferred to the cache and the host concurrently.
If the same data block is read again, it comes from the cache memory. This is the default.
– Cached—In cached I/O mode, all reads are buffered in the cache memory.
The IO Policy applies to reads on a specific virtual drive. It does not affect the read-ahead cache.
-
From the Drive Cache drop-down list, choose one of the following:
– Enable—Enables the drive cache.
– Disable—Disables the drive cache.
– NoChange—Leaves the current drive cache policy as is.This is the default.
-
From the Disable BGI drop-down list, choose the background initialization status from the following:
– No—Leaves background initialization enabled, which means that a new configuration can be initialized in the background while
you use WebBIOS to do other configuration tasks.This is the default.
– Yes—Does not allow background initializations for configurations on this controller.
-
From the Select Size drop-down list, choose the size of the virtual drive in MB.
Normally, this would be the full size for RAID 0 shown in the Configuration pane. You can specify a smaller size if you want to create other virtual drives in the same drive group.
|
Step 17 |
Click Accept to accept the changes to the virtual drive definitions.
If you need to undo the changes, click Reclaim.
|
Step 18 |
After you finish the virtual drive definitions, click Next.
The Configuration Preview window appears.
|
Step 19 |
Check the virtual drive configuration in the Configuration Preview window and choose one of the following:
-
If the virtual drive configuration is acceptable, click Accept to save the configuration.
-
Click Back to return to the previous windows and change the configuration.
|
Step 20 |
Click Yes at the prompt to save the configuration.
The main WebBIOS CU window appears.
|