Users Guide

Protecting Your Virtual Disk With A Hot Spare

When you create a virtual disk using a RAID controller, it enables the system to continue functioning even during a disk failure. This feature

can be enabled by assigning a hot spare to the virtual disk. When a disk fails, the redundant data is rebuilt onto the hot spare without

interrupting system operations.

Topics:

• Understanding Hot Spares

• Setting Hot Spare Protection Policy

• Dedicated Hot Spare Considerations

• Considerations For Hot Spares On PERC S100 And PERC S300 Controllers

Related link

Dedicated Hot Spare Considerations

Dedicated Hot Spare Protection Policy

Understanding Hot Spares

A hot spare is an unused backup physical disk that can be used to rebuild data from a redundant virtual disk. Hot spares remain in standby

mode. When a physical disk that is used in a redundant virtual disk fails, the assigned hot spare is activated to replace the failed physical

disk without interrupting the system or requiring your intervention. If a virtual disk using the failed physical disk is not redundant, then the

data is permanently lost without any method (unless you have a backup) to restore the data.

Hot spare implementation varies for each controller controller. For more information on hot spares, see:

• Considerations For Hot Spares On PERC S100 And PERC S300 Controllers

The following sections describe procedures for assigning a hot spare:

• Assigning And Unassigning Global Hot Spare

• Assigning And Unassigning Dedicated Hot Spare

Setting Hot Spare Protection Policy

The Hot Spare Protection Policy is supported only on Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controllers.

The Hot Spare Protection Policy provides you with a higher protection level for the virtual disks by enabling you to specify the number of

dedicated/global hot spares to be assigned to the virtual disks/controller. You can also specify the severity levels for the protection policy.

Storage Management sends alerts when the hot spare protection policy is violated.

Storage Management does not provide a default policy; however, you can determine the hot spare protection policy best suited for your

environment.