Promise Technology dc5750 - Microtower PC, User Manual

Page 1: ...WEBPAM USER MANUAL Version 1 3 ...

Page 2: ...ntain technical inaccuracies typographical or other errors Promise Technology assumes no liability for any error in this publication and for damages whether direct indirect incidental consequential or otherwise that may result from such error including but not limited to loss of data or profits Promise Technology provides this publication as is without warranty of any kind either express or implie...

Page 3: ...WebPAM 9 Chapter 3 Setup 17 Log in to WebPAM 17 Regular Connection 17 Secure Connection 17 Access a Host PC 19 Recommended Initial Settings 20 Administrator s Settings 20 Utility Configuration 22 Delete the Temporary Logical Drive 22 Create a New Logical Drive 23 Log out of WebPAM 27 Internet Connection using WebPAM 27 Run WebPAM without Network Connection 27 Chapter 4 WebPAM User Interface 29 Ban...

Page 4: ...ddress 42 Change a User s Access Rights 43 Host Management 45 Utility Configuration 46 FastTrak 47 Controller 48 Controller Information 48 Controller Settings 49 Controller Schedule 50 Delete a Scheduled Process 50 Controller Lock 51 Physical Drives 52 Physical Drive View 52 Split a Physical Drive 53 Merge a Physical Drive 54 Media Patrol Schedule 55 Physical Drive Information 56 Physical Drive Se...

Page 5: ...cheduled 73 Cancel a Schedule 74 Automatic Rebuild 75 Synchronize All Logical Drives 75 Logical Drive Synchronization Redundancy Check 76 On Demand 76 Scheduled 77 Cancel a Schedule 78 Logical Drive Initialization 78 Logical Drive Activation 79 Logical Drive Critical Offline 79 When a Disk Drive Fails 80 Replace the Failed Disk Drive 81 Rebuild Your Logical Drive 81 Enclosures 83 Enclosure View 83...

Page 6: ...3 JBOD Single Drive 94 Choosing a RAID Level 95 RAID 0 95 RAID 1 95 RAID 5 96 RAID 10 96 JBOD 96 Choosing Stripe Block Size 97 Gigabyte Boundary 97 Initialization 97 Hot Spare Drive s 98 Partition and Format the Logical Drive 98 Cache Settings 99 Migration and Expansion 99 Ranges of Logical Drive Expansion 100 Appendix A Frequently Asked Questions 103 Appendix B Partition and Format 105 ...

Page 7: ...5 Thank you for purchasing a Promise Technology RAID Controller product This Web based Promise Array Management WebPAM browser based software is included to improve your RAID Monitoring and Management experience Figure 1 WebPAM in a browser window For more information about the WebPAM Graphic User Interface GUI see Chapter 4 on page 29 ...

Page 8: ...g WebPAM You can use the most recent versions of either Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator How They Work Together The WebPAM software provides and easy way to set up monitor modify and repair your RAID WebPAM works with the Promise FastTrak SX series RAID Controller cards WebPAM watches the RAID and when significant events happen or it discovers a problem the Utility Server passes the warning...

Page 9: ...al drives The WebPAM runs on each of the PCs with a FastTrak Controller Networked PCs and also on remote PCs connecting to the company network through the Internet With this arrangement you can monitor RAID condition and activity from offsite such as a hotel room or home office Desktop PC with Internet browser Laptop PC with Internet browser The Internet Networked PC with Internet browser File Ser...

Page 10: ...ngement All monitoring and management are done on the RAID PC No network connection is used One PC has an optional SuperSwap enclosure that holds up to four SATA physical drives Promise s FastTrak SX Series Controller card is designed to setup and control a RAID within the PC s enclosure They have the same need of monitoring and management as an external RAID subsystem Both WebPAM components run o...

Page 11: ...ation designed specifically for monitoring and managing Promise Technology s FastTrak SX Series RAID Controller cards Note A Note provides helpful information such as hints or alternative ways of doing a task Important An Important calls attention to an essential step or point required to complete a task Important items include things often missed Caution A Caution informs you of possible equipmen...

Page 12: ...WebPAM User Manual 6 ...

Page 13: ...king software Java Runtime Environment if not previously installed Utility Server The Utility Server installs on the PC with the FastTrak RAID Controller card the Host PC Figure 1 WebPAM on a network Desktop PC with Internet browser Laptop PC with Internet browser The Internet Networked PC with Internet browser Router Firewall Host PC with FastTrak SX Controller Host PC with FastTrak SX Controller...

Page 14: ...The Utility Server supports these operating systems Choose one of them to take full advantage of all the features of WebPAM Before You Start In order for WebPAM to install and configure properly there must be a logical drive on the FastTrak Controller To create a logical drive on the FastTrak Controller 1 Exit Windows and reboot your PC 2 When the FastTrak BIOS appears press Ctrl F to enter the th...

Page 15: ...s If the computer is already running exit all programs 2 Insert the software CD into your CD ROM drive 3 Double click on the Install CD s icon to open it 4 Double click on the Installer icon to launch it right The first WebPAM installation dialog box appears as shown on the next page 5 When the Introduction screen appears above click the Next button ...

Page 16: ...WebPAM User Manual 10 6 When the License Agreement appears above click the I accept the terms of the license agreement radio button Then click the Next button ...

Page 17: ...he WebPAM applications you are installing The default folder is C Program Files Promise WebPAM 2 0 If you want a different folder type its location and click the Browse button If you change your mind and want the default location click on the Back button then the Next button Click the Next button when you are finished ...

Page 18: ...l Security options are invisible to authorized users Promise Technology provides a default certificate for the server as well as for internal data communication However in some cases it is always better to install and verify your own certificate for the webserver And and if possible verify certificate by certificate authority like Verisign or Thwate See your MIS Administrator for guidance Click th...

Page 19: ...Chapter 2 Installation 13 9 When the Installation Summary screen appears above review your choices To make changes click the Back button To continue click the Finish button ...

Page 20: ...WebPAM User Manual 14 10 When the Install Complete screen appears above the installation process is finished Click the Finish button ...

Page 21: ... the Finish button to go to the Promise Registration website This completes the WebPAM installation Go to Chapter 3 Setup page 17 Important Registration of your VTrak and WebPAM provides useful information that helps Promise Technologies to offer better products and support Please take a few minutes to register Thanks ...

Page 22: ...WebPAM User Manual 16 ...

Page 23: ...ess field type in the IP address of the Host PC as explained below If you did not choose the External Security option during WebPAM installation see page 12 use the Regular connection If you chose the External Security option during WebPAM installation use the Secure connection Regular Connection WebPAM uses an HTTP connection http Enter the Host PC s IP address 127 0 0 1 Enter the Port number 808...

Page 24: ... will enter the Host PC s actual IP address 3 When the opening screen appears type admin in the Login ID field Type admin again in the Password field The WebPAM login and password are case sensitive 4 Click the Sign in button Note Make a Bookmark Netscape Navigator or set a Favorite Internet Explorer of the Login Screen so you can access it easily next time ...

Page 25: ...s made up of Administrative Tools User and Host Management and Utility Configuration Host Controller Physical Drives Logical Drives Enclosure Spare Drives Battery if present If you do not see these details in the Tree View and you are connecting over a network it means your network connection to the Host PC is not working Restore your connection before proceeding If you do not see WebPAM at all lo...

Page 26: ...e settings are recommended and now is the best time to make them You can change them later as necessary Administrator s Settings To make the Admistrator s password and notification settings 1 In Tree View under Administrative Tools click on the User Management icon 2 In the Management Window click on the admin link 3 Click on the Settings tab ...

Page 27: ... on the Submit button If the action was successful the Management Window will display the message Update Success 8 If you plan to set up Event Notification click on the Settings tab The image above was shortened to fit into the available space 9 Check the boxes of the notification events that you want to have reported to you via email and popup messages To select events by their severity check one...

Page 28: ...strator 3 Enter your email server in the Email Server field 4 Keep or change the Email Subject line 5 Click the Submit button when you are done Delete the Temporary Logical Drive Before installation you created a logical drive on the FastTrak RAID Controller using the FastBuild utility In most cases the temporary logical drive does not meet your storage requirements so you should delete it and cre...

Page 29: ...he temporary logical drive is deleted Create a New Logical Drive A logical drive is a collection of physical drives in a RAID To create a new logical drive 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon 2 Click on the Create tab 3 Select the radio button beside the RAID level you want for your logical drive WebPAM displays the RAID levels you can use with the available disk drives See Choosing a RAID Leve...

Page 30: ... used capacity in the Logical Drive Size field To use the maximum capacity check the Use Maximum Capacity box 6 Click on the disk drives to select them Available drives have a black frame Selected drives have a red frame 7 Click the Next button 8 Enter a name for the logical drive in the field provided 9 Click the Next button ...

Page 31: ... in data loss in the event of a power failure This is the default Write Through Slower but more secure 12 Select a Gigabyte Boundary policy from the dropdown menu GB Rounding Rounds the size of the logical drive down to the nearest whole gigabyte It allows you to install a slightly smaller within 1 GB replacement drive should the need arise This is the default None No Boundary function 13 Select a...

Page 32: ...ed Click on the Logical Drive Icon to see all of the information about your new logical drive Before you can use your new logical drive you must partition and format the logical drive using your PC s operating system See Appendix B Partition and Format on page 105 for more information ...

Page 33: ...t only the Host PC with the FastTrak RAID Controller can read and write data to the logical drives However other PCs can monitor the Host PC from virtually any location Run WebPAM without Network Connection While WebPAM was designed to run over a network you can run WebPAM without a network connection but only from the Host PC Follow this procedure 1 Double click the WebPAM desktop icon Your brows...

Page 34: ...WebPAM User Manual 28 ...

Page 35: ...raphic User Interface GUI You should understand that WebPAM is software running on top of the Promise RAID BIOS and other applications that came with your Promise RAID product and your Internet Browser WebPAM adds a graphic user interface to make RAID management functions easier to understand and perform Figure 1 The WebPAM Graphic User Interface ...

Page 36: ...and Chinese Traditional are the available languages Show or Hide the Event Frame See Event Frame below Display Promise Technology contact information including links to the Promise website and email accounts Log out of WebPAM Display the Main Online Help menu The banner always appears when your browser displays WebPAM Tree View The purpose of Tree View is Navigation Tree View appears in the left f...

Page 37: ...ical Drive View Information on attached physical drives Split Merge function Physical Drive Information on a specific physical drive Cache setting Media Patrol Bad Sector Log BSL and Drive Locator Logical Drive View Information on logical drives Create and Delete logical drives Logical Drives Information on logical drives Write Cache settings Rebuild and Synchronization functions Enclosure View A ...

Page 38: ... icon was selected in Tree View Every Management View window has at least one tab typically the Information tab In most cases there are other tabs each with a particular function that applies to the RAID component you have selected In the example above you can Click on the Settings tab to change the name of the logical drive or its cache settings Click on the Rebuild tab to rebuild a replacement d...

Page 39: ...nt from the WebPAM Header above Figure 3 Event Frame appears below the Management Window The Event Frame lists 20 per screen Events are listed by events by Number Source the FastTrak controller Severity Information Warning Critical Date and Time of occurance and Description Click the Prev and Next buttons to move through the Event list You can also clear and save the event list as an HTML file and...

Page 40: ...WebPAM User Manual 34 ...

Page 41: ... connection http Enter the Host PC s IP address 127 0 0 1 Enter the Port number 8080 Add to launch WebPAM promise Together your entry looks like this http 127 0 0 1 8080 promise Secure Connection WebPAM uses a secure HTTP connection https Enter the Host PC s IP address 127 0 0 1 Enter the Port number 8443 Add to launch WebPAM promise Together your entry looks like this https 127 0 0 1 8443 promise...

Page 42: ... screen appears type admin in the Login ID field The WebPAM login and password when used are case sensitive 4 Click the Sign in button Log out of WebPAM There are two ways to log out of WebPAM PRO Close your browser window Click Logout on the WebPAM banner below After logging out you must enter your user name and password to log in again Clicking Logout brings you back to the Login Screen ...

Page 43: ... This could be the User s actual name 5 Type a password into the Password field Use up to 8 letters and numbers but no spaces or other characters 6 Type the same password into the Retype Password field 7 If you plan to set up Event Notification type the user s email address in the Email field Add a User below Event Notification page 38 Delete a User page 41 Change a User s Password page 41 Change ...

Page 44: ...ink 3 Click on the Settings tab Right Meaning Creation Permission to create a logical drive and a spare drive Deletion Permission to delete a logical drive and a spare drive Maintenance Permission to migrate rebuild and synchronize a logical drive to run Media Patrol on a physical drive make controller and physical drive settings Notification Permission to receive notification of events affecting ...

Page 45: ...able space 4 Check the boxes of the notification events that you want to have reported to you via email and popup messages To select events by their severity check one of the four Select Events boxes at the top of the window See the table on the next page 5 Click on the Submit button ...

Page 46: ... Initialization Started Background Initialization Completed Background Initialization Paused Background Initialization Resumed Background Initialization Aborted Migration Started Migration Completed Migration Paused Migration Resumed Migration Aborted Migration Progress Battery Becomes Normal Warning Events Synchronization Aborted with Error Rebuild Aborted with Error Background Initialization Abo...

Page 47: ...elete tab 3 Check the box to the left of the user you want to delete 4 Click the Delete button 5 In the Confirmation box click the OK button Change a User s Password In WebPAM each user can change his her own password To change a user s password 1 Log into WebPAM under the User name 2 Click on your User ID link ...

Page 48: ... password in the Retype Password field 6 Click the Submit button Change a User s Email Address In WebPAM each user can change his her own email address or the Administrator can do it To change a user s email address Important If a user forgets his her password the Administrator must delete that User and create a new User as described above ...

Page 49: ...nge 2 Type a new email address in the Email field 3 Click the Submit button Change a User s Access Rights In WebPAM the Administrator can change a user s access rights To change a user s access rights 1 Log in as the Administrator 2 Click on the User ID link for the user whose access rights will change ...

Page 50: ...ing Creation Permission to create a logical drive and a spare drive Deletion Permission to delete a logical drive and a spare drive Maintenance Permission to migrate rebuild and synchronize a logical drive to run Media Patrol on a physical drive make controller and physical drive settings Notification Permission to receive notification of events affecting the logical drive ...

Page 51: ... always 127 0 0 1 The Information tab displays with information about the Host PC WebPAM Version The version number of the WebPAM software Display Name The display name of the Host PC localhost is the default IP Address 127 0 0 1 is the IP address of the Host PC accessed at the Host PC Other addresses such as 192 168 0 33 refer to a Host PC accessed over the network Operating System The Operating ...

Page 52: ...e Utility Configuration icon 2 Enter the Sender s address in the Email Sender field Be sure the sender has an account in your email system See your IT admininstrator 3 Enter your email server in the Email Server field 4 Keep or change the Email Subject line 5 Type a new interval in seconds in the Event Frame Refresh Time field 30 seconds is the default interval 6 Click the Submit button when you a...

Page 53: ...een in Management View click on the FastTrak icon in Tree View With the screen displayed move your cursor over key components of the FastTrak controller card to see a Tool Tip popup message that identifies the component as shown above If you have multiple FastTrak controller cards in the same system they will appear under the FastTrak icon as Controller 1 Controller 2 and so on ...

Page 54: ...ys with information about the controller Product Name The Promise product name for this controller BIOS Version Version number of the controller s BIOS Driver Version Version number of the controller s software driver Memory Size Size of the controller s onboard memory in MB Maximum Number of Ports The number of ports on the controller Maximum Physical Drives The maximum number of physical disk dr...

Page 55: ... handling read write requests Read write requests are handled at nearly normal speed while the background processes take longer Automatic Rebuild Status When enabled and a hot spare drive is available a critical or degraded logical drive will rebuild itself automatically Automatic Rebuilding applies to RAID 1 and 3 drive RAID 5 logical drives only Buzzer When enabled the FastTrak controller s buzz...

Page 56: ...r Synchronization click on the Logical Drive icon in Tree View then select the appropriate tab in Management View To access or schedule a Media Patrol click on the Physical Drive icon in Tree View then select the Media Patrol tab in Management View Delete a Scheduled Process To delete a scheduled process 1 Click on the Controller icon in Tree View 2 Select the Schedule tab in Management View 3 Che...

Page 57: ...her periods when you want to avoid interruption from other users trying to access the logical drives under this controller To lock the Controller on the Host PC 1 Click on the Controller icon in Tree View 2 Select the Lock tab in Management View 3 From the dropdown menu select a period of time to hold the lock The lock time range is 1 to 30 minutes 4 Click on the Lock button to set the lock The lo...

Page 58: ...ccess information and functions of individual physical drives and use the Split and Merge feature Physical Drive View below Split a Physical Drive page 53 Merge a Physical Drive page 54 Media Patrol Schedule page 55 Physical Drive Information page 56 Physical Drive Settings page 57 Physical Drive Media Patrol page 58 Physical Drive Bad Sector Log page 59 Locate a Physical Drive page 60 ...

Page 59: ... Click on the Split tab in Management View 3 Enter a portion size in the Split Size field You can enter a value from 1 GB up to the capacity of the physical drive The value you enter will be the size of the first portion The remaining drive capacity will be the size of the second portion This value will apply to all physical drives you select for the split operation 4 Check the box es to the left ...

Page 60: ...ated Spare Drives on page 87 Merge a Physical Drive The action of merging a physical drive reunites the two portions of a split drive back into a single physical drive The Merge function is not available when either or both portions of the physical drive are assigned to a logical drive To merge a physical drive 1 Click on the Physical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Merge tab in Manage...

Page 61: ...and Redundancy Check Media Patrol is concerned with the condition of the media itself not the data recorded on the media If Media Patrol encounters a suspect sector it will attempt to regenerate the data and write to the suspect sector If the write operation is successful Media Patrol continues checking other sectors If the write operation fails Media Patrol reports the error to your PC s system l...

Page 62: ...able radio button Physical Drive Information To access information about a physical drive 1 Click on the Physical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Physical Drive icon The information tab displays the following information Drive Model The disk drive manufacturer s model name or number Serial Number The serial number of this disk drive Firmware Version The version number of the firmware o...

Page 63: ...ive currently operates S M A R T Status SMART an acronym for Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology is a feature of the disk drive software When this feature is supported the drive will pass SMART information to the FastTrak controller when it polls the physical drives Write Cache Status Indicates whether the disk drive s write cache is Enabled or Disabled You can change this status und...

Page 64: ...Patrol is concerned with the condition of the media itself not the data recorded on the media If Media Patrol encounters a suspect sector it will attempt to regenerate the data and write to the suspect sector If the write operation is successful Media Patrol continues checking other sectors If the write operation fails Media Patrol reports the error to your PC s system log and to the physical driv...

Page 65: ...atrol operation 1 Click on the Physical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Physical Drive icon 3 Click on the Media Patrol tab in Management View 4 Click the Disable radio button Physical Drive Bad Sector Log On occasion an error can arise with the media on a physical drive WebPAM keeps track of bad sectors in order to inform you of the condition of individual physical drives To access a ...

Page 66: ...ogical drive On non fault tolerant RAID 0 logical drives the physical drive remains online Backup your data replace the physical drive create a new logical drive and copy your data to it See Logical Drive Rebuild on page 71 and Logical Drive Critical Offline on page 79 See the FastTrak User Manual and SuperSwap User Manual for more information about replacing a physical drive Locate a Physical Dri...

Page 67: ...uperSwap enclosure If you remove the physical drive the Status LED stops blinking the Activity LED goes dark and WebPAM will report that the physical drive was unplugged When you replace the drive the LEDs will return to normal operation If you do not remove the physical drive click on the Located Release button to stop the Status LED from blinking For more information see the SuperSwap User Manua...

Page 68: ...A logical drive is a collection of physical drives in a RAID To create a new logical drive 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon 2 Click on the Create tab Logical Drive View below Create a Logical Drive page 62 JBOD page 65 Delete a Logical Drive page 66 Logical Drive Information page 66 Logical Drive Settings page 67 Logical Drive Mapping page 68 Logical Drive Migration and Expansion page 68 Log...

Page 69: ... a RAID Level on page 95 for information about the advantages and requirements of the available RAID levels and JBOD 4 Click the Next button 5 If you want to create a logical drive with unused capacity enter the assigned used capacity in the Logical Drive Size field To use the maximum capacity check the Use Maximum Capacity box 6 Click on the disk drives to select them Available drives have a blac...

Page 70: ...64KB When in doubt use the default value 11 Select a Write Cache policy from the dropdown menu Write Back Increases performance but can result in data loss in the event of a power failure This is the default Write Through Slower but more secure 12 Select a Gigabyte Boundary policy from the dropdown menu GB Rounding Rounds the size of the logical drive down to the nearest whole gigabyte It allows y...

Page 71: ...ore you can use your new logical drive you must partition and format the logical drive using your PC s operating system See Appendix B Partition and Format on page 105 for more information JBOD In WebPAM JBOD is created managed and deleted the same as a logical drive You can also use the FastTrak BIOS for this purpose See the FastTrak User Manual for more information on the BIOS In addition if you...

Page 72: ...on 5 In the Confirmation box click the OK button The selected logical drive is deleted Logical Drive Information Logical Drive View provides a list of all logical drives currently on the Host PC To access Logical Drive View 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View Warning When you delete a logical drive you delete all data on the logical drive Be sure to backup any important data before...

Page 73: ...bs Features that do not apply have grayed tabs Logical Drive Settings Logical Drive Settings allows you to assign a name to a logical drive and to change its controller cache settings To access logical drive settings 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon of the logical drive you want to see 3 Click on the Settings tab in Management View 4 Enter a nam...

Page 74: ...ve Mapping tab in Management View The Drive Mapping tab shows how the stripe an mirror components of the RAID 10 logical drive are mapped to the physical drives Logical Drive Migration and Expansion The Logical Drive Migration tab enables you to migrate or expand a logical drive Migration is the process of changing the RAID level of an existing logical drive Expansion is the process of adding more...

Page 75: ...ck on the Logical Drive icon of the logical drive you want to migrate RAID 0 1 or 2 drives RAID 5 3 or 4 drives Increased performance and capacity adds redundancy RAID 10 4 drives RAID 0 3 drives RAID 5 4 drives ncreased performance and capacity adds redundancy RAID 10 4 drives RAID 1 2 drives RAID 5 3 or 4 drives Increased performance and capacity RAID 10 4 drives RAID 10 4 drives RAID 5 4 drives...

Page 76: ...a black frame Selected drives have a red frame 5 Click the Start Now button You can monitor Migration or Expansion progress on the Logical Drive Migration tab Click the respective buttons to pause and resume the Migration Scheduled To schedule a Migration or Expansion 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon of the logical drive you want to migrate or e...

Page 77: ...art time Start time is based on a 24 hour clock 7 Click in Start At field to display a popup calendar 8 Click on the start date in the calendar or enter a date manually 9 Click the Schedule button Cancel a Schedule If you want to cancel the scheduled Migration do the following 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon 3 Click on the Migration tab in Mana...

Page 78: ...Rebuild for a time when there is less demand on the RAID system Begin automatically when a logical drive goes critical or degraded see Create a Spare Drive on page 85 On Demand To rebuild a logical drive 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon of the logical drive you want to rebuild 3 Click on the Rebuild tab in Management View 4 Select the logical dr...

Page 79: ...s to pause and resume the Rebuild Scheduled To schedule a Rebuild 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon of the logical drive you want to rebuild 3 Click on the Rebuild tab in Management View 4 Select the physical drive you want to rebuild Available drives have a black frame Selected drives have a red frame ...

Page 80: ...to display a popup calendar 8 Click on the start date in the calendar or enter a date manually 9 Click the Schedule button Cancel a Schedule If you want to cancel the scheduled Rebuild do the following 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon 3 Click on the Rebuild tab in Management View 4 Click on the Disable radio button ...

Page 81: ...When the automatic rebuild operation is completed you must remove and replace the faulty physical drive with a new one See Replace the Failed Disk Drive on page 81 and the FastTrak User Manual and SuperSwap User Manual for more information on replacing a physical drive Synchronize All Logical Drives The Logical Drive View Synchronization tab enables you to synchronize all logical drives You can al...

Page 82: ...f checking and correcting data and parity Unlike a Rebuild Synchronization is a maintenance operation You can also synchronize all logical drives at the same time see page 75 Redundancy Check is an automated process of checking data and parity but it only reports and does not correct any inconsistencies that it finds Synchronization and Redundancy Check apply to RAID 1 RAID 5 and RAID 10 logical d...

Page 83: ...dancy Check if you do not want to correct inconsistencies 5 Click the Start Now button You can monitor Migration progress on the Logical Drive Migration tab Click the respective buttons to pause resume or abort the Synchronization or Redundancy Check Scheduled To schedule a Synchronization or Redundancy Check 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon of ...

Page 84: ...24 hour clock 8 Click the Schedule button Cancel a Schedule If you want to cancel the scheduled Synchronization or Redundancy Check do the following 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Drive icon 3 Click on the Synchronization tab in Management View 4 Click on the Disable radio button Logical Drive Initialization When logical drive is first created you can se...

Page 85: ...n This feature enables you to designate a hot plug and play logical drive It will become available in a future release of the FastTrak Controller card Logical Drive Critical Offline A fault tolerant logical drive RAID 1 5 or 10 goes critical when a disk drive is removed or fails Due to the fault tolerance of the logical drive the data is still available and online However once the logical drive go...

Page 86: ...ith a hot spare drive properly configured the logical drive will automatically rebuild itself using the spare drive In the example above amber icons appear over the FastTrak Controller Logical Drive View and Logical Drive icons Click on the Logical Drive View or Logical Drive icons to verify the condition of the logical drive In this example the Status is Critical and Background activity is Idle T...

Page 87: ...at there is no drive on Port 3 This is the failed drive Replace the Failed Disk Drive Replace the failed disk drive with a new one of equal or greater capacity Then rebuild the logical drive See the FastTrak User Manual and SuperSwap User Manual for more information about replacing a disk drive Rebuild Your Logical Drive 1 Click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Logical Dr...

Page 88: ...ve you just replaced 5 Click the Start Now button You can monitor Rebuild progress on the Logical Drive Rebuild tab Click the respective buttons to pause and resume the Rebuild When the Rebuild is finished your logical drive will be Functional again ...

Page 89: ... the Host PC To access Enclosure View click on the Logical Drive View icon in Tree View From this window you can click on the links to access information and functions of individual Enclosures Enclosure To access information about an Enclosure 1 Click on the Enclosure View icon in Tree View 2 Click on the Enclosure icon ...

Page 90: ...her repair operations refer to the SuperSwap User Manual LEDs State Status Activity Enclosure Green Disk drive is present and ready Disk drive is present and ready Normal status Blinking n a Read write activity n a Amber Disk drive is spinning up is critical is rebuilding reports a SMART error n a 1 incident see below Enclosure is critical but still functional Attention required Red Disk drive is ...

Page 91: ... page 71 for more information on how spare drives work Spare Drive View Spare Drive View provides a list of all spare drives currently on the Host PC To access Spare Drive View click on the Spare Drive View icon in Tree View From this screen you can view the current Spare Drives and click on the tabs to access the Create and Delete features Create a Spare Drive To create a spare drive 1 Click on t...

Page 92: ...ive The name of the logical drive to which this Spare Drive will be assigned or dedicated 4 Click on a disk drive to select it Available drives have a black frame Selected drives have a red frame Drives with a blue frame are assigned to a logical drive 5 Click the Create button The new Spare Drive appears under Physical Drive View and Spare Drive View ...

Page 93: ...n Port 3 as our spare drive The 37 GB portion of the drive on Port 3 belongs to Logical Drive 1 Even though the drive on Port 3 has adequate capacity if this drive failed it could not replace itself as a spare drive Therefore WebPAM will not permit you to use this drive to make your spare drive In this were an actual situation you would choose the drive on Port 1 for your spare drive WebPAM will p...

Page 94: ...The battery s operating temperature The battery normally has the same temperature as the inside of the PC where it is installed typically below 38 C or 100 F If the battery temperature rises above this value determine whether the PC is overheating If the PC is OK but the battery is too hot the battery is not accepting a charge properly and you must replace it Voltage The battery supplies 3 3V to b...

Page 95: ...ing system sees the logical drive as a single storage device and treats it as such The RAID software and or controller handle all of the individual drives on its own The benefits of a RAID can include Higher data transfer rates for increased server performance Increased overall storage capacity for a single drive designation such as C D E etc Data redundancy fault tolerance for ensuring continuous...

Page 96: ...ntical drives are recommended for performance as well as data storage efficiency The logical drive s data capacity is equal to the number of drive members multiplied by the smallest logical drive member s capacity Figure 1 RAID 0 Striping interleaves data across multiple drives For example one 100GB and three 120GB drives will form a 400GB 4 x 100GB logical drive instead of 460 GB RAID 0 logical d...

Page 97: ...ce Moreover if a spare disk drive is present the spare drive will be used as the replacement drive and data will begin to be mirrored to it from the remaining good drive Figure 2 RAID 1 Mirrors identical data to two drives Due to the data redundancy of mirroring the capacity of the logical drive is only the size of the smallest disk drive For example two 100GB disk drives which have a combined cap...

Page 98: ...isk drives along with the data blocks In each case the parity data is stored on a different disk than its corresponding data block RAID 5 makes efficient use of hard drives and is the most versatile RAID Level It works well for file database application and web servers Figure 3 RAID 5 Stripes all drives with data and parity information The capacity of a RAID 5 logical drive is the smallest disk dr...

Page 99: ...her then striped over a second drive pair Figure 4 RAID 10 takes a data mirror on one drive pair and stripes it over two drive pairs The data capacity is similar to a RAID 1 logical drive with half of the total storage capacity dedicated for redundancy An added plus for using RAID 10 is that in many situations such a logical drive offers double fault tolerance Double fault tolerance may allow your...

Page 100: ...s none of the performance or security advantages of a RAID logical drive Any number of physical drives on the FastTrak Controller can be designated as JBOD In WebPAM JBOD is created managed and deleted the same as a logical drive You can also use the FastTrak BIOS for this purpose See the FastTrak User Manual for more information on the BIOS In addition if you attach a physical drive that was init...

Page 101: ...sadvantages Implements a striped disk logical drive the data is broken down into blocks and each block is written to a separate disk drive I O performance is greatly improved by spreading the I O load across many channels and drives No parity calculation overhead is involved Not a true RAID because it is not fault tolerant The failure of just one drive will result in all data in an logical drive b...

Page 102: ...ion rate Good aggregate transfer rate Disk failure has a medium impact on throughput File and Application servers WWW E mail and News servers Intranet servers Most versatile RAID level Advantages Disadvantages Implemented as a mirrored logical drive whose segments are RAID 0 logical drives High I O rates are achieved thanks to multiple stripe segments Very high disk overhead uses only 50 of total ...

Page 103: ...which a drive has failed and the user cannot replace the drive with the same capacity or larger Instead the Gigabyte Boundary feature permits the installation of a replacement drive that is slightly smaller within 1 gigabyte than the remaining working drive for example an 80 5GB drive would be rounded down to 80GB This can be helpful in the event that a drive fails and an exact replacement model i...

Page 104: ...logical drive The hot spare policy function lets you select whether a logical drive will access any unassigned disk drive or a designated drive in the event of disk drive failure See Logical Drive Rebuild on page 71 and Create a Spare Drive on page 85 for information The spare drive effectively takes the place of the failed drive and the RAID system immediately begins to rebuild data onto the driv...

Page 105: ...h reports that the data has been written to the disk only when it actually has To make Cache settings see Create a Logical Drive on page 62 and Logical Drive Settings on page 67 Migration and Expansion Migration is the process of changing the RAID level of an existing logical drive Expansion is the process of adding more physical drives to a logical drive while keeping the same RAID level See Logi...

Page 106: ... blocks above 4 billiion As a result there are range limits imposed upon logical drive expansion as shown in the table above For example You can expand a 2 5 TB logical drive up to 4 TB You can only expand a 1 9 TB logical drive up to 2 TB From To Result RAID 0 1 drive RAID 0 2 3 or 4 drives Increased capacity RAID 0 2 drives RAID 0 3 or 4 drives Increased capacity RAID 0 3 drives RAID 0 4 drives ...

Page 107: ... in the table If you require a logical drive larger than the maximum expansion size 1 Backup the data from the current logical drive 2 Delete the current logical drive 3 Create a new logical drive with the desired capacity 4 Restore the data to the new logical drive Current LD Size Maximum LD Expansion Size Sector Size 8 to 16 TB 16 TB 4096 bytes 4 to 8 TB 8 TB 2048 bytes 2 to 4 TB 4 TB 1024 bytes...

Page 108: ...WebPAM User Manual 102 ...

Page 109: ... it such as 192 168 0 33 How can I be sure everything is working OK by using WebPAM One way to do this is through Event Notification WebPAM will report events to you in the form of email and popup messages You might only select Warning and Critical events so that you only receive messages when something is wrong Another method is to periodically log into WebPAM and check the Status of your logical...

Page 110: ...dual data blocks on each disk drive Plus your disk array remains available while these operations take place These added requirements increase complexity and take more time WebPAM documentation uses the term logical drive where earlier Promise products use the term array Why did this change happen A disk array is an organized collection of physical disk drives Logical drives are made from disk arr...

Page 111: ...ork In the example below we show how this is done in Windows A similar procedure is required for Linux PC s However partitioning and formatting in Linux is unautomated therefore please refer to your system documentation for the exact procedure 1 From the desktop right click on the My Computer icon and select Manage from the popup menu The Computer Management window opens 2 From the left menu click...

Page 112: ...In the following windows select Disk 1 to Initialize Do not select any disks to Convert Click the Finish button to Initialize the logical disk 5 Right click on the Unallocated portion of Disk 1 and select New Partition from the popup menu The New Partition Wizard appears ...

Page 113: ... available drive letter of your choice Choose Format this partition with the following settings File system NTFS Allocation unit size Default Volume label Enter your choice of name Do not check Perform a quick format or Enable file and folder compression 8 Review your selections and click Finish The New Partition Wizard will disappear while partitioning and formatting begin This process will take ...

Page 114: ...WebPAM User Manual 108 When formatting is complete your logical disk will appear as a hard drive in the Disk Management window above and the My Computer window below ...