ASRock X79 Extreme11 LSI SAS2 Integrated RAID Solution User Guide - Page 25

SAS2 Integrated RAID Solution User Guide

Chapter 5: Creating Integrated Striping Volumes

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Integrated Striping Configuration Over-

LSI Corporation Confidential

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August 2010

Page 25

Chapter 5

5.1

Integrated Striping

Configuration Overview

The LSI SAS2 BIOS CU is a menu-driven utility program that enables you to easily

configure and manage Integrated RAID volumes. You can use the SAS2 BIOS CU to

create one or two Integrated Striping volumes on each LSI SAS2 controller. Each

volume can have from two-to-ten drives. All disks in an Integrated Striping volume

must be connected to the same LSI SAS2 controller.

Although you can use disks of different size in Integrated Striping volumes, the smallest

disk in the volume determines the logical size of all disks in the volume. In other words,

the firmware does not use the excess space of the higher-capacity member disk(s). For

example, if you create an Integrated Striping volume with two 100-GB disks and two

120-GB disks, the firmware uses only 100 GB on each of the 120-MB disks for the

volume. The supported stripe size is 64 kilobytes.

Refer to

Chapter 4

for more information about Integrated Striping volumes.

5.2

Creating Integrated Striping

Volumes

The SAS2 BIOS CU is part of the Fusion-MPT BIOS. When the BIOS loads during boot and

you see the message about the LSI Configuration Utility, press

Ctrl-C

to start the CU.

After you do this, the message changes to:

Please wait, invoking SAS Configuration Utility...

After a brief pause, the main menu of the SAS2 BIOS CU appears. On some systems,

however, the following message appears next:

LSI Corp Configuration Utility will load following

initialization!

In this case, the SAS2 BIOS CU loads after the system completes its power-on self-test.

You can configure one or two Integrated RAID volumes on each LSI SAS2 controller.

For a two-volume configuration, you can have two Integrated Striping (RAID 0)

volumes, two mirrored volumes, or one volume of each type. The two volumes can

have a maximum of 14 disk drives. (This configuration includes one or two hot spare

disks for mirrored volumes.)

The following guidelines apply when creating an Integrated Striping volume:



All physical disks in an Integrated Striping volume must be either SATA (with

extended command set support) or SAS (with SMART support). You cannot

combine SAS and SATA disks in the same volume. However, you can create one

volume with SAS disks and a second volume with SATA disks on the same controller.

Creating Integrated Striping Volumes

This chapter explains how to create Integrated Striping volumes using the LSI SAS2

BIOS Configuration Utility (SAS2 BIOS CU).

Section	Page
SAS2 Integrated RAID Solution User Guide	1
Introduction to the Integrated RAID Solution	5
1.1 Overview	5
1.2 Benefits and Features	6
1.2.1 Host Interface	6
1.2.2 Metadata Support	6
1.2.3 SMART Support	6
1.2.4 Fusion-MPT Support	6
Overview of Integrated RAID Mirrored Volumes	7
2.1 Introduction	7
2.2 Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced Features	7
2.3 Operation of Mirrored Volumes	8
2.4 Mirrored Volume Features	11
2.4.1 Resynchronization with Concurrent Host I/O Operation	11
2.4.2 Hot Swapping	11
2.4.3 Hot Spare Disk	11
2.4.4 Online Capacity Expansion	11
2.4.5 Media Verification	11
2.4.6 Disk Write Caching	12
2.4.7 NVSRAM Usage	12
2.4.8 Background Initialization	12
2.4.9 Consistency Check	12
2.4.10 Make Data Consistent	12
Creating Mirrored Volumes	13
3.1 Mirrored Volume Configuration Overview	13
3.2 Creating Mirrored Volumes	13
3.2.1 Creating an Integrated Mirroring Volume	14
3.2.2 Creating an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirroring + Striping Volume	15
3.2.3 Expanding an Integrated Mirroring Volume with OCE	16
3.3 Managing Hot Spare Disks	17
3.3.1 Creating Hot Spare Disks	17
3.3.2 Deleting Hot Spare Disks	18
3.4 Other Configuration Tasks	19
3.4.1 Viewing Volume Properties	19
3.4.2 Running a Consistency Check	19
3.4.3 Activating an Array	20
3.4.4 Deleting an Array	20
3.4.5 Locating Disk Drives in a Volume	21
3.4.6 Selecting a Boot Disk	21
Overview of Integrated Striping	23
4.1 Introduction	23
4.2 Integrated Striping Features	23
4.3 Integrated Striping Description	24
Creating Integrated Striping Volumes	25
5.1 Integrated Striping Configuration Overview	25
5.2 Creating Integrated Striping Volumes	25
5.3 Other Configuration Tasks	27
5.3.1 Viewing Volume Properties	27
5.3.2 Activating an Array	27
5.3.3 Deleting an Array	28
5.3.4 Locating Disk Drives in a Volume	28
5.3.5 Selecting a Boot Disk	29
Using the SAS2 Integrated RAID Configuration Utility	31
A.1 Hardware and Software Requirements	31
A.1.1 Controller Support	31
A.1.2 Operating System and Software Support	32
A.2 Interface Description	32
A.3 Commands	32
A.3.1 Common Command-Line Parameters	33
A.3.2 CREATE Command	33
A.3.3 DELETE Command	35
A.3.4 DISPLAY Command	35
A.3.5 HOTSPARE Command	37
A.3.6 STATUS Command	38
A.3.7 LIST Command	39
A.3.8 MFGPAGE Command	40
A.3.9 CONSTCHK Command	40
A.3.10 ACTIVATE Command	40
A.3.11 LOCATE Command	41

ASRock X79 Extreme11 LSI SAS2 Integrated RAID Solution User Guide - Page 25

Creating Integrated Striping Volumes

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