Users Guide
PERC 9 personality management
PERC 9 series of cards support two personality modes.
• RAID mode: RAID mode is commonly used and the controllers are mostly shipped from the factory in RAID mode. This mode allows the
creation and operation of RAID virtual disks and non-RAID disks.
• HBA mode: In the HBA mode, PERC controller operates as Host Bus Adapter (HBA). This mode does not contain virtual disks or the
ability to create them. All physical disks function as non-RAID disks under operating system control. The PERC card acts as a conduit
between the host server and the physical disks. Input and output requests originate from the host and are passed through the
controller to the physical drives. HBA mode is the approach used for Windows Storage Spaces.
NOTE: HBA mode should be enabled for customers, using Microsoft Storage Spaces or VMware Virtual SAN. HBA mode allows
the operating system to control backplane LED functionality on supported systems.
NOTE: When the controller is in HBA mode, SMART monitoring is disabled.
Secure rmware update
This feature provides a cryptographic method of updating the rmware using RSA encryption-decryption algorithm.
Only Dell certied rmware is supported on your PERC controller.
Improved RAID 10 conguration
RAID 10 conguration has been simplied for easier management and deployment. Disks are selected in mirrored pairs.
NOTE
: An even number of drives is required to create RAID 10 virtual disks.
4 KB sector disk drives
PERC H330, H730, H730P, H730P MX, H830, FD33xS, and FD33xD cards support 4 KB sector disk drives, which enable you to eciently
use the storage space.
Before installing Windows on 4 KB sector drives, refer Windows operating system installation errors .
NOTE
:
• Mixing 512–byte native and 512–byte emulated drives in a virtual disk is allowed, but mixing 512–byte and 4 KB native drives in a
virtual disk is not allowed.
• 4 KB sector disk drives boot only in UEFI mode.
Physical disk power management
Physical disk power management is a power-saving feature of the PERC 9 series cards. The feature allows disks to be spun down based on
disk conguration and I/O activity. The feature is supported on all rotating SAS and SATA disks and includes uncongured, congured, and
hot-spare disks. The physical disk power management feature is disabled by default. The feature can be enabled in the Dell Open Manage
Storage Management application or Unied Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) RAID Conguration utility. For more information, see
the Dell OpenManage documentation at Dell.com/openmanagemanuals.
There are four power-saving modes:
No Power Savings
(default mode)
All power savings features are disabled.
Features 25