User Manual

Introduction
1-13
such that capacity overhead can be minimized while performance and
reliability can still be guaranteed.
You might need to pay attentions to a few options when doing the tasks
above, like initialization modes, cache settings, alignment offset
rebuilding mode, and etc. Please read the GUI chapter to know their
meanings and choose the most appropriate settings, because they are
directly or indirectly related to how well the RAID system can perform (see
2.6 RAID Management on page 2-22 and 2.7.16 Miscellaneous on
page 2-56).
• Installing and launching bundled software (optionally)
The RAID system is equipped with host-side software providing solutions for
multi-path I/O, VDS-compliant management, and centralized
management console on multiple platforms. You can locate their
sections in the chapter 5 and know their features and benefits, as well as
how to do the installation and configuration. Contact your RAID system
supplier to know the interoperability between the software and the
system.
• Getting ready for future maintenance tasks
The better you’re prepared, the less your maintenance efforts would be.
Below are the major settings you’ll need for maintenance.
Event logging and notification
You can have peace only if you can always get timely notifications of
incidents happening to your RAID systems, so completing the event
notification settings is also a must-do. You might also need to set the
policies for event logging and notifications (see 2.9 Event Management
on page 2-66).
Data integrity assurance
For better system reliability, you are advised to set policies for handling
exceptions, like to start disk cloning when SMART warning is detected or
too many bad sectors of a hard disk are discovered (see 2.8.1 Hard disks
on page 2-57), or to turn off write cache when something wrong happens
Note
When planning your storage resources, reserving space for snapshot
operations is needed. Please check chapter 5 for information about
the snapshot functions.
Note
Installing multi-path I/O driver is a must for redundant-controller
systems to support controller failover/failback. Please check
Chapter 5: Advanced Functions for more information about MPIO
and redundant-controller solution.