Users Guide

Therefore, depending upon the PERC, the policy value is set.
Deleting virtual disks
Deleting a virtual disk destroys all information including file systems and volumes residing on the virtual disk and removes the
virtual disk from the controller’s configuration. When deleting virtual disks, all assigned global hot spares may be automatically
unassigned when the last virtual disk associated with the controller is deleted. When deleting the last virtual disk of a disk group,
all assigned dedicated hot spares automatically become global hot spares.
If you delete all the VDs for a global hotspare, then the global hotspare gets automatically deleted.
You must have the Login and Server Control privilege to perform delete virtual disks.
When this operation is allowed, you can delete a boot virtual drive. It is done from sideband and the independent of the
operating system. Hence, a warning message appears before you delete the virtual drive.
If you delete a virtual disk and immediately create a new virtual disk with all the same characteristics as the one that was
deleted, the controller recognizes the data as if the first virtual disk were never deleted. In this situation, if you do not want the
old data after recreating a new virtual disk, re-initialize the virtual disk.
Checking virtual disk consistency
This operation verifies the accuracy of the redundant (parity) information. This task only applies to redundant virtual disks.
When necessary, the check consistency task rebuilds the redundant data. If the virtual drive has a degraded status, running a
check consistency may be able to return the virtual drive to ready status. You can perform a consistency check using the web
interface or RACADM.
You can also cancel the check consistency operation. The cancel check consistency is a real-time operation.
You must have Login and Server Control privilege to check consistency of virtual disks.
NOTE: Consistency check is not supported when the drives are set up in RAID0 mode.
NOTE: If you perform Cancel Consistency operation when there is no consistency check operation is in progress, then the
pending operation in GUI is shown as Cancel BGI instead of Cancel Consistency check.
Initializing virtual disks
Initializing virtual disks erases the all the data on the disk but does not change the virtual disk configuration. You must initialize a
virtual disk that is configured before it is used.
NOTE: Do not initialize virtual disks when attempting to recreate an existing configuration.
You can perform a fast initialization, a full Initialization, or cancel the initialization operation.
NOTE:
The cancel initialization is a real-time operation. You can cancel the initialization using only the iDRAC Web interface
and not RACADM.
Fast initialization
The fast initialize operation initializes all physical disks included in the virtual disk. It updates the metadata on the physical disks
so that all disk space is available for future write operations. The initialize task can be completed quickly because the existing
information on the physical disks is not erased, although future write operations overwrite any information that remains on the
physical disks.
Fast initialization only deletes the boot sector and stripe information. Perform a fast initialize only if you are constrained for time
or the hard drives are new or unused. Fast Initialization takes less time to complete (usually 30-60 seconds).
CAUTION: Performing a fast initialize causes existing data to be inaccessible.
The fast initialize task does not write zeroes to the disk blocks on the physical disks. It is because the Fast Initialize task does
not perform a write operation, it causes less degradation to the disk.
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Managing storage devices