Intel® Integrated RAID Solution User Guide Intel Order Number: H15784-001
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Preface This is the primary user guide for the Intel® Integrated RAID Solution. It contains configuration instructions and specifications. Audience The people who benefit from this document are: • Engineers who are designing an Intel® Integrated RAID Controller. • Anyone configuring an Intel® Integrated RAID Controller. Organization This document includes the following chapters and appendices: • Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the Intel® Integrated RAID Solution.
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Table of Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................ iii Audience ............................................................................................................................... iii Organization ......................................................................................................................... iii Related Publication .............................................................
Viewing Array Properties ............................................................................................. 20 Running a Consistency Check .................................................................................... 20 Activating an Array ...................................................................................................... 21 Deleting an Array ........................................................................................................
List of Figures Figure 1. Typical Integrated Mirroring Implementation.............................................................. 7 Figure 2. Integrated Mirroring Volume....................................................................................... 7 Figure 3. Integrated Mirroring Enhanced with Three Disks ....................................................... 8 Figure 4. Integrated Mirroring + Striping with Four Disks.......................................................... 8 Figure 5.
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List of Tables Table 1. SAS3IRCU Commands .............................................................................................
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1 Introduction to the Integrated RAID Solution Overview The Intel® Integrated RAID Solution provides cost benefits for the server or workstation market that requires the extra performance, storage capacity, and redundancy of a RAID configuration.
Benefits and Features The Intel® Integrated RAID Solution has the following benefits and features: • Support for up to 10 disks per Integrated RAID volume, with one or two volumes on each SAS-3 controller. Each controller can support 14 volume drives, including one or two hot spare disks. • Support for two-disk Integrated Mirroring volumes (RAID 1). • Support for disk drives with 512-byte sectors and disk drives with 4-KB sectors.
Metadata Support The Integrated RAID firmware supports metadata, which describes the RAID volume configuration stored on each member disk of a volume. After initialization, the firmware reads the metadata on each member disk and verifies the configuration. The firmware reduces the usable disk space for each member disk when it creates the volume to make room for the metadata.
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2 Overview of Integrated RAID Mirrored Volumes This chapter provides an overview of the Intel® Integrated RAID features that support the creation of mirrored volumes. Overview As a result of the shift towards network-attached storage (NAS), Internet service providers need a cost-effective, fault-tolerant solution to protect the operating systems on small form-factor, high-density, rack-mountable servers.
Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced Features Integrated Mirroring, Integrated Mirroring + Striping, and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes support the following features: • Configurations of one or two mirrored volumes on each Intel SAS-3 controller.
Operation of Mirrored Volumes The Intel® Integrated RAID Solution supports one or two mirrored volumes on each Intel SAS-3 controller (or one mirrored volume and one Integrated Striping volume). Typically, one of these volumes is the boot volume. Boot support is available through the firmware of the Intel SAS-3 controller that supports the standard Fusion-MPT interface. The runtime mirroring of the boot disk is transparent to the BIOS, the drivers, and the operating system.
You can configure an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volume with up to 10 mirrored disks. The following figure shows the logical view and physical view of an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volume with three mirrored disks. The firmware writes each mirrored stripe to a disk and mirrors it to an adjacent disk. RAID 1E is another term for this type of mirrored configuration.
Mirrored Volume Features This section describes features of Integrated Mirroring volumes, Integrated Mirroring + Striping volumes, and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes. Resynchronization with Concurrent Host I/O Operation The Integrated RAID firmware permits host I/O transactions to continue on a mirrored volume while it resynchronizes the volume in the background.
After you replace the disk drives and run the OCE command, you must use a commercial tool specific to the operating system to move, or increase the size of, the partition on the volume. Media Verification The Integrated RAID firmware supports a background media verification feature that runs at regular intervals when the mirrored volume is in the Optimal state.
Make Data Consistent If it is enabled in the Integrated RAID firmware, the make data consistent (MDC) process starts automatically and runs in the background when you move a redundant volume from one Intel SAS-3 controller to another Intel SAS-3 controller. MDC compares the data on the primary and secondary disks. If MDC finds inconsistencies, it copies data from the primary disk to the secondary disk.
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3 Creating Mirrored Volumes This chapter explains how to create Integrated Mirroring volumes, Integrated Mirroring + Striping volumes, and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes with the Intel SAS-3 BIOS Configuration Utility (SAS3 BIOS CU). Mirrored Volume Configuration Overview The Intel SAS3 BIOS CU is a menu-driven utility program that enables you to easily configure and manage Integrated RAID volumes.
controller, up to a maximum of 14 disk drives for the two volumes. (The maximum number includes one or two optional hot spare disks for the mirrored volume or volumes.) Additional information about configuring a RAID volume follows: • All physical disks in a 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.
Figure 5. Adapter Properties Window 2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID Properties, and then press Enter. The Create Array window appears. 3. Select Create RAID 1 Volume. The Create New Array window appears. 4. Move the cursor to the RAID Disk column and select a line that has a No entry in this column, indicating that the disk is not already part of the volume you are creating. To add the disk to the new array, change the No to Yes by pressing the space bar. This disk is the Primary disk in the array.
7. From the menu options, select Save changes then exit this menu. A message appears briefly, and then the SAS3 BIOS CU returns to the Adapter Properties window. Initialization of the new array continues in the background. Note: To create a second Integrated Mirroring volume, repeat these instructions starting with step 2. Alternatively, follow the instructions in the following section to create an Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirroring + Striping volume.
A menu window appears. 7. From the menu options, select Save changes then exit this menu. A message appears briefly, and then the SAS3 BIOS CU returns to the Adapter Properties window. Initialization of the new array continues in the background. Note: To create a second Integrated Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Mirroring + Striping volume, repeat the previous instructions. Note: See the instructions in Section Managing Hot Spare Disks, if you want to create one or two global hot spares.
9. Select Online Capacity Expansion. A menu window appears with a warning message and with options to start the expansion process or quit. 10. Press Y to start the expansion. The RAID Properties window appears when the expansion process completes. 11. Run a commercial tool specific to the operating system to move or increase the size of the partition on the newly expanded RAID 1 volume.
Figure 6. Manage Volume Window 5. Select Manage Hot Spares. The Manage Hot Spares window appears. 6. Identify a disk that is not part of a RAID array (that is, the value in the Drive Status column is not RAID) and that is not already identified as a hot spare disk. A global hot spare disk must have 512-byte blocks and nonremovable media. The disk type must be either SATA with extended command set support or SAS with SMART support. 7.
Deleting a Hot Spare Disk Follow these steps to delete a global hot spare disk: 1. Access the Manage Hot Spares window by following the first five steps of the previous section. 2. Select a hot spare disk for deletion, and press C. 3. Select Save changes then exit this menu to complete the deletion of the hot spare disk. The configuration utility pauses while it removes the global hot spare.
The Select New Array Type window appears. 3. Select View Existing Array. The View Array window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another array on this adapter. 4. Select Manage Volume. The Manage Volume window appears. 5. Select Consistency Check on the Manage Volume window. A menu window appears. 6. Press Y to start the consistency check. The consistency check runs in the background. If it encounters any data miscompares, it stores the information in a bad block table.
1. In the Adapter List window, use the arrow keys to select an Intel SAS adapter. The Adapter Properties window appears. 2. Use the arrow keys to select RAID Properties, and then press Enter. The Select New Array Type window appears. 3. Select View Existing Array. The View Array window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another array on this adapter. 4. Select Manage Volume. The Manage Volume window appears. 5. Select Delete Array. A menu window appears. 6.
Selecting a Boot Disk You can select a boot disk in the SAS Topology window. The next time you boot the computer, the firmware moves this disk to scan ID 0, making it the new boot disk. This feature makes it easier to set BIOS boot device options and to keep the boot device constant during device additions and removals. You can also select an alternative boot device. If the BIOS cannot find the preferred boot device when it loads, it attempts to boot from the alternative device.
5. To change the boot disk, move the cursor to the new boot disk, and press Alt + B. The Boot designator moves to this disk. 6. To select an alternative boot disk, move the cursor to the disk, and press Alt + A. Note: To change the alternative boot device from one disk to another, follow step 4 and step 5 in this procedure, but press Alt + A instead of Alt + B.
4 Overview of Integrated Striping This chapter provides an overview of the Intel® Integrated RAID features that support the creation of striped volumes. Overview The Intel® Integrated RAID Solution enables you to create Integrated Striping volumes for applications that require the faster performance and increased storage capacity of striping. The low-cost Integrated Striping feature has many of the advantages of more expensive RAID striping solutions.
• Error display inside the Fusion-MPT BIOS • SES status LED support for drives used in Integrated Striping volumes Integrated Striping Description On Integrated Striping volumes, the firmware writes data across multiple disks instead of onto one disk by partitioning each disk’s storage space into 64-KB stripes. The firmware interleaves the stripes in such a way that the combined storage space consists alternately of stripes from each disk. The following figure shows an example of Integrated Striping.
Logical View Physical View Stripe 1 Stripe 1 Stripe 2 Stripe 3 Stripe 2 Stripe 4 Stripe 5 Stripe 6 Stripe 3 Stripe 7 Stripe N Stripe N - 2 + Stripe 8 Stripe N - 1 + Stripe 9 Stripe N 3_00011-00 Figure 9. Integrated Striping – Logical and Physical Views Speed is the primary advantage of the Integrated Striping solution because it transfers data to or from multiple disks simultaneously. However, Integrated Striping volumes have no data redundancy.
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5 Creating Integrated Striping Volumes This chapter explains how to create Integrated Striping volumes using the Intel SAS-3 BIOS Configuration Utility (SAS3 BIOS CU). Integrated Striping Configuration Overview The Intel SAS3 BIOS CU is a menu-driven utility program that enables you to easily configure and manage Integrated RAID volumes. Use the SAS3 BIOS CU to create one or two Integrated Striping volumes on each Intel SAS-3 controller. Each volume contains two drives to ten drives.
The following guidelines apply when creating an Integrated Striping volume: • All physical disks in the 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, it is possible to configure one volume with SAS disks and one volume with SATA disks on the same controller. • Disks in the volume must have 512-byte blocks and must not have removable media.
4. Move the cursor to the RAID Disk column, and select a line that has a No entry in this column, which indicates that the disk is not already part of the volume you are creating. To add the disk to the new array, change the No to Yes by pressing the space bar. 5. Move the cursor to another line and press the space bar to add another disk to the array. 6. Continue adding disks in this way until you reach the desired number of disks. 7. Press C to create the array. A menu appears. 8.
Follow these steps to activate a selected array: 1. In the Adapter List window, use the arrow keys to select an Intel SAS adapter and press Enter. The Adapter Properties window appears. 2. Select RAID Properties, and then press Enter. The Select New Array Type window appears. 3. Select View Existing Array. The View Array window appears. If necessary, press Alt + N to switch to another array on this adapter. 4. Select Manage Volume. The Manage Volume window appears. 5.
Locating Disk Drives in a Volume Use the SAS3 BIOS CU to locate and identify a specific physical disk drive in a disk enclosure by flashing the drive’s LED. Alternatively, use the SAS3 BIOS CU to flash the LEDs of all the disk drives in a RAID volume if they are in a disk enclosure. When you add a disk drive to a new mirrored volume, the LED on the disk drive starts flashing. The LED stops flashing when you finish creating the volume. To locate disk drives by flashing their LEDs, follow these steps: 1.
Figure 11. Boot Device on SAS Topology Window If a device is currently designated as the alternative boot device, the Device Info column shows the word Alt. 3. To select the preferred boot disk, move the cursor to the disk, and press Alt + B. 4. To remove the boot designator, move the cursor to the current boot disk, and press Alt + B. This controller no longer has a disk designated as boot. 5. To change the boot disk, move the cursor to the new boot disk, and press Alt + B.
Appendix A: Using the SAS-3 Integrated RAID Configuration Utility This appendix explains how to use the command-line-driven SAS-3 Integrated RAID configuration utility (SAS3IRCU) to create and manage Integrated RAID volumes on Intel SAS-3 controllers. You run SAS3IRCU commands from a command-line prompt or a shell script. When you use a SAS3IRCU command, the program returns a status value to the operating system when it exits.
Operating System and Software Support SAS3IRCU requires PCI 2.x or PCI 3.0 firmware and MPI v2.5. SAS3IRCU supports the following operating systems. Note: Intel recommends that you use the latest version of the driver for any operating system. • Windows Server 2003*, Windows XP*, Windows Vista*, Windows 7*, Windows Server 2008*, Windows Server 2008-R2*, Windows 8*, Windows Server 2012* • UEFI 2.1 and 2.3 • Linux 2.
Table 1. SAS3IRCU Commands Operating System SAS3IRCU Command DOS Linux EFI FreeBSD CREATE X X X X DELETE X X X X DELETEVOLUME X X X X DISPLAY X X X X HOTSPARE X X X X LIST X X X X STATUS X X X X CONSTCHK X X X X ACTIVATE X X X X LOCATE X X X X LOGIR X X X X BOOTIR X X X X BOOTENCL X X X X HELP X X X X The commands are not case sensitive.
Valid controller number values are 0 to 255 (decimal). • The enclosure and bay (or slot) of a peripheral device attached to the bus. The argument must use a colon ( : ) as a separator and must follow the Enclosure:Bay format. Enclosure is a 16-bit EnclosureHandle value set by the I/O controller (IOC). A value of 0 is invalid. Bay/Slot is a 16-bit slot value set by the IOC. Use the DISPLAY command to determine the enclosure number and slot number of a drive.
Note: Some operating systems do not fully support 4-KB-sector drives. Refer to the documentation for the operating system you are using. Command Line sas3ircu create {} [VolumeName] [noprompt] Parameters • – The index of the controller for the newly created volume. • – Volume type for the new volume. Valid values are RAID0, RAID1, RAID10, or RAID1E.
Program Return Value 0x00 – SUCCESS: Command completed successfully. 0x01 – FAILURE: Bad command-line arguments or operational failure. 0x02 – ADAPTER_NOT_FOUND: Cannot find specified adapter. DELETEVOLUME The DELETEVOLUME command deletes a specific RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 or RAID 1E volume and the associated hot spare drives on the specified controller. The hot spare is deleted only if it is inappropriate for any of the remaining volumes. No other controller configuration parameters are changed.
Command Line sas3ircu display [filename] Parameters • – The index of the controller for which you want to display information. • [filename] – An optional valid filename to store the command output to a file. Program Return Value 0x00 – SUCCESS: Command completed successfully. 0x01 – FAILURE: Bad command-line arguments or operational failure. 0x02 – ADAPTER_NOT_FOUND: Cannot find specified adapter.
Status of volume : Okay (OKY) Volume wwid : 0677c0fb06777e7b RAID level : RAID1 Size (in MB) : 139236 Boot : Primary Physical hard disks : PHY[0] Enclosure#/Slot# : 1:0 PHY[1] Enclosure#/Slot# : 1:1 ---------------------------------------------------------------Physical device information ---------------------------------------------------------------Initiator at ID #0 Device is a Hard disk Enclosure # Slot # SAS Address State Size (in MB)/(in sectors) Manufacturer Model Number Firmware Revision Serial No G
Primary Boot Slot : 2 SAS3IRCU: Command DISPLAY Completed Successfully. IR Volume State values are as follows: • Okay (OKY) – The volume is active and drives are functioning properly. User data is protected if the current RAID level provides data protection. • Degraded (DGD) – The volume is active. User data is not fully protected because the configuration has changed or a drive has failed. • • • • Failed (FLD) – The volume has failed. Missing (MIS) – The volume is missing.
HOTSPARE The HOTSPARE command adds a hot spare drive to spare pool 0 or deletes a hot spare drive. The capacity of the hot spare drive must be greater than or equal to the capacity of the smallest drive in the RAID volume. Determine if this is true by using the DISPLAY command on the drive. Observe the following rules when creating hot spare disks: • You cannot create a hot spare disk unless at least one RAID 1, RAID 10, or RAID 1E volume already exists.
STATUS The STATUS command displays the current status of any existing Integrated RAID volumes and the status of any operation that is currently in progress on the selected controller. If no operation is in progress, SAS3IRCU prints a message indicating this condition before it exits. Command Line sas3ircu status Parameters • – The index of the controller with the volumes whose status you want to display. Program Return Value 0x00 – SUCCESS: Command completed successfully.
Volume wwid : 0e2ca3c68dc5dc20 Physical disk I/Os : Not quiesced SAS3IRCU: Command STATUS Completed Successfully. SAS3IRCU: Utility Completed Successfully.
CONSTCHK The CONSTCHK command requests the Integrated RAID firmware to start a consistency check operation on the specified volume. Command Line sas3ircu constchk [noprompt] Parameters • – The index of the controller on which the consistency check operation runs. • – The volume ID of an Integrated RAID volume, as listed in the DISPLAY command, on which the consistency check operation runs.
0x01 – FAILURE: Bad command-line arguments or operational failure. 0x02 – ADAPTER_NOT_FOUND: Cannot find specified adapter. LOCATE The LOCATE command locates a specific drive in a volume by turning on its location indicator and flashing its LED. The command works only for drives installed in a disk enclosure. It does not work for drives attached directly to the controller.
— UPLOAD – Upload the controller logs to a file. — CLEAR – Clear the controller logs. • [filename] – This optional parameter specifies the filename where the logs must be uploaded. The default filename is LOGIR.LOG. • [noprompt] – This optional parameter prevents warnings and prompts from appearing while the command is running. Program Return Value 0x00 – SUCCESS: Command completed successfully. 0x01 – FAILURE: Bad command-line arguments or operational failure.
Sample Output Following is an example of the output of the BOOTIR command, showing a RAID volume as the primary boot device, after it was selected with the BOOTIR command. The format and fields in the output vary depending on the types of installed controllers.
Sample Output Following is an example of the output of the BOOTENCL command, showing an enclosure:bay value as the primary boot device, after it was selected with the BOOTENCL command. The format and fields in the output vary depending on the types of installed controllers.
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