Using Manual Configuration: RAID 50

RAID 50 provides the features of both RAID 0 and RAID 5. RAID 50 uses both distributed parity and drive striping across multiple drive groups.

It provides high data throughput, data redundancy, and very good performance. It is best implemented on two RAID 5 drive groups with data striped across both drive groups. Though multiple drive failures can be tolerated, only one drive failure can be tolerated in each RAID 5 level drive group.

RAID 50 is appropriate when used with data that requires high reliability, high request rates, high data transfer, and medium to large capacity.

When you select Manual Configuration and click Next, the Disk Group Definition screen appears. You use this screen to select drives to create drive group.

1. Hold <Ctrl> while selecting at least three ready drives in the Drives panel on the left.

2. Click Add To Array to move the drives to a proposed drive group configuration in the Disk Groups panel on the right.

If you need to undo the changes, click the Reclaim button.

3. Click Accept DG to create a RAID 5 drive group.

An icon for a second drive group displays in the right panel.

4. Click on the icon for the second drive group to select it.

5. Hold <Ctrl> while selecting at least three more ready drives in the Drives panel to create a second drive group.

6. Click Add To Array to move the drives to a proposed drive group configuration in the Disk Groups panel on the right, as shown in Figure 3.24.

If you need to undo the changes, click the Reclaim button.

Figure 3.24 WebBIOS Disk Group Definition Screen

7. When you have finished selecting drives for the drive groups, select each drive group and click Accept DG for each.

8. Click Next.

The Span Definition screen appears, as shown in Figure 3.25.

This screen displays the drive group holes you can select to add to a span.

Figure 3.25 WebBIOS Span Definition Screen

9. Under the heading Array With Free Space, hold <Ctrl> while you select a drive group of three or more drives, and click Add to SPAN.

The drive group you select displays in the right frame under the heading Span.

10. Hold <Ctrl> while you select a second drive group of three or more drives, and click Add to SPAN.

Both drive groups display in the right frame under Span.

11. Click Next.

The Virtual Drive Definition screen appears, as shown in Figure 3.26.

You use this screen to select the RAID level, stripe size, read policy, and other attributes for the new virtual drive(s).

12. Hold <Ctrl> while you select two 3-drive drive groups in the Configuration panel on the right.

Figure 3.26 WebBIOS Virtual Drive Definition Screen

13. Change the virtual drive options from the defaults listed on the screen as needed.

Here are brief explanations of the virtual drive options:

• RAID Level: The drop-down menu lists the possible RAID levels for the virtual drive. Select RAID 50.

• Stripe Size: The stripe size specifies the length of the 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. You can set the stripe size to 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1024 Kbytes. A larger stripe size produces higher read

performance. If your computer regularly performs random read requests, choose a smaller stripe size. The default is 64 Kbytes.

• Access Policy: Select the type of data access that is allowed for this virtual drive:

◊ RW: Allow read/write access.

◊ Read Only: Allow read-only access. This is the default.

◊ Blocked: Do not allow access.

• Read Policy: Specify the read policy for this virtual drive:

◊ Normal: This disables the read ahead capability. This is the default.

◊ Ahead: This enables read ahead capability, which allows the controller to read sequentially ahead of requested data and to store 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.

◊ Adaptive: When Adaptive read ahead is selected, 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 Normal (no read ahead).

• Write Policy: Specify the write policy for this virtual drive:

◊ WBack: In Writeback 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.

This setting is recommended in Standard mode.

◊ WThru: In Writethrough 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.

This is the default.

◊ Bad BBU: Select this mode if you want the controller to use Writeback mode but the controller has no BBU or the BBU is bad. If you do not choose this option, the controller firmware automatically switches to Writethrough mode if it detects a bad or missing BBU.

Caution: LSI allows Writeback mode to be used with or without a battery. LSI recommends that you use either a battery to protect the controller cache, or an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to protect the entire system. If you do not use a battery or a UPS, and there is a power failure, you risk losing the data in the controller cache.

• IO Policy: The IO Policy applies to reads on a specific virtual drive.

It does not affect the read ahead cache.

◊ Direct: In Direct I/O mode, reads are not buffered in cache memory. Data is transferred to the cache and the host concurrently. If the same data block is read again, it comes from cache memory. This is the default.

◊ Cached: In Cached I/O mode, all reads are buffered in cache memory.

• Drive Policy: Specify the drive cache policy:

◊ Enable: Enable the drive cache.

◊ Disable: Disable the drive cache. This drive policy is the default.

◊ NoChange: Leave the current drive cache policy as is.

This is the default.

• Disable BGI: Specify the background initialization status:

◊ No: Leave background initialization enabled. This means that a new configuration can be initialized in the background while you use WebBIOS to do other configuration tasks.

This is the default.

◊ Yes: Select Yes if you do not want to allow background initializations for configurations on this controller.

• Select Size: Specify the size of the virtual drive in megabytes.

Normally, this would be the full size for RAID 50 shown in the Configuration Panel on the right. You may specify a smaller size if you want to create other virtual drives on the same drive group.

14. Click Accept to accept the changes to the virtual drive definition or