Administrator Guide

Table 1. Physical disk states
Status Mode Description
Optimal Assigned The physical disk in the indicated slot is configured as part of a
disk group.
Optimal Unassigned The physical disk in the indicated slot is unused and available to
be configured.
Optimal Hot Spare Standby The physical disk in the indicated slot is configured as a hot spare.
Optimal Hot Spare in use The physical disk in the indicated slot is in use as a hot spare
within a disk group.
Failed Assigned, Unassigned, Hot Spare in use,
or Hot Spare Standby
The physical disk in the indicated slot has failed because of an
unrecoverable error, an incorrect physical disk type or physical
disk size, or by its operational state being set to failed.
Replaced Assigned The physical disk in the indicated slot has been replaced and is
ready to be, or is actively being, configured into a disk group.
Pending Failure Assigned, Unassigned, Hot Spare in use,
or Hot Spare Standby
A Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART)
error has been detected on the physical disk in the indicated slot.
Offline Not applicable The physical disk has either been spun down or had a rebuild
ended by user request.
Identify Assigned, Unassigned, Hot Spare in use,
or Hot Spare Standby
The physical disk is being identified.
Virtual disks and disk groups
When configuring a storage array, you must:
• Organize the physical disks into disk groups.
• Create virtual disks within these disk groups.
• Provide host server access.
• Create mappings to associate the virtual disks with the host servers.
NOTE: Host server access must be created before mapping virtual disks.
Disk groups are always created in the unconfigured capacity of a storage array. Unconfigured capacity is the available physical disk space
not already assigned in the storage array.
Virtual disks are created within the free capacity of a disk group. Free capacity is the space in a disk group that has not been assigned to a
virtual disk.
Virtual disk states
The following table describes the various states of the virtual disk, recognized by the storage array.
Table 2. Raid controller virtual disk states
State Description
Optimal The virtual disk contains physical disks that are online.
Degraded The virtual disk with a redundant RAID level contains an inaccessible
physical disk. The system can still function properly, but performance
may be affected and more disk failures may result in data loss.
Offline A virtual disk with one or more member disks in an inaccessible (failed,
missing, or offline) state. Data on the virtual disk is no longer
accessible.
Force online The storage array forces a virtual disk that is in an Offline state to an
Optimal state. If all the member physical disks are not available, the
About your MD Series storage array 17