Glossary
A virtual drive property indicating what kind of access is allowed for a particular virtual drive. The possible values are Read/Write, Read Only, or Blocked.
See drive group.
Basic Input/Output System. The computer BIOS is stored on a flash memory chip. The BIOS controls communications between the microprocessor and peripheral devices, such as the keyboard and the video controller, and miscellaneous functions, such as system messages.
Fast memory that holds recently accessed data. Use of cache memory speeds subsequent access to the same data. When data is read from or written to main memory, a copy is also saved in cache memory with the associated main memory address. The cache memory software monitors the addresses of subsequent reads to see if the required data is already stored in cache memory. If it is already in cache memory (a cache hit), it is read from cache memory immediately and the main memory read is aborted (or not started). If the data is not cached (a cache miss), it is fetched from main memory and saved in cache memory.
A controller property that indicates how often the data cache is flushed.
The process of using a high speed memory buffer to speed up a computer system’s overall read/write performance. The cache can be accessed at a higher speed than a drive subsystem. To improve read performance, the cache usually contains the most recently accessed data, as well as data from adjacent drive sectors. To improve write performance, the cache may temporarily store data in accordance with its write back policies.
A property that indicates the amount of storage space on a drive or virtual drive.
A drive property indicating the capacity to which a drive has been coerced (forced) to make it compatible with other drives that are nominally the same capacity. For example, a 4 Gbyte drive from one manufacturer may be 4,196 Mbytes, and a 4 Gbyte from another manufacturer may be 4,128 Mbytes. These drives could be coerced to a usable capacity of 4,088 Mbytes each for use in a drive group in a storage configuration.
A controller property indicating the capacity to which drives of nominally identical capacity are coerced (forced) to make them usable in a storage configuration.
An operation that verifies that all stripes in a virtual drive with a redundant RAID level are consistent and that automatically fixes any errors. For RAID 1 drive groups, this operation verifies correct mirrored data for each stripe.
The rate at which consistency check operations are run on a computer system.
A chip that controls the transfer of data between the microprocessor and memory or between the microprocessor and a peripheral device such as a drive. RAID controllers perform RAID functions such as striping and mirroring to provide data protection. MegaRAID Storage Manager software runs on LSI SAS controllers.
A virtual drive property that indicates whether the virtual drive currently supports Write Back mode or Write Through mode.
In Write Back 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.
In Write Through 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.
A virtual drive property indicating whether the default write policy is Write Through or Write Back. In Write Back 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. In Write Through 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.
A controller or drive property indicating the manufacturer-assigned device ID.
A controller property indicating the number of ports on the controller.
A virtual drive property indicating whether the virtual drive cache is enabled, disabled, or unchanged from its previous setting.
A group of drives attached to a RAID controller on which one or more virtual drives can be created. All virtual drives in the drive group use all of the drives in the drive group.
A drive property indicating the status of the drive. A drive can be in one of the following states:
Hot Spare: A drive that is configured as a hot spare.
Online: A drive that can be accessed by the RAID controller and will be part of the virtual drive.
Rebuild: A drive to which data is being written to restore full redundancy for a virtual drive.
Failed: A drive that was originally configured as Online or Hot Spare, but on which the firmware detects an unrecoverable error.
Unconfigured Bad: A drive on which the firmware detects an unrecoverable error; the drive was Unconfigured Good or the drive could not be initialized.
Missing: A drive that was Online, but which has been removed from its location.
None: A drive with an unsupported flag set. An Unconfigured Good or Offline drive that has completed the prepare for removal operation.
A collection of drives and the hardware that controls them and connects them to one or more controllers. The hardware can include an intelligent controller, or the drives can attach directly to a system I/O bus controller.
A drive property indicating the characteristics of the drive.
A mode of initialization that quickly writes zeroes to the first and last sectors of the virtual drive. This allows you to immediately start writing data to the virtual drive while the initialization is running in the background.
The capability of the drive subsystem to undergo a single drive failure per drive group without compromising data integrity and processing capability. LSI SAS RAID controllers provides fault tolerance through redundant drive groups in RAID levels 1 and 1E. They also support hot spare drives and the auto-rebuild feature.
Software stored in read-only memory (ROM) or programmable ROM (PROM). Firmware is often responsible for the behavior of a system when it is first turned on. A typical example would be a monitor program in a system that loads the full operating system from drive or from a network and then passes control to the operating system.
A RAID configuration that already exists on a replacement set of drives that you install in a computer system. MegaRAID Storage Manager software allows you to import the existing configuration to the RAID controller, or you can clear the configuration so you can create a new one.
The process of writing a specific value to all data fields on a drive, to map out unreadable or bad sectors. Because most drives are formatted when manufactured, formatting is usually done only if a drive generates many media errors.
In MegaRAID Storage Manager, a hole is a block of empty space in a drive group that can be used to define a virtual drive.
A controller property indicating the number of host data ports currently in use.
Any computer system on which the controller is installed. Mainframes, workstations, and stand-alone desktop systems can all be considered host systems.
A standby drive that can automatically replace a failed drive in a virtual drive and prevent data from being lost. A hot spare can be dedicated to a single redundant drive group or it can be part of the global hot spare pool for all drive groups controlled by the controller.
When a drive fails, MegaRAID Storage Manager software automatically uses a hot spare to replace it and then rebuilds the data from the failed drive to the hot spare. Hot spares can be used in RAID 1 and RAID 1E storage configurations.
The process of writing zeros to the data fields of a virtual drive and, in fault-tolerant RAID levels, generating the corresponding parity to put the virtual drive in a Ready state. Initialization erases all previous data on the drives. Drive groups will work without initializing, but they can fail a consistency check because the parity fields have not been generated.
A virtual drive property indicating whether Cached I/O or Direct I/O is being used. In Cached I/O mode, all reads are buffered in cache memory. In Direct I/O mode, reads are not buffered in cache memory. Data is transferred to cache and the host concurrently. If the same data block is read again, it comes from cache memory. (The IO Policy applies to reads on a specific virtual drive. It does not affect the read ahead cache.)
A method of spreading work between two or more computers, network links, CPUs, drives, or other resources. Load balancing is used to maximize resource use, throughput, or response time.
A drive property indicating the number of errors that have been detected on the drive media.
The process of moving virtual drives and hot spare drives from one controller to another by disconnecting the drives from one controller and attaching them to another one. The firmware on the new controller will detect and retain the virtual drive information on the drives.
The process of providing complete data redundancy with two drives by maintaining an exact copy of one drive’s data on the second drive. If one drive fails, the contents of the other drive can be used to maintain the integrity of the system and to rebuild the failed drive.
The firmware provides support for detecting and using multiple paths from the RAID controllers to the SAS devices that are in enclosures. Devices connected to enclosures have multiple paths to them. With redundant paths to the same port of a device, if one path fails, another path can be used to communicate between the controller and the device. Using multiple paths with load balancing, instead of a single path, can increase reliability through redundancy.
A virtual drive property indicating the user-assigned name of the virtual drive.
non-redundant configuration
A RAID 0 virtual drive with data striped across two or more drives but without drive mirroring or parity. This provides for high data throughput but offers no protection in case of a drive failure.
Acronym for non-volatile random access memory. A storage system that does not lose the data stored on it when power is removed. NVRAM is used to store firmware and configuration data on the RAID controller.
A controller property indicating whether an NVRAM is present on the controller.
A controller property indicating the capacity of the controller’s NVRAM.
A drive property indicating the vendor-assigned model number of the drive.
A controller property indicating the manufacturing name of the controller.
A group of multiple, independent drives that provide high performance by increasing the number of drives used for saving and accessing data.
A RAID drive group improves input/output (I/O) performance and data availability. The group of drives appears to the host system as a single storage unit or as multiple virtual drives. Data throughput improves because several drives can be accessed simultaneously. RAID configurations also improve data storage availability and fault tolerance. Redundant RAID levels (RAID levels 1 and 1E) provide data protection.
Uses data striping on one or more drives to provide high data throughput, especially for large files in an environment that requires no data redundancy.
Uses data mirroring on pairs of drives so that data written to one drive is simultaneously written to the other drive. RAID 1 works well for small databases or other small applications that require complete data redundancy.
A RAID 1E drive group is the same as a RAID 0 drive group, except that the data is divided into strips, and each strip is then written to one drive and mirrored on another drive. Thus, the data is protected by the mirroring arrangement. As with RAID 1, if a drive in the drive group fails a hot spare drive can automatically replace it. RAID 1E performance is roughly the same as for a single drive, although in some instances the dual write may be somewhat slower.
A RAID 10 drive group is a spanned drive group that creates a striped set from a series of mirrored drives. The drive group can sustain multiple drive losses as long as no two drives lost comprise a single pair of one mirror.
A virtual drive property indicating the RAID level of the virtual drive. Integrated RAID controllers support RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, and 10.
A controller attribute indicating the current Read Policy mode. In Always Read Ahead mode, the controller reads sequentially ahead of requested data and stores the additional data in cache memory, anticipating that the data will be needed soon. This speeds up reads for sequential data, but there is little improvement when accessing random data. In No Read Ahead mode, read ahead capability is disabled. In Adaptive Read Ahead mode, the controller begins using read ahead if the two most recent drive accesses occurred in sequential sectors. If the read requests are random, the controller reverts to No Read Ahead mode.
The regeneration of all data to a replacement drive in a redundant virtual drive after a drive failure. A drive rebuild normally occurs without interrupting normal operations on the affected virtual drive, though some degradation of performance of the drive subsystem can occur.
The percentage of central processing unit (CPU) resources devoted to rebuilding data onto a new drive after a drive in a storage configuration has failed.
A method of undoing the configuration of a new virtual drive. If you highlight the virtual drive in the Configuration Wizard and click the Reclaim button, the individual drives are removed from the virtual drive configuration.
The user-defined rate at which a reconstruction operation is carried out.
A virtual drive that has redundant data on drives in the drive group that can be used to rebuild a failed drive. The redundant data can be parity data striped across multiple drives in a drive group, or it can be a complete mirrored copy of the data stored on a second drive.
A redundant configuration protects the data in case a drive fails in the configuration.
When you use the Replace Member procedure, after data is copied from a hot spare to a new drive, the hot spare reverts from a rebuild drive to its original hot spare status.
A drive property that indicates the revision level of the drive’s firmware.
Acronym for Serial Attached SCSI. SAS is a serial, point-to-point, enterprise-level device interface that leverages the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) protocol set. The SAS interface provides improved performance, simplified cabling, smaller connectors, lower pin count, and lower power requirements when compared to parallel SCSI.
Acronym for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. A physical storage interface standard. SATA is a serial link that provides point-to-point connections between devices. The thinner serial cables allow for better airflow within the system and permit smaller chassis designs.
A drive property indicating the type of the device, such as drive.
A controller property indicating the manufacturer-assigned serial number.
The portion of a stripe that resides on a single drive in the drive group.
A virtual drive property indicating the length of the interleaved 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. The user can select the stripe size.
A technique used to write data across all drives in a virtual drive. Each stripe consists of consecutive virtual drive data addresses that are mapped in fixed-size units to each drive in the virtual drive using a sequential pattern. For example, if the virtual drive includes five drives, the stripe writes data to drives one through five without repeating any of the drives. The amount of space consumed by a stripe is the same on each drive. Striping by itself does not provide data redundancy. Striping in combination with parity does provide data redundancy.
A controller property that lists additional vendor ID information about the controller.
A controller property that lists the number of uncorrectable errors detected on drives connected to the controller. If the error count reaches a certain level, a drive will be marked as failed.
A controller property indicating the vendor-assigned ID number of the controller.
A drive property listing the name of the vendor of the drive.
A storage unit created by a RAID controller from one or more drives. Although a virtual drive may be created from several drives, it is seen by the operating system as a single drive. Depending on the RAID level used, the virtual drive may retain redundant data in case of a drive failure.
In Write-Back Caching mode, the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has received all of the data in a drive write transaction. Data is written to the drive subsystem in accordance with policies set up by the controller. These policies include the amount of dirty/clean cache lines, the number of cache lines available, and elapsed time from the last cache flush.
See Default Write Policy.
In Write-Through Caching mode, the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host when the drive subsystem has received all of the data and has completed the write transaction to the drive.
DB09 000202 -13 37857 -02, Rev N, August 2012 |
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