3Ware 7000-2 User Guide - Page 43

3ware Disk Array Configuration Utility 3ware Disk Array Configuration Utility The 3ware Disk Array Configuration Utility allows you to create disk arrays by combining disks, deleting disks or breaking disk arrays back into their member disks. You can also specify an available drive as a hot spare. If an array becomes degraded, the hot spare will automatically be substituted for the faulted drive. Note: The BIOS will not be installed if no drives are attached to the Escalade ATA RAID Controller. The ATA RAID Controller shares one IRQ on the PCI bus. Hot spare and hot swap Hot Spare is the label given to a drive that is available, active and designated as a spare. This designated drive is applied automatically when a drive degrades and the array is rebuilt. Hot Swap is the term applied to the process of swapping out a degraded drive, programmatically and using 3DM, with a pre-assigned spare. There are two methods for adding a drive as a spare. You may designate a drive as a Hot Spare during the BIOS page display, or you may designate a drive as a Hot Spare through the 3DM configure page. These two methods are discussed below. BIOS Screen When designating spare in the BIOS screen, it is assumed that as you are creating your array, you are "setting aside" drive(s) as Hot Spares. This is done by using the S key on the selected drive. Leaving a drive undesignated results in it becoming a JBOD drive. JBOD drives become available to the operating system as distinct www.3ware.com 43