HP NetRAID-4M Configuration and Upgrade Guide (Release 5)

Chapter 10 Glossary

Cluster (In A File System)

A cluster is a group of contiguous sectors and the smallest increment of storage. The

cluster size is determined by the total partition storage space divided by the number

of addressable clusters. For example, a 2 GB partition divided by 216 addressable

clusters would result in a cluster size of 32 KB (64 sectors).

Cluster (In High Availability)

A cluster is a unit of computing resource that can include, for example, storage and

IP addresses.

Computer Manager

The MS Windows 2000 application containing Disk Manager.

Container

Containers are logical disks (also known as arrays) created from free space and made

up of one or more partitions on one or more physical disks. A container that spans

multiple physical disks can be larger than any one of the physical disks.

Containers differ from most other RAID arrays in that their underlying partitions can

be smaller than a physical disk. Consequently, several containers’ partitions can

reside on a single physical disk. A container’s file system appears in Windows

Explorer as a disk drive with its own drive letter.

A single level container is made up of one or more partitions. Four types of single-

level containers are supported:

• Volume set

• Stripe set (RAID 0)

• Mirror set (RAID 1)

• RAID-5 set

For further information, refer to Multilevel Containers.

Disk Expansion

Generally speaking, “expansion” is the word used by the RAID controller vendors

to increase the disk drive free space, and “extension” is the word used by Microsoft

to increase the volume space.