Configuration : Changing Power Settings

Changing Power Settings

The RAID controller includes Dimmer Switchâ„¢ technology that conserves energy by placing certain available online drives into a powersave mode. In a powersave mode, the drives use less energy, and the fan and the enclosure requires less energy to cool and house the drives. Also, this technology helps avoid application time-outs caused by spin-up delays and drive wear caused by excessive spin-up/down cycles.

You can use the Power Settings field in MegaRAID Storage Manager software to choose whether to allow unconfigured drives or hot spares to enter a powersave mode.

 

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NOTE The Dimmer Switch technology is enabled by default.

When they are in the powersave mode, unconfigured drives and drives configured as hot spares (dedicated or global) can be spun down. When spun down, the drives stay in powersave mode except for periodic maintenance, including:

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Periodic background media scans (Patrol Read) to find and correct media defects to avoid losing data redundancy (hot spare drives only)

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Use of a hot spare to rebuild a degraded drive group (hot spare drives only)

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Update of Disk Data Format (DDF) and other metadata when you make changes to RAID configurations (hot spare drives and unconfigured drives)

 

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NOTE If your controller does not support this option, the Power Settings field does not appear.

Follow these steps to change the powersave setting.

1.

Select a controller icon in the Physical tab or the Logical tab in the left panel of the MegaRAID Storage Manager main menu window.

2.

Select Go To>>Controller>>Power Settings from the menu bar.

The Power Settings dialog appears, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 41 Powersave Mode Checkbox

 

3.

Click the Allow unconfigured drives to enter powersave mode check box and then click OK.

The second Power Settings dialog appears, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 42 Spin Down Time Delay Setting

 

4.

Enter the time delay, in minutes, before the unconfigured drives spin down automatically.

After the specified time, the drives spin down automatically.

5.

Click OK.

Your power settings are saved. In the Physical tab of the MegaRAID Storage Manager main menu window, the nodes for the unconfigured good drives that are spun down appear with - Powersave after their status.