SUPERTRAK EX4650, EX8650, EX8654, EX8658 USER MANUAL Version 1.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Copyright © 2008 Promise Technology, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Copyright by Promise Technology, Inc. (Promise Technology). No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the expressed, written permission of Promise Technology. Trademarks Promise, and the Promise logo are registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Notices Radio Frequency Interference Statement This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses and can radiate radio frequency energy, and, if not installed and used in accordance with the instruction may cause harmful interference to radio communications.
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Contents Chapter 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 About This Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Product Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 XOR Microprocessor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Hot-Swapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Chapter 3: Installing Drivers, cont. Windows Server 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 New OS Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Existing System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Confirming Driver Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Windows XP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Contents Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility, cont. Logical Drive Management, cont. Initializing a Logical Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Changing Logical Drive Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Deleting a Logical Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Managing Logical Drive Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Identifying a Critical Logical Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO, cont. Accessing the Interface, cont. Deleting the Event Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90 Viewing the Storage Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90 Logging out of WebPAM PRO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Managing Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 Viewing User Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Contents Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO, cont. Managing the Subsystem, cont. Viewing the NVRAM Event Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Saving the NVRAM Event Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 Clearing the NVRAM Event Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 Viewing Current Background Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109 Making Background Activity Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109 Running Background Activities . . . . .
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO, cont. Managing Disk Arrays, cont. Creating a Disk Array – Express Configuration . . . . . . . . . . .130 Creating a Disk Array – Advanced Configuration . . . . . . . . . .132 Deleting a Disk Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134 Viewing Disk Array Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134 Making Disk Array Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Contents Chapter 6: Technology Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 Introduction to RAID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 RAID 0 – Stripe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 RAID 1 – Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 RAID 1E – Enhanced Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158 RAID 5 – Block Striping with Distributed Parity . . . . . . .
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Chapter 6: Technology Background, cont. Predictive Data Migration (PDM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184 PDM Triggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184 Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185 Drive Failure and Automatic Rebuild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185 Automatic Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter 1: Introduction • About This Manual, below • Product Overview (page 2) • WebPAM PRO Management Software (page 3) Thank you for purchasing one of Promise Technology’s SuperTrak EX4650, EX8650, EX8654, or EX8658 SAS/SATA RAID Controller card. About This Manual This User Manual describes how to setup, use and maintain the SuperTrak RAID controller. It also describes how to use the Web-Based Promise Array Management—Professional (WebPAM PRO) RAID management software.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Product Overview SuperTrak EX4650, EX8650, EX8654, and EX8658 are SAS and SATA RAID Controller cards. When used with WebPAM PRO software, the SuperTrak RAID Controllers offer a feature-rich, secure and versatile enterprise-wide ATA RAID solution. In addition, the SuperTrak EX Series supports RAID expansion.
Chapter 1: Introduction WebPAM PRO Management Software The Web-Based Promise Array Management—Professional (WebPAM PRO) software offers local and remote management and monitoring of all SuperTrak logical drives that exist anywhere on a network.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual If you do not have one of the above browsers, install the browser first and make it the default browser. Then install WebPAM PRO. Key Features and Benefits The following information offers an overview of the major features of the Promise SuperTrak EX4650, EX8650, EX8654, and EX8658. Advanced Hardware Design Features Benefits Supports multi-lane PCIe bus motherboards Allows maximum data transfers of up to 2.
Chapter 1: Introduction Advanced Hardware Design Features Benefits Displays status and error checking messages during bootup Notifies user of possible errors and allows for recovery of mirrored drive logical drives directly from SuperBuild™. Supports S.M.A.R.T. monitoring and reporting Polls status at set intervals, reports through WebPAM PRO.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Compatibility Features Benefits Tested compatibility to coexist Improves system performance and minimizes with motherboards that have system conflicts for new and existing integrated IDE controllers installations. Compatible with all major SATA generation 1 and SATA generation 2, phase 1 and phase 2 disk drives Promise performs verification testing with major drive manufacturers and development partners. Features LBA support Supports drives greater than 137 GB capacity.
Chapter 2: Installation • Unpacking the SuperTrak, below • Installing the SuperTrak Card (page 8) • Choosing the Physical Drives (page 14) • Creating a Logical Drive (page 15) • Installing WebPAM PRO (page 20) • Windows (page 22) • Linux (page 29) • Logging into WebPAM PRO (page 37) • Setting up WebPAM PRO (page 39) Unpacking the SuperTrak When you receive the SuperTrak EX Series SAS/SATA RAID Controller card, the package should contain the items listed below: • SuperTrak EX4650, EX8650, E
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Note The SuperTrak EX Controller cards are PCI Plug-n-Play (PnP) devices. No changes are necessary in the motherboard CMOS or BIOS Setup for resources or drive types in most applications. Installing the SuperTrak Card The SuperTrak EX Controller card fits into any available 3.3-volt PCI-Express x8 slot. You can also plug the SuperTrak card into a PCI-Express x16 slot. 1. Remove the cover of your system. 2.
Chapter 2: Installation Figure 1. SuperTrak EX4650 card UART connector Activity and Fault LED Pins Global and Aggregate LED Pins SAS Ports Ch1-4 CPU Fan connector BBU module connector I2C/SMBus connector Figure 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Figure 3. SuperTrak EX8654 card I2C/SMBus connector SAS Ports: Ch5-8 Activity and Fault LED Pins BBU module connector Aggregate LED Pins Global LED Pins SAS Ports: Ch1-4 CPU Fan connector UART connector Figure 4. SuperTrak EX8658 card UART connector SAS Ports BBU module connector I2C/SMBus connector Aggregate LED Pins Ch1-4 Ch5-8 Global LED Pins CPU Fan connector 6.
Chapter 2: Installation 7. Optional. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for the second SAS port on the SuperTrak EX8650, EX8654, or EX8658 card. 8. Optional. Attach cables from the LED pins on the SuperTrak card to the LEDs in your PC or enclosure. See Figures 5 through 7. For more information, see “Appendix D: LED Backplane Connections” on page 213 and the user manual for your PC or enclosure. Figure 5.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Connecting SuperTrak to a VTrak JBOD Enclosure If you are connecting the SuperTrak card to a single VTrak JBOD enclosure, you can attach the SAS multi-lane cable to either the circle or diamond port on the enclosure. However, if you plan to cascade multiple VTrak JBOD enclosures, you must attach the SAS multi-lane cable to the circle port on the first enclosure. Figure 8.
Chapter 2: Installation The SuperTrak EX8650, EX8654, and EX8658 cards are designed to manage up to 16 enclosures and up to 256 SAS or SATA disk drives (using SAS expanders). If your system has fewer components, you might be surprised at the way WebPAM PRO numbers your enclosures and drives. The following scenarios illustrate some numbering examples. Scenario 1: Virtual Enclosure – SGPIO You install the SuperTrak card into an SGPIO enclosure.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual In WebPAM PRO, the first Expander appears as Enclosure 2. The drives are numbered 1 to 128. The second Expander appears as Enclosure 10. The drives are numbered 129 to 256. See “Viewing Enclosure Information” on page 121 and “Locating a Physical Drive” on page 122 for more information. Choosing the Physical Drives The SuperTrak EX Controller card supports SAS and 1.5-Gb/s or 3.0-Gb/s SATA physical drives.
Chapter 2: Installation Creating a Logical Drive You can use the SuperBuild™ Configuration Utility to create a logical drive with the attached physical drives. Even if you plan to use the WebPAM PRO software to manage your logical drives, you can still create your first logical drive using the SuperBuild Utility, as described here.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 3. Press the arrow keys to highlight Disk Array Management and press Enter. The Disk Array Management screen appears. 4. Highlight Create Disk Array and press Enter. The Create Disk Array screen appears. Use this screen to select the physical drives for your disk array. 5. Press the arrow keys to highlight a physical drive. Then press the spacebar to select the physical drive. An asterisk (*) appears at the left of each selected physical drive. 6.
Chapter 2: Installation 7. Highlight Return to Previous Menu and press Enter. The Main Menu appears. 8. Highlight Logical Drive Management and press Enter. The Logical Drive Management screen appears. 9. Highlight Create Logical Drive and press Enter. The Create Logical Drive Step 1/2 screen appears. 10. Press the arrow keys to highlight a disk array. Then press the spacebar to choose the disk array. An asterisk (*) appears at the left of the chosen disk array.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 11. Highlight Next Step and press Enter. The Create Logical Drive Step 2/2 screen appears. 12. To change the RAID Level, highlight RAID Level and press Enter. In the popup menu, highlight your choice of RAID Level and press Enter. The available RAID Levels depend on the number of physical drives you selected for your disk array. 13. Press the arrow keys to highlight Logical Drive Name. Type a name for your logical drive and press Enter. 14.
Chapter 2: Installation 18. To change the Read Cache Policy, highlight Read Cache Policy and press Enter. Highlight your choice of None, Read Cache, or Read Ahead and press Enter. 19. Highlight Save Configuration and press Enter. The Logical Drive Management screen appears with your new logical drive. At this point you can create additional logical drives, if there is physical drive space available. To create another logical drive, repeat steps 4 though 18 above. 20.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Installing WebPAM PRO Web-Based Promise Array Management—Professional (WebPAM PRO) software provides a browser-based graphic user interface used to monitor and manage Promise RAID products and their logical drives. Because it works over your network, it can monitor and control multiple systems.
Chapter 2: Installation • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.4, 4.5, 5.0, 5.1 • SuSE 10.1, 10.2; SLES 10, 10 SP1 • Miracle Linux 4 SP2 • Fedora Core 6, 7 • Asianux 3 Choose one of these operating systems to take full advantage of all the features of WebPAM PRO. JRE The WebPAM PRO installation program installs a private Java Runtime Environment (JRE) under the same directory where WebPAM PRO is installed.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Go to one of the following procedures: • “Installing WebPAM PRO onto a Windows PC or Server” on page 22. • “Installing WebPAM PRO onto a Linux PC or Server” on page 29. Installing WebPAM PRO onto a Windows PC or Server Follow these steps to install WebPAM PRO on your Windows-based PC or Server. 1. Boot the PC or server, launch Windows, and log in as the Administrator. If the computer is already running, exit all programs.
Chapter 2: Installation 6. In the License Agreement dialog box, choose the I accept... option, then click the Next button. Figure 10.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 7. In the Setup Type dialog box, choose the option you prefer: • Typical – Better for most applications • Custom – For advanced users and special applications. Additional choices follow this option Click the Next button to continue. Figure 11.
Chapter 2: Installation 8. In the Choose Destination Location dialog box, you can: • Accept the default installation folder (recommended) • Specify a different installation folder (advanced users) When you agree with the proposed installation folder, click the Next button. Figure 12.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 9. In the SSL Security Options dialog box, check the box to select SSL security. External SSL Security – Applies security to all connections involving the Internet or outside your company firewall. Security options are invisible to authorized users. Promise Technology provides a default certificate for the server as well as for internal data communication. However, in some cases it is better to install and verify your own certificate for the webserver.
Chapter 2: Installation 10. In the Ready to Install dialog box, click the Install button to continue. Figure 14.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 11. In the Install Complete dialog box, click the Finish button to exit the installer. Figure 15.Install Complete dialog box With the Register Your Product Online box checked, your browser will open and go directly to the Promise product registration website. Thank you for taking the time to register. This completes the WebPAM PRO installation for Windows. Go to “Logging into WebPAM PRO” on page 37.
Chapter 2: Installation Installing WebPAM PRO onto a Linux PC or Server If you have a previous version of WebPAM PRO installed on your PC or server, remove it now, before you install the current version of WebPAM PRO. Follow these steps to install WebPAM PRO on your Linux-based PC or Server. 1. Boot the PC or server, log in as root, and launch the Linux GUI. If the computer is already running, exit all programs. If you are not logged in as root, log out, then log in again as root. 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 6. In the License Agreement dialog box, choose the I accept... option, then click the Next button. Figure 17.
Chapter 2: Installation 7. In the Choose Product Install dialog box, choose the option you prefer: • Typical – Better for most applications • Custom – For advanced users and special applications. Additional choices follow this option Click the Next button to continue. Figure 18.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 8. When the Choose Install Folder dialog box appears, you can: • Accept the default installation folder (recommended) • Specify a different installation folder (advanced users) When you agree with the proposed installation folder, click the Next button. Figure 19.
Chapter 2: Installation 9. In the WebPAM PRO Agent Configuration dialog box, click the Next button to continue. Figure 20.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 10. In the SSL Security Options dialog box, check the box to select SSL security. External SSL Security – Applies security to all connections involving the Internet or outside your company firewall. Security options are invisible to authorized users. Promise Technology provides a default certificate for the server as well as for internal data communication. However, in some cases it is better to install and verify your own certificate for the webserver.
Chapter 2: Installation 11. In the WebPAM PRO Utility Server Configuration dialog box, click the Install button to continue. Figure 22.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 12. In the Register On-line dialog box, click the Done button to exit the installer Figure 23.Register On-line dialog box With the Register Your Product On-line box checked, your browser will open and go directly to the Promise product registration website. Thank you for taking the time to register. Note The first time you install WebPAM PRO on a RedHat Linux system, the WebPAM PRO icon appears on the desktop but not in the application menu.
Chapter 2: Installation Logging into WebPAM PRO You can log into WebPAM PRO in either of two ways: • Logging in at the Host PC (page 37) • Logging in over the Network (page 37) Logging in at the Host PC At the Host PC (where the SuperTrak EX Controller is installed), do one of the following actions: • Double-click the WebPAM PRO desktop icon. • Choose WebPAM PRO in the Windows Programs menu. • Choose WebPAM PRO in the Linux Applications menu.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Together, your entry looks like this: https://192.168.10.228:8443/promise Notes • You can enter the Host PC’s network name in place of the IP address. • If you are logging in at the Host PC, you can enter localhost in place of the IP address. • Whether you select a regular or a secure connection, your WebPAM PRO user name and password are always secure. Login Screen When the opening screen appears: 1. Type administrator in the User Name field. 2.
Chapter 2: Installation Setting up WebPAM PRO The first time you use WebPAM PRO, you must add the Host PC so that WebPAM PRO will recognize it. You only need to perform this procedure once. To add the Host PC: 1. In the Tree, click the Subsystem/Host Management icon. See Figure 25. Figure 25. WebPAM PRO initial login screen Click the Subsystem/Host Management icon 2. Click the Add Subsystem/Host tab. 3.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Figure 26.Add Subsystem/Host tab 4. Click the Submit button. The newly added host appears in the Tree, on the left side of the WebPAM PRO screen. This completes the WebPAM PRO installation and initial setup. Go to “Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO” on page 83 for information about using this application.
Chapter 3: Installing Drivers • Driver Diskette for Windows (page 42) • USB Memory Stick for Windows (page 42) • Driver Diskette for Linux (page 42) • Windows Vista • • • • • • New OS Installation (page 43) • Existing System (page 44) • Confirming Driver Installation (page 44) Windows Server 2003 • New OS Installation (page 45) • Existing System (page 46) • Confirming Driver Installation (page 46) Windows XP • New OS Installation (page 47) • Existing System (page 48) • Confirmi
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Driver Diskette for Windows If you have a Windows PC and plan to install your SuperTrak driver from a diskette, follow this procedure. This procedure requires one write-enabled blank 3.5-inch diskette. 1. Place your blank diskette in the appropriate drive. 2. Insert the Promise CD into your CD-ROM drive. 3. Click MyComputer > CD Drive D: go to the Windows Driver folder. 4. Manually copy the driver files to your diskette.
Chapter 3: Installing Drivers Windows Vista New OS Installation The following details the installation of the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller drivers while installing Windows Vista. 1. Start the installation: Boot from the DVD-ROM. 2. When the “Where do you want to install Windows?” dialog box appears, click Load Driver. 3. Insert the SuperTrak driver diskette into drive A: or attach a USB memory stick with the SuperTrak driver to the USB port. 4.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Existing System After installing the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller card and rebooting your system, Windows Vista setup will show a “Found New Hardware” dialog box. Under Windows Vista, “RAID Controller” will be displayed. 1. Insert the SuperTrak driver diskette into drive A: or attach a USB memory stick with the SuperTrak driver to the USB port. 2. Choose Install the software automatically and press the Enter key. 3.
Chapter 3: Installing Drivers Windows Server 2003 New OS Installation The following details the installation of the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller drivers while installing Windows Server 2003. 1. Start the installation: • Floppy Install: Boot the computer with the Windows Server 2003 installation diskettes. • CD-ROM Install: Boot from the CD-ROM. Press F6 after the message “Press F6 if you need to install third party SCSI or RAID driver” appears. 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Existing System After installing the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller card and rebooting your system, Windows Server 2003 setup will show a “Found New Hardware” dialog box. Under Windows 2003, “RAID Controller” will be displayed. 1. Insert the SuperTrak driver diskette into the A:\ drive. 2. Choose Install the software automatically and press the Enter key. 3.
Chapter 3: Installing Drivers Windows XP New OS Installation The following details the installation of the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller drivers while installing Windows XP. 1. Start the installation: • Floppy Install: Boot the computer with the Windows XP installation diskettes. • CD-ROM Install: Boot from the CD-ROM. Press F6 after the message “Press F6 if you need to install third party SCSI or RAID driver” appears. 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Existing System After installing the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller card and rebooting your system, Windows XP setup will show a “Found New Hardware” dialog box. 1. Insert the SuperTrak driver diskette into the A:\ drive. 2. Choose Install the software automatically and press the Enter key. 3. Choose Promise SuperTrak EX [4650, 8650, 8654, 8658] (tm) Controller from the list that appears on screen, and then press the Enter key. 4.
Chapter 3: Installing Drivers Windows 2000 New OS Installation The following details the installation of the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller drivers while installing Windows 2000. 1. Start the installation: • Floppy Install: Boot the computer with the Windows 2000 installation diskettes. • CD-ROM Install: Boot from the CD-ROM. Press F6 after the message “Press F6 if you need to install third party SCSI or RAID driver” appears. 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Existing System After installing the SuperTrak EX Series RAID Controller card and rebooting your system, Windows 2000 setup will show a “New Hardware Found” dialog box. Under Windows 2000, “PCI Mass Storage Controller” will be displayed. 1. Choose Add New Hardware Wizard from the list, and then press Enter. 2. Choose Add/Troubleshoot a device and click Next. The new hardware wizard will show device list 3. Choose Mass Storage controller and click Next.
Chapter 3: Installing Drivers Red Hat Linux Enterprise 4.4, 4.5 New OS Installation 1. Start the RedHat Linux Installation by booting from the install CD. 2. At the “Welcome to Red Hat Linux...” installation screen, a prompt labeled boot: will appear at the bottom of the screen. Type linux dd and press Enter. 3. When the Installer asks, “Do you have a driver disk?” click Yes. 4. At the “Insert your driver disk and press OK to continue,” insert the driver diskette into the floppy drive and click OK.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual SuSE Linux Enterprise 10.1 New OS Installation 1. Start the SuSE Linux Installation by booting from the install CD. 2. As the system boots, press F5 for the Driver Disk. 3. Move the cursor to the Installation – ACPI Disabled option, and press Enter. 4. When the installer displays, “Please insert the Driver Update floppy/ CDROM,” insert the SuperTrak driver disk, then press Enter. 5.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility • SuperTrak BIOS (below) • Main Menu (page 56) • Controller Selection (page 57) • Controller Information (page 58) • Physical Drive Management (page 59) • • • Managing Logical Drive Problems (page 68) • Spare Drive Management (page 73) • Background Activity (page 76) • Event Log (page 77) Disk Array Management (page 61) • • Logical Drive Management Time Sync (page 79) Miscellaneous (page 80) (page 64) SuperTrak BIOS This section explains the information t
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Figure 1. SuperTrak BIOS screen If the SuperBuild BIOS detects a Critical logical drive, the BIOS reports the condition: Figure 2. SuperTrak BIOS screen, logical drive critical See “Managing Logical Drive Problems” on page 68 for information about rebuilding a critical logical drive. Press Ctrl-S to access the SuperBuild utility.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility If the SuperTrak BIOS detects an Offline logical drive, the BIOS reports the condition and temporarily halts the booting process of the Host PC, so you can access the SuperBuild utility to investigate. Figure 3. SuperTrak BIOS screen, logical drive offline You can use the SuperBuild Utility to diagnose the problem. See “Managing Logical Drive Problems” on page 68. Press Ctrl-S to access the SuperBuild utility.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Main Menu The opening screen of the SuperBuild utility is the Main Menu. Figure 4.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility • Miscellaneous – SAS drive LEDs, enclosure management, and buzzer settings Controller Selection The SuperBuild Configuration utility supports up to two SuperTrak RAID Controller cards installed in the same Host PC. Controller selection enables you to select which of the two SuperTrak controllers the utility accesses. If you have only one SuperTrak card installed in the Host PC, the SuperTrak is Controller 1, and no selection is necessary.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Controller Information The SuperBuild utility displays information about the selected SuperTrak EX controller. 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Controller Information and press Enter. The information includes: Vendor – Promise Technology, Inc.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility Physical Drive Management Physical drive management includes these functions: • Viewing Physical Drives (page 59) • Viewing Physical Drive Information (page 59) • Managing Physical Drive Problems (page 60) Viewing Physical Drives To view physical drives: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Physical Drive Management and press Enter.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 3. Highlight Return to Previous Menu and press Enter. Managing Physical Drive Problems Physical drives can develop problems that make them unsuitable for service in a disk array. These problems are reflected in the physical drive status.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility Disk Array Management Disk array management includes these functions: • Viewing Disk Arrays (page 61) • Viewing Disk Array Information (page 61) • Creating a Disk Array (page 62) • Changing Disk Array Settings (page 63) • Rebuilding a Disk Array (page 63) • Deleting a Disk Array (page 63) Viewing Disk Arrays The SuperBuild utility displays information about the disk arrays managed by the SuperTrak controller. 1.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Status – OK is normal. Can also show Rebuilding, Degraded, Critical, or Offline. 3. Highlight Physical Drives in the Disk Array and press Enter. The following information displays: ID – The channel number of the SuperTrak controller to which the physical drive is attached Model Name – The physical drive manufacturer’s model name for the drive Capacity – Data capacity of the physical drive in GB Status – OK is normal. Can also show Rebuilding or Dead. 4.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility Changing Disk Array Settings To change the name of a disk array: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Disk Array Management and press Enter. The Disk Array Management screen displays. 2. Highlight the Disk Array you want to change and press Enter. The Disk Array Info and Setting screen displays. 3. Highlight Disk Array Name and press Enter. 4. Press the backspace or delete keys to remove the characters. Then type new characters. 5. Highlight Save Setting and press Enter.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Logical Drive Management Logical drive management includes these functions: • Viewing Logical Drives (page 64) • Viewing Logical Drive Information (page 64) • Creating a Logical Drive (page 65) • Initializing a Logical Drive (page 66) • Changing Logical Drive Settings (page 67) • Deleting a Logical Drive (page 67) Note For an explanation of the logical drive concepts and the choices you can make when you create your logical drive, see Viewing Logical Drives To vi
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility RAID Level – Chosen when the logical drive was created. Stripe Size – Chosen when the logical drive was created. Sector Size – Chosen when the logical drive was created. Write Cache Policy – You can change this setting. Read Cache Policy – You can change this setting. Disk Array ID – Consecutive number of the disk array to which this logical drive belongs Status – OK is normal. Can also show Rebuilding, Initializing, Synchronizing, Degraded, Critical, or Offline. 3.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 5. • Read Cache Policy – Choose from Read Cache, Read Ahead, or No Cache. • Axle – RAID 50 and 60 logical drives only. Choose the number of axles or choose 0 to let the controller decide for you. Highlight Save Configuration and press Enter. At this point you can create additional logical drives, if there is space remaining on your disk arrays. To create another logical drive, repeat steps 2 though 5 above. 6.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility The Initialization begins immediately. If you set Initialization for multiple logical drives, they will be initialized sequentially. You can monitor Initialization progress under Background Activity. 5. Highlight Return to Previous Menu and press Enter. Changing Logical Drive Settings To change logical drive settings: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Logical Drive Management and press Enter. The Logical Drive Management screen displays. 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Managing Logical Drive Problems The most common logical drive problems are caused by physical disk drive failure, resulting in a Critical or an Offline logical drive.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility Rebuilding the Logical Drive The remedial action for a critical logical drive is to rebuild it, meaning the data from the failed drive is rebuilt onto the replacement drive. The SuperTrak controller does this action automatically using a spare drive. If you do not have a spare drive, the controller will do it when you install a replacement drive.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 5. Highlight the Source Sequence Number and press Enter. Then type the ID number of one of the physical drives you noted in step 3 and press Enter. 6. Highlight the Target Physical Drive ID and press Enter. Then type the ID number of the new drive and press Enter. 7. Highlight Start Manual Rebuild and press Enter. The time required for the Rebuild depends on the number and size of your logical drives.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility BIOS reports the condition and temporarily halts the booting process of the Host PC, so you can access the SuperBuild utility to investigate. Figure 7. SuperTrak BIOS screen, logical drive offline 1. Press Ctrl-S to access the SuperBuild utility. 2. From the Main Menu, highlight Physical Drive Management and press Enter. 3. Verify that all of the physical drives attached to the SuperTrak controller appear under on the Physical Drive Management screen.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 0 Because RAID 0 logical drives are not fault-tolerant, there is no way to rebuild the logical drive when a physical drive fails. See “Managing Physical Drive Problems” on page 60 to determine if there is any way to salvage the physical drive and restore your logical drive. If the physical drive cannot be salvaged, replace the drive, then create a new logical drive and copy your data to the logical drive from a backup source.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility Spare Drive Management Spare drive management includes these functions: • Viewing Spare Drives (page 73) • Viewing Spare Drive Information (page 73) • Creating a Spare Drive (page 73) • Changing Spare Drive Settings (page 74) • Deleting a Spare Drive (page 75) Viewing Spare Drives To view your spare drives: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Spare Drive Management and press Enter.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual • Big Enough – Same capacity or greater than the largest drive in your array To create a spare drive: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Spare Drive Management and press Enter. The Spare Drive Management screen displays. 2. Highlight Assign Spare Drive and press Enter. The Assign Spare Drive Step 1/2 screen appears. 3. Press the arrow keys to highlight a physical drive. Then press the spacebar to select the physical drive.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility 4. Optional. If you chose Dedicated in step 3, press the arrow keys to highlight a disk array. Then press the spacebar to select the disk array. An asterisk (*) appears at the left of the selected disk array. 5. Highlight Save Setting and press Enter. The changes happen immediately. Deleting a Spare Drive To delete a spare drive: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Spare Drive Management and press Enter. The Spare Drive Management screen displays. 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Background Activity The Background Activity function enables you to monitor background activities are running on the SuperTrak RAID controller. Information reported includes: • Device – Disk array or logical drive by ID number • Type – Synchronization, Initialization, or Rebuilding • Status – Running or queued (waiting) • Percentage – Percent completed The Background Activity screen does not enable you to start, pause, resume, or cancel any activity.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility Event Log The event log tracks events related to the SuperTrak controller and includes the following functions: • Viewing RAM Events (page 77) • Viewing NVRAM Events (page 77) • Clearing the Event Logs (page 78) Viewing RAM Events RAM events are also called Runtime events. All recorded events happened since the last time you booted the Host PC. Displays the 1023 most recent events. To view NVRAM events: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Event Log and press Enter.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual • To see all the information about an event, highlight the event and press Enter. Clearing the Event Logs Clearing the event logs remove all of the events from both the RAM and NVRAM event logs. Note that the RAM log clears every time you boot the Host PC. 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Event Log and press Enter. The Event Log screen displays. You can clear both logs from the RAM or NVRAM screen. 2. Highlight Clear All Event Logs and press Enter. 3.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility Time Sync The Time Sync function adds two special features to SuperTrak. These functions include: • Setting the Time Zone (page 79) • Synchronizing Time with an Embedded Site (page 79) The Time Sync function does not replace or overwrite the regular date and time settings in the Host PC’s BIOS or OS. Setting the Time Zone To set the difference between the current time zone (the time zone in which you are) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT): 1.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Miscellaneous The Miscellaneous menu enables three useful functions on SuperTrak: • SAS Ready LEDs (page 80) • SGPIO Backplane (page 80) • Buzzer (page 80) SAS Ready LEDs The LEDs for SAS disk drives stay on continuously to show Ready status, except when the drive is processing a command. This function enables you to turn the LEDs off. To turn the SAS drive LEDs off: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Miscellaneous and press Enter. 2.
Chapter 4: SuperBuild™ Utility When the buzzer sounds, take the following actions: • Check your disk arrays and logical drives. • Check the Event Log. To silence the buzzer for the current trigger event, you must disable it. Also see “Managing Physical Drive Problems” on page 60 and “Managing Logical Drive Problems” on page 68. Enabling or Disabling the Buzzer To enable or disable the Buzzer: 1. In the Main Menu, highlight Miscellaneous and press Enter. 2. Highlight Buzzer and press Enter. 3.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 82
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO • Logging into WebPAM PRO (page 83) • Accessing the Interface (page 86) • Managing Users (page 92) • .
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Logging in over the Network You can log into WebPAM PRO from any PC with a network connection to the Host PC (where the SuperTrak EX Controller is installed). 1. Launch your Browser. 2. In the Browser address field, type the information provided below. Then press Enter. If you chose External SSL Security during installation (Windows, see page 26; Linux, see page 34), use the Secure Connection. Otherwise, use the Regular Connection.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Login Screen When the opening screen appears: 1. Type administrator in the User Name field. 2. Type password in the Password field. 3. Click the Login button. The User Name and Password are case sensitive. See Figure 1. Figure 1.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Accessing the Interface WebPAM PRO is browser-based RAID management software with a graphic user interface.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO There are four major parts to the WebPAM PRO interface: • Header (see page 87) • Tree View (see page 87) • Management View (see page 88) • Event Frame (see page 89) Using the Header The Header contains the following items: • Language – To choose a display language, see “Choosing a Display Language” on page 89. • Show/Hide Event Frame – To view the Event Frame, see “Viewing the Event Frame” on page 89.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Figure 3. WebPAM PRO Tree View Logged-in User Host PC, where the SuperTrak card is installed The Administrative Tools section is different for the Administrator and Super Users than for other users. The remainder of the Tree is the same for all users. Management View displays information according to the item you choose in Tree View.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Choosing a Display Language WebPAM PRO displays in the following languages: • English • Italian • Simplified Chinese • Japanese • Traditional Chinese • Korean • French • Spanish • German • Russian To change the display language: 1. Click the Language dropdown menu in the Header. 2. Highlight the language you prefer. WebPAM PRO displays in the chosen language. Viewing the Event Frame To view the Event Frame, click Show Event Frame in the Header.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual You can also view events by clicking the Subsystems clicking the Event tab in Management View. icon in Tree View, then Saving the Event Frame This function saves a copy of the events from the Event Frame as a text file on the Host PC’s hard drive. To save the event log: 1. In the Header, click Show Event Frame. 2. In the Event Frame, click the Save Events button. 3. In the File Download dialog box, click the Save button. 4.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Figure 4. The Storage Network appears in Tree View Added to WebPAM PRO Not added yet To view the Storage Network, click Show Storage Network in the Header. All networked systems will appear in Tree View. To hide the Storage Network, click Hide Storage Network in the Header. Only the networked systems you have added appear in Tree View. See “Adding a Subsystem or Host” on page 96.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Managing Users User Management includes all functions dealing with user accounts.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO You can also set user privilege under Subsystem/Host Management. See “Setting User Privilege” on page 97 and “Setting User Rights” on page 103. Making Your Own User Settings To change your own user settings: 1. Log into WebPAM PRO under your own user name. 2. Click the Administrative Tools 3. Click the User Management icon. icon. 4. Click the Settings tab in Management View. 5. Enter or change the display name or mail address. 6. Click the Submit button.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 8. Click the Submit button. Creating a User To create a user: 1. Log into WebPAM PRO as the Administrator or a Super User. 2. Click the Administrative Tools 3. Click the User Management icon. icon. 4. Click the Create tab in Management View. 5. Enter a user name in the User Name field. 6. Enter a password for this user in the New Password and Retype Password fields. A password is optional.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO 2. Click the Administrative Tools 3. Click the User Management icon. icon. 4. Click the Delete tab in Management View. 5. Check the box to the left of the user you want to delete. 6. Click the Submit button. 7. Click OK in the confirmation box.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Working with Subsystem/Host Management Subsystem/Host Management includes the following functions: • Viewing Subsystem/Host Information (page 96) • Adding a Subsystem or Host (page 96) • Deleting a Subsystem or Host (page 97) • Setting User Privilege (page 97) Viewing Subsystem/Host Information To view the Subsystem/Host List: 1. Click the Administrative Tools icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Subsystem/Host Management icon.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO 5. Do one of the following actions: • To create an in-band connection: Type the Host PC’s IP address into the address field. Choose this option for SuperTrak. Note that entries such as localhost or the Host PC’s network name do not work for this function. • 6. To create an out-of-band connection: Type the Subsystem’s management port IP address into the address field. Click the Submit button. The new Subsystem or Host PC is added to Tree View.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 3. click the IP address link of the Subsystem or Host you want to access. 4. Beside the name of the user whose privilege you want to change, choose the privilege level from the Privilege dropdown menu. For definitions of each privilege level, see “List of User Privileges” on page 94. 5. Click the Submit button. You can also set user privilege under User settings. See “Making User Settings” on page 92.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Managing Software Services Software Services include the following functions: • Viewing Service Status (page 99) • Changing Web Server Settings (page 99) • Restarting the Tomcat Server (page 100) • Setting up Email Service (page 100) • Setting up Extended SMTP (page 101) • Setting Event Frame Refresh Time (page 101) • Changing CIM Client Settings (page 102) • Changing CIM Server Settings (page 102) Viewing Service Status There are two software services:
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual The range is 1 to 1440 minutes. 15 minutes is the default. Session Time Out refers to the amount of time the connection remains active without any user interaction. After WebPAM PRO reaches the Time Out interval, you must log in again and begin a new session. 6. Click the Submit button. 7. In the confirmation box, type the word confirm in the field provided. 8. Click the OK button.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Setting up Extended SMTP To make Extended SMTP settings: 1. Click the Administrative Tools icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Software Management icon. 3. Click the Email tab in Management View. 4. Check the Enable ESMTP box to enable ESMTP. Uncheck the box to disable ESMTP. 5. Enter ESMTP user name in the field provided. 6. Enter a ESMTP password in the field provided. 7. When you are done, click the Submit button.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Changing CIM Client Settings The CIM client is part of the WebPAM PRO Utility Server. The Utility Server can be installed on any PC on the network. Only one CIM client and Utility Server installation is required. The CIM client works with CIM server. The CIM server is part of the WebPAMPRO Agent. The Agent must be installed on every host PC where the HBA RAID controller is installed to enable management over a network.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Managing the Host The Host is designated by its IP address:127.0.0.1. Host functions include: • Viewing Host Information (page 103) • Setting User Rights (page 103) • Refreshing the WebPAM PRO Screen (page 103) Viewing Host Information To view Host information, click the 127.0.0.1 icon in Tree View.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Managing the Subsystem Subsystem functions include: • Viewing Subsystem Information (page 104) • Clearing Statistical Data (page 105) • Setting an Alias for the Subsystem (page 105) • Viewing the Runtime Event Log (page 106) • Saving the Runtime Event Log (page 107) • Clearing the Runtime Event Log (page 107) • Viewing the NVRAM Event Log (page 107) • Saving the NVRAM Event Log (page 108) • Clearing the NVRAM Event Log (page 108) • Updating the Firmware (p
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Clearing Statistical Data Use this function to clear the statistical data registers for the controller, physical drives, and logical drives. To clear statistical data: 1. In Tree View, click the Subsystem icon. 2. In Management View, click the Information tab. 3. Click the Clear Statistics link. 4. Click the Submit button. 5. In the Confirmation dialog box, type confirm and click the OK button. Setting an Alias for the Subsystem An alias is optional.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 4. 5. Navigate to the directory where you saved the upgrade file, then click the upgrade file, and click the Open button. Click the Submit button. When the Flash Image Status shows Flash image completed, the firmware and BIOS have been updated. 6. Restart the Host PC. Checking Subsystem Health 1. 2. In Tree View, click the Subsystem icon. In Management View, click the Health tab.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO • Fatal – Non-Recoverable error or failure has occurred Saving the Runtime Event Log This function saves a copy of the runtime event log as a text file on the Host PC’s hard drive. To save the runtime event log: 1. In Tree View, click the Subsystem 2. From the dropdown menu on the Events tab, choose Runtime Events. icon. 3. At the bottom of the window, click the Save Event Log button. 4. In the File Download dialog box, click the Save button. 5.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Severity Definitions Each event is marked with a level of severity.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Viewing Current Background Activities To view the current background activities: 1. 2. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. Click the Background Activities tab in Management View.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 4. 5. 6. Highlight the following PDM trigger settings and type a value into the corresponding field: • Reassigned Block Threshold – 1 to 512 blocks • Error Block Threshold – 1 to 1024 blocks Check to enable or uncheck to disable the following functions: • Media Patrol – Checks the magnetic media on physical drives • Auto Rebuild – If there is a spare drive of adequate capacity, a critical disk array will begin to rebuild automatically.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO 3. In the next screen, click the Start button. Running PDM Predictive Data Migration (PDM) migrates data from the suspect physical drive to a spare disk drive, similar to Rebuilding. But unlike Rebuilding, PDM acts before the disk drive fails and your Logical Drive goes Critical. You an also run PDM on a specific disk array, see “Running PDM on a Disk Array” on page 140. Also see “Predictive Data Migration (PDM)” on page 184. To run PDM: 1.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 5. Click the option button for the Recurrence Pattern you want: • Daily • Weekly • Monthly 6. Click the Next button. 7. For a DAILY recurrence pattern, make the following setting: • Choose a Start Time for the activity, based on a 24-hour clock, from the dropdown menus. • Type the number of days between activities, from 1 to 255, into the Every days field.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO 10. For Redundancy Check only: • Choose the Auto Fix option. This feature attempts to repair the problem when it finds an error. • Choose the Pause on Error option. This feature stops the process when it finds an error • Check the boxes beside the logical drives (all except RAID 0) to which this activity will apply. Note: Each logical drive can have only one scheduled Redundancy Check. 11. Click the Submit button.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual • Physical Drive List – Device number, model, type, capacity, location, operational status, and configuration • Disk Array List – ID, alias, operational status, configurable capacity, and free capacity • Logical Drive List – Device number, alias, RAID level, capacity, ID, stripe size, sector size, and operational status • Spare Drive List – ID, operational status, physical drive ID, capacity, revertibility, type (global or dedicated), and dedicated to array 114
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Managing the Controller The RAID controller is the heart of the RAID storage system.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Controller information includes: • Controller ID (1 or 2) • Alias, if assigned* • Vendor • Model • Operational Status • Power On Time • Cache Usage (percent) • Dirty Cache Usage (percent) – Refers to data in the cache that is not yet saved to a physical drive • Part number • Serial number • Hardware revision number • WWN – World Wide Number of the controller • Manufacturing Date • SCSI protocols supported • Host Driver Version • BIOS Version •
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Controller information, continued: • SMART Polling Interval* • Write Back Cache Flush Interval* • Write Through Mode • Enclosure Polling interval* • Adaptive Writeback Cache* Items marked with an asterisk (*) are user adjustable. See “Making Controller Settings” on page 117. Viewing Controller Statistics To view controller statistics: 1. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Controllers icon. 3. Click the Controller 4.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual • Choose a coercion method from the Coercion Method dropdown menu. The choices are: • GBTruncate • 10GBTruncate • GRPRounding • TableRounding For more information, see “Capacity Coercion” on page 174. • Enter a time interval (1 to 12 seconds) in the Write Back Cache Flush Interval field. For more information, see “Choosing Cache Policy” on page 173. • Enter a time interval (15 to 255 seconds) in the Enclosure Polling Interval field.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO 3. Click the Controller 4. Click the Battery tab in Management View. icon. In normal operation, the operational status of the battery shows Fully Charged with a Reserve Capacity of 100%. If the battery is constantly recharging, its reserve capacity drops significantly, or the battery remains discharged, replace the battery. Also see “Viewing Enclosure Information” on page 121. Silencing the Buzzer To silence the buzzer for the current event: 1.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 4. 5. Click the Buzzer tab in Management View. Click the Sound button. The buzzer sounds a continuous tone. 6. Click the Mute button. The buzzer goes silent but remains enabled. Viewing Buzzer Information This function refers to the buzzer on the SuperTrak RAID controller card. To view buzzer information: 1. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Controllers icon. 3. Click the Controller 4. Click the Buzzer tab in Management View. icon.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Managing Enclosures This function of WebPAM PRO does not apply to the SuperTrak RAID controller card installed in the Host PC, except for one item: • Viewing Enclosure Information (page 121) Viewing Enclosure Information Enclosure information includes: • Enclosure ID • Enclosure Type – Virtual • SEP Firmware Version • Maximum number of Controllers, Physical Drive Slots, Fans, Blowers, Temperature Sensors, Power Supply Units, Batteries, and Voltage Sensors.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Managing Physical Drives Managing Physical Drives deals with the physical disk drives under the SuperTrak RAID controller, including the following functions: • Viewing a List of Physical Drives (page 122) • Locating a Physical Drive (page 122) • Making Global Physical Drive Settings (page 123) • Viewing Physical Drive Information (page 124) • Viewing Physical Drive Statistics (page 124) • Making Physical Drive Settings (page 125) • Forcing a Physical Drive Offli
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO To locate a physical drive in the enclosure, click the Locate PDx button. The LED for the carrier holding the physical drive will blink for one minute. Promise Enclosures To locate a physical drive in the VTrak JBOD enclosure, click the Locate PDx button. The disk status LED will blink for one minute to identify the carrier holding the physical drive. Figure 6.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual The functions you enable here depend on whether the physical drives support those functions. See “Viewing Physical Drive Information” on page 124 to determine which functions a particular drive supports. Viewing Physical Drive Information To view physical drive information: 1. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Enclosures icon. 3. Click the Enclosure 4. Click the Physical Drives 5. Click a Physical Drive icon. icon. icon.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Making Physical Drive Settings The only individual physical drive setting is an alias. An alias is optional. To set an alias for a physical drive: 1. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Enclosures icon. 3. Click the Enclosure icon. 4. Click the Physical Drives 5. Click a Physical Drive icon. icon. 6. Click the Settings tab in Management View. 7. Type an alias into the Physical Drive Alias field. Maximum of 32 characters.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Clearing Stale and PFA Conditions The Clear tab only appears when one or both conditions are present. • Stale – The physical drive contains obsolete disk array information. • PFA – The physical drive has errors resulting in a prediction of failure. Be sure you have corrected the condition by a physical drive replacement, rebuild operation, etc., first. Then clear the condition. To clear a Stale or PFA status from a physical drive: 1.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Managing Disk Arrays Disk Array Management includes the following functions: • Viewing Disk Arrays (page 127) • Locating a Disk Array (page 127) • Creating a Disk Array (page 128) • Deleting a Disk Array (page 134) • Viewing Disk Array Information (page 134) • Making Disk Array Settings (page 135) • Creating a Logical Drive (page 136) • Deleting a Logical Drive (page 137) • Migrating a Disk Array (page 138) • Rebuilding a Disk Array (page 139) • Ru
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Promise Enclosures To locate a disk array in a VTrak JBOD enclosure, click the Locate DAx button. The disk status LEDs will blink for one minute to identify the carriers holding the physical drives used by the disk array. Figure 7.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Creating a Disk Array – Automatic Configuration The Disk Array – Automatic Configuration option enables you to create a new disk array following a default set of parameters. One logical drive will be made automatically when you create the disk array. To create a Disk Array using the Automatic function: 1. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Disk Arrays icon. 3. From dropdown menu on the Create tab, choose Automatic.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Creating a Disk Array – Express Configuration The Disk Array – Express Configuration option enables you to choose the parameters for a new disk array by specifying the characteristics you want. With this method, you can create multiple logical drives at the same time you create your disk array. However, all of the logical drives will be the same. If you prefer to specific the parameters directly, use the Advanced option to create your disk array.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO • Logical Drives – The slot number of the logical drive(s), their RAID level, capacity, and stripe size • Spare Drives – The physical drive slot number of the dedicated hot spare assigned to this disk array (all RAID levels except RAID 0) If you accept these parameters, proceed to the next step. If you do NOT accept these parameters, review and modify your choices in the previous steps. 8. When you are done, click the Submit button.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Creating a Disk Array – Advanced Configuration The Disk Array – Advanced Configuration option enables you to directly specify all parameters for a new disk array. One logical drive will be made automatically when you create the disk array. If you specify less than the total available capacity, you can use the remaining space to create additional logical drives now or at a later time.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO This value will be the data capacity of the first logical drive in your new disk array. If you specify less than disk array's maximum capacity, the remainder will be available for additional logical drives which you can create later. 5. Specify a Stripe size from the dropdown menu. 64 KB, 128 KB, 256 KB, and 1 MB are available. 64 KB is the default. 6. Specify a Sector size from the dropdown menu. 512 B, 1 KB, 2 KB, and 4 KB are available. 512 B is the default. 7.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Deleting a Disk Array The Disk Arrays–Delete tab enables you to delete existing disk arrays. Caution If you delete a disk array, you also delete any logical drives that belong to it, along with the data in those logical drives. Back up any important data before deleting a disk array. To delete a disk array: 1. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Disk Arrays icon. 3. Click the Delete tab in Management View. 4.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO available. However, the logical drive has lost redundancy (fault tolerance). You must determine the cause of the problem and correct it. • Rebuilding – This condition is temporary. When a physical drive has been replaced, the logical drive automatically begins rebuilding in order to restore redundancy (fault tolerance). When a logical drive is rebuilding, it will function and your data is available. However, access will be slower due to the rebuilding operation.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Maximum of 32 characters. Use letters, numbers, one space between words, and underscore. An alias is optional. 6. To enable Media Patrol support, check the Media Patrol box. 7. To enable PDM support, check the PDM box. 8. Click the Submit button. Creating a Logical Drive When you create a disk array, you automatically create one logical drive also.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO The choices are Read Cache, Read Ahead, and No Cache. Read Ahead is the default. See “Choosing Cache Policy” on page 173. 11. From the Write Policy dropdown menu, choose a Write Cache policy for this logical drive. The choices are Write Through and Write Back. Write Back is the default. If you chose No Cache under Read Cache, this setting will be Write Through. See “Choosing Cache Policy” on page 173. 12.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual In the confirmation box, type the word confirm in the field provided. 7. Click the OK button. The chosen logical disappears from the Logical Drive List the Information tab. Migrating a Disk Array On SuperTrak, RAID level migration is performed on the disk array but it applies to the logical drives.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO To set Migration priority, see “Making Background Activity Settings” on page 109. Rebuilding a Disk Array When you rebuild a disk array, you are actually rebuilding the data on a replacement physical drive. Rebuilding Automatically Normally, a disk array would rebuild itself using a hot disk drive, after going Critical. However, if the Auto Rebuild function is disabled or no spare drives are available, you must initiate the procedure.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Running Media Patrol on a Disk Array Media Patrol checks the magnetic media on physical drives. When it finds the specified number of bad blocks, it will trigger PDM. See “Making Background Activity Settings” on page 109 and “Running PDM” on page 111. You can schedule Media Patrol to run automatically, see “Scheduling an Activity” on page 111. To start Media Patrol: 1. Click the Subsystem icon in Tree View. 2. Click the Disk Arrays icon. 3. Click the Disk Array 4.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Transitioning a Disk Array Transition is the process of replacing a revertible spare drive that is currently part of a disk array with an unconfigured physical drive or a non-revertible spare. The revertible spare drive returns to its original status. For more information, see “Transition” on page 185. In order to run the Transition function: • The spare drive must be Revertible.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 8. 9. After the Transition is complete, move the physical drives comprising the disk array to their new locations. Click the Refresh button in your Browser. The drives appear in their new locations and disk array status displays OK.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Managing Logical Drives Logical drives are made from disk arrays. In the Tree, you can see a graphic representation of the logical drives that belong to each array. You can see a summary of all logical drives in the subsystem under Logical Drive Summary.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual function and your data is available. However, access will be slower due to the rebuilding operation. To create a logical drive, see “Creating a Logical Drive” on page 136. To delete a logical drive, see “Deleting a Logical Drive” on page 137. For a Degraded or Offline logical drive, see “Critical & Offline Logical Drives” on page 189. Locating a Logical Drive Virtual or Third Party Enclosures Support for this feature depends on how your system or enclosure was set up.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO 5. Click the Logical Drive icon. To specify an Alias or set the Read and Write Policies, click the Settings tab. Logical Drive Status See “Logical Drive Status” on page 143. Logical Drive Synchronization Synchronization is an automatic procedure applied to logical drives when they are created. Yes means the logical drive was synchronized. Adjustable Items • Alias – Optional • Read Policy • Write Policy See “Changing Logical Drive Settings” on page 145.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Maximum of 32 characters. Use letters, numbers, one space between words, and underscore. An alias is optional. 8. From the Read Policy dropdown menu, choose a Read Cache policy. The choices are Read Cache, Read Ahead, and No Cache. See “Choosing Cache Policy” on page 173. 9. From the Write Policy dropdown menu, choose a Write Cache policy. The choices are Write Back and Write Through. If you chose No Read Cache, Write policy is automatically Write Through.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO To set Initialization priority, see “Making Background Activity Settings” on page 109. You can also start Initialization from the Subsystem Activities tab. icon, Background Running Redundancy Check Redundancy Check is a routine maintenance procedure for fault-tolerant disk arrays (those with redundancy) that ensures all the data matches exactly. Redundancy Check can also correct inconsistencies. You can also schedule a Redundancy Check.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 3. Click the Disk Array icon. 4. Click the Logical Drives 5. Click the Logical Drive icon icon. 6. Click the Check Table tab in Management View. 7. Click the option for the table you want to see. The default is All tables. If there are entries, they are listed as follows: • Entry Number – A number assigned to each block of entry. • Table Type – Read Check, Write Check or Inconsistent Block (see below).
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Managing Spare Drives When a physical drive in a disk array fails and a spare drive of adequate capacity is available, the disk array will begin to rebuild automatically using the spare drive. See “Critical & Offline Logical Drives” on page 189.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Creating a Spare Drive Important • There must be an unconfigured physical drive available to assign as a spare drive. See “Viewing a List of Physical Drives” on page 122. • Be sure the spare drive you choose has capacity equal to or greater than the smallest physical drive assigned to the disk array. To create a spare drive: 1. Click the Subsystem 2. Click the Spare Drives icon in Tree View. icon. 3. Click the Create tab in Management View. 4.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Deleting Spare Drive Note If an existing spare drive has the wrong parameters for your needs, click the Settings tab to change the parameters rather than delete the spare drive and create a new one. To delete a spare drive: 1. Click the Subsystem 2. Click the Spare Drives icon in Tree View. icon. 3. Click the Delete tab in Management View. 4. Check the box to the left of the spare drive you want to delete. 5. Click the Submit button.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Running Spare Check Spare Check verifies the operational status of your spare drives. You can also schedule a Spare Check. See “Scheduling an Activity” on page 111. To check a spare drive: 1. Click the Subsystem 2. Click the Spare Drives icon in Tree View. icon. 3. Click the Spare Check tab in Management View. 4. From the Physical Drive dropdown menu, choose the spare drive you want to check. Or choose All to check all the spare drives at the same time. 5.
Chapter 5: Management with WebPAM PRO Working with the Logical Drive Summary The Logical Drive Summary displays a list of all logical drives under the SuperTrak controller including logical drives in expanded or cascaded enclosures. This list does not arrange the logical drives under the disk array to which they belong nor under the enclosure in which they are located.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Viewing Individual Logical Drive Information 1. Click the Subsystem 2. Click the Logical Drive Summary icon in Tree View. 3. Click the Logical Drive icon. icon. The information and location for the logical drive appear in Management View. See Viewing Logical Drive Information (page 144).
Chapter 6: Technology Background • Introduction to RAID (below) • Choosing a RAID Level (page 168) • Choosing Stripe Block Size (page 172) • Choosing Sector Size (page 172) • Choosing Cache Policy (page 173) • Capacity Coercion (page 174) • Initialization (page 175) • Hot Spare Drive(s) (page 175) • Partition and Format the Logical Drive (page 176) • RAID Level Migration (page 176) • Media Patrol (page 184) • Predictive Data Migration (PDM) (page 184) • Transition (page 185) • Cri
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 0 – Stripe When a logical drive is striped, the read and write blocks of data are interleaved between the sectors of multiple physical drives. Performance is increased, since the workload is balanced between drives or “members” that form the logical drive. Identical drives are recommended for performance as well as data storage efficiency. Figure 1.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 1 – Mirror When a logical drive is mirrored, identical data is written to a pair of physical drives, while reads are performed in parallel. The reads are performed using elevator seek and load balancing techniques where the workload is distributed in the most efficient manner. Whichever drive is not busy and is positioned closer to the data will be accessed first.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 1E – Enhanced Mirror RAID 1E offers the security of mirrored data provided by RAID 1 plus the added capacity of more than two physical drives. It also offers overall increased read/ write performance plus the flexibility of using an odd number of physical drives. With RAID 1E, each data stripe is mirrored onto two physical drives. If one drive fails or has errors, the other drives continue to function, providing fault tolerance. Figure 3.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 5 – Block Striping with Distributed Parity RAID 5 organizes block data and parity data across the physical drives. Generally, RAID Level 5 tends to exhibit lower random write performance due to the heavy workload of parity recalculation for each I/O. RAID 5 is generally considered to be the most versatile RAID level. It works well for file, database, application and web servers. Figure 4.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 6 – Block and Double Parity Stripe RAID level 6 stores dual parity data is rotated across the physical drives along with the block data. A RAID 6 logical drive can continue to accept I/O requests when any two physical drives fail. Figure 5.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 10 – Mirror / Stripe Mirror/Stripe combines both of the RAID 0 and RAID 1 logical drive types. RAID 10 is similar though not identical to RAID 0+1. It can increase performance by reading and writing data in parallel while protecting data with duplication. The data on one drive pair is mirrored together, then striped over a second drive pair. Figure 6.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 50 – Striped Distributed Parity RAID 50 combines both RAID 5 and RAID 0 features. Data is striped across physical drives as in RAID 0, and it uses distributed parity as in RAID 5. RAID 50 provides data reliability, good overall performance, and supports larger volume sizes. Figure 7.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 50 Axles When you create a RAID 50, you must specify the number of axles. An axle refers to a single RAID 5 logical drive that is striped with other RAID 5 logical drives to make RAID 50. An axle can have from 3 to 16 physical drives, depending on the number of physical drives in the logical drive. The chart below shows RAID 50 logical drives with 6 to 16 physical drives, the available number of axles, and the resulting distribution of physical drives on each axle.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 50 Logical Drive No. of Drives No.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 60 – Striping of Double Parity RAID 60 combines both RAID 6 and RAID 0 features. Data is striped across disks as in RAID 0, and it uses double distributed parity as in RAID 6. RAID 60 provides data reliability, good overall performance and supports larger volume sizes. Figure 8.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 60 Axles When you create a RAID 60, you must specify the number of axles. An axle refers to a single RAID 6 logical drive that is striped with other RAID 6 logical drives to make RAID 60. An axle can have from 4 to 16 physical drives, depending on the number of physical drives in the logical drive. The chart below shows RAID 60 logical drives with 8 to 20 physical drives, the available number of axles, and the resulting distribution of physical drives on each axle.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 60 Logical Drive No. of Drives No.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Choosing a RAID Level There are several issues to consider when choosing the RAID Level for your logical drive. The following discussion summarizes some advantages, disadvantages and applications for each choice.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 1E Advantages Disadvantages Implemented as a mirrored logical drive whose segments are RAID 0 logical drives High I/O rates are achieved thanks to multiple stripe segments Can use an odd number of physical drives Very high physical drive overhead – uses only 50% of total capacity Recommended Applications for RAID 1E • Imaging applications • Database servers • General fileserver RAID 5 Advantages Disadvantages High Read data transaction rate Physical drive
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 6 Advantages Disadvantages High Read data transaction rate High physical drive overhead – equivalent of two drives used for parity Medium Write data transaction rate Slightly lower performance than RAID 5 Good aggregate transfer rate Safest RAID level Recommended applications for RAID 6: • Accounting/Financial • Database servers • Any application requiring very high availability RAID 10 Advantages Disadvantages Implemented as a mirrored logical drive whose
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 50 Advantages Disadvantages High Read data transaction rate Physical drive failure has a moderate impact on throughput Good write data transaction rate Very good aggregate transfer rate Most versatile RAID level Recommended applications for RAID 50: • File and Application Servers • Transaction Processing • Office applications with many users accessing small files RAID 60 Advantages Disadvantages High Read data transaction rate High disk overhead – equival
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Choosing Stripe Block Size You set the stripe block size, also called block size, when you create a logical drive. With SuperTrak, the choices are 64 KB, 128 KB, 256 KB, 512 KB, and 1024 KB. 64 KB is the default. Your choice will directly affect performance. There are two issues to consider when choosing the stripe block size. • Choose a stripe block size equal to or smaller than the smallest cache buffer found on any physical drive in your logical drive.
Chapter 6: Technology Background • Linux operating systems with the 2.6 kernel support 64-bit LBA. For these OSes, always choose the default 512 B sector size. See “Creating a Logical Drive” on page 65 and page 136, and “Creating a Disk Array – Advanced Configuration” on page 132. 2 TB Limitation If your Host PC runs Windows 2000 or Windows XP (32-bit), and you want to create logical drives larger than 2 TB, you must choose a sector size larger than 512 B when you create the logical drive.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Read Cache Policy • Read Cache – The read cache is enabled. • Read Ahead – The read cache and the read-ahead feature are enabled. Read-ahead anticipates the next read and performs it before the request is made. Can increase read performance. • No Cache – The read cache is disabled. Write Cache Policy • Write Back – Data is written first to the cache, then to the logical drive. Better performance.
Chapter 6: Technology Background Without Capacity Coercion, the controller will not permit the use of a replacement physical drive that is slightly smaller than the remaining working drive(s). Initialization Initialization is highly recommended for logical drives when they are created from a disk array. Initialization sets all data bits in the logical drive to zero. The action is useful because there may be residual data on the logical drives left behind from earlier configurations.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Whenever possible, having a hot spare drive in your RAID system is good protection against physical drive failure. Partition and Format the Logical Drive Like any other type of fixed disk media in your system, a RAID logical drive must also be partitioned and formatted before use. Use the same method of partitioning and formatting on an logical drive as you would any other fixed disk. See “Appendix A: Partition and Format” on page 203.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 0 A RAID 0 source logical drive can migrate to the following target logical drives: Target Requirements RAID 0 Add physical drives. RAID 1 2 physical drives only. Only a single-drive RAID 0 can migrate to RAID 1 by adding 1 physical drive. RAID 1E 3 or more physical drives. RAID 5 3 physical drives minimum, 16 maximum. RAID 0 must have less than 16 physical drives. RAID 6 4 physical drives minimum, 16 maximum. RAID 10 4 physical drives minimum.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 1 A RAID 1 Source logical drive can migrate to the following Target logical drives: Target Requirements RAID 0 None. RAID 1E 3 or more physical drives. RAID 5 3 physical drives minimum, 16 maximum. RAID 1 must have less than 16 physical drives. RAID 10 4 physical drives minimum. Even number of physical drives. RAID 50 6 physical drives minimum, 16 per axle maximum.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 5 A RAID 5 Source logical drive can migrate to the following Target logical drives: Target Requirements RAID 0 None. RAID 1E None. RAID 5 Add physical drives. 16 maximum. RAID 6 4 physical drives minimum, 16 maximum. RAID 10 4 physical drives minimum. Even number of physical drives. RAID 50 6 physical drives minimum, 16 per axle maximum. RAID 60 8 physical drives minimum, 16 per axle maximum.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual RAID 10 A RAID 10 Source logical drive can migrate to the following Target logical drives: Target Requirements RAID 0 None. RAID 1E None. RAID 5 3 physical drives minimum, 16 maximum. RAID 10 must have less than 16 physical drives. RAID 6 4 physical drives minimum, 16 maximum. RAID 10 must have less than 16 physical drives. RAID 10 Add physical drives. Even number of physical drives. RAID 50 6 physical drives minimum, 16 per axle maximum.
Chapter 6: Technology Background RAID 50 A RAID 50 Source logical drive can migrate to the following Target logical drives: Target Requirements RAID 0 None. RAID 1E None. RAID 5 16 physical drives maximum. RAID 50 must have less than 16 physical drives. RAID 6 16 physical drives maximum. RAID 50 must have less than 16 physical drives. RAID 10 Even number of physical drives. RAID 50 Add physical drives. 16 per axle maximum. RAID 60 8 physical drives minimum, 16 per axle maximum.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Important • The Target disk array may require more physical drives than the Source disk array • If the Target disk array requires an EVEN number of physical drives but the Source disk array has an ODD number, ADD a physical drive as part of the migration process • You cannot reduce the number of physical drives in your disk array, even if the Target disk array requires fewer physical drives than the Source disk array • RAID 1 (mirroring) works with two drives only.
Chapter 6: Technology Background Current LD Size Maximum LD Expansion Size 8 to 16 TB 16 TB 4096 bytes 4 to 8 TB 8 TB 2048 bytes 2 to 4 TB 4 TB 1024 bytes up to 2 TB 2 TB 512 bytes Sector Size At this point, you have the choice of: • Format the unpartitioned/unformatted capacity as a second logical drive • Delete the existing disk array and create a new one in the desired size Delete and Recreate If you require a logical drive larger than the maximum expansion size: 1. 2.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Media Patrol Media Patrol is a routine maintenance procedure that checks the magnetic media on each physical drive. Media Patrol checks all physical drives assigned to disk arrays and on spare drives. Media Patrol does not check unconfigured drives. Unlike Synchronization and Redundancy Check, Media Patrol is concerned with the condition of the media itself, not the data recorded on the media. If Media Patrol encounters a critical error, it triggers PDM if PDM is enabled.
Chapter 6: Technology Background the bad sector remapping table, which has a capacity of 512 reassigned blocks and 1024 error blocks. When the table fills to a specified percentage of its capacity, PDM triggers a migration of data from the suspect drive (the physical drive with the bad sectors) to a spare drive. During data migration, you will have access to the logical drive but it will respond more slowly to read/write tasks because of the additional operation.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual • The physical drive in channel 4 is a revertible spare drive. The physical drive in channel 2 fails. The disk array becomes degraded and its logical drives go critical. The SuperTrak controller automatically rebuilds the disk array using the revertible spare drive, the physical drive in channel 4. When the rebuild is finished, the disk array and logical drives are OK again. • The physical drives in channels 1 and 4 belong to the disk array.
Chapter 6: Technology Background Automatic Transition At this juncture, you would replace the failed drive in channel 2 with a new drive of the same or greater capacity. When the SuperTrak controller detects the new drive in channel 2, it will: • Transition the data from the drive in channel 4 to the drive in channel 2. • Return the drive in channel 4 to spare status. When the Transition is finished: • The physical drives in channels 1 and 2 belong to the disk array.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual The physical drive in channel 2 fails. The disk array becomes degraded and its logical drives go critical. The SuperTrak controller automatically rebuilds the disk array using the spare drive, the physical drive in channel 4. As we saw in the example of Automatic Transition, if you replace the failed physical drive in channel 2, the SuperTrak controller would transition the data from the physical drive in channel 4 to the new drive in channel 2.
Chapter 6: Technology Background Critical & Offline Logical Drives A fault-tolerant logical drive—RAID 1, 1E, 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60—goes critical when a physical drive is removed or fails. Due to the fault tolerance of the logical drive, the data is still available and online. However, once the logical drive goes critical, the logical drive has lost its fault tolerance, and performance may be adversely affected.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual • Sends email messages, per your configuration • Displays popup messages, per your configuration (below) • Keeps a record in the Event Log (below) 190
Chapter 6: Technology Background With a Hot Spare Drive When a physical drive in a disk array fails and a spare drive of adequate capacity is available, the disk array will begin to rebuild automatically using the spare drive. After the disk array rebuilds itself using the spare drive, you must replace the failed drive. To set up a spare drive, see “Creating a Spare Drive” on page 150.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual After a successful rebuild: • The alarm is silent • The logical drive’s Operational Status as OK • The rebuilt physical drive Status LED displays steady green 192
Chapter 7: Support • Frequently Asked Questions (below) • Contacting Technical Support (page 197) • Limited Warranty (page 199) • Returning the Product For Repair (page 201) Frequently Asked Questions This section lists frequently asked questions involving pre-installation, drive issues, installation, and post-installation.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Can I use ATAPI devices on the SuperTrak EX Series? No. The SuperTrak EX Series Controller does not support ATAPI devices. Will ACPI work with HDDs on the SuperTrak EX Series? Yes. The SuperTrak EX Series controller supports ACPI S1, S3 and S4 standby modes. What kind of PCI slots do the SuperTrak EX Series controllers use? SuperTrak EX Series controllers will work in a PCI-Express x8 slot or x16 slot.
Chapter 7: Support If I have a problem with one of the drives on the SuperTrak EX Series, how can I low-level format it to correct the problem? Do NOT do this! Low-level formatting hard physical drives is not only unnecessary but it generally does not correct problems commonly experienced during use. Errors such as bad sectors or ECC/CRC failure are best remedied by completely replacing the drive. For this reason, do NOT low-level format the drives attached to the SuperTrak EX Series controller.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Installation Issues (Capacity, Booting) How can I change the system boot sequence in order to boot from the SuperTrak EX Series logical drive? The boot sequence is controlled by the system BIOS. As far as the system BIOS is concerned, the SuperTrak EX Controller and defined logical drives are categorized as a SCSI device. This allows you to set the boot sequence in your BIOS setup utility to boot from SCSI first, rather than IDE.
Chapter 7: Support Why can’t I run WebPAM PRO in Konqueror? The Konqueror browser (Linux) does not support WebPAM PRO. Install a Netscape Navigator or Firefox browser. With that browser as the default, reinstall WebPAM PRO. Aren’t the WebPAM PRO icons supposed to be animated? Yes, they are animated. However, the default setting for Internet Explorer under Windows 2003 Server does not display animation in the browser. Go to Internet Options > Advanced and check Play animations in web pages.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual The Netherlands E-mail Support e-Support On-Line Fax Support +31 (0) 40 256 9463 Attn: Technical Support Phone Support +31 (0) 40 235 2600 If you wish to write us for support: Promise Technology Europe B.V.
Chapter 7: Support Taiwan E-mail Support e-Support On-Line Fax Support +886 3 578 2390 Attn: Technical Support Phone Support +886 3 578 2395 (ext. 8822 or 8823) If you wish to write us for support: Promise Technology, Inc. 2F, No. 30, Industry E. Rd. IX Science-based Industrial Park Hsin-Chu 30075, Taiwan (R.O.C.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual This warranty shall not apply to defects resulting from: a) improper or inadequate maintenance, or unauthorized modification(s), performed by the end user; b) operation outside the environmental specifications for the product; c) accident, misuse, negligence, misapplication, abuse, natural or personal disaster, or maintenance by anyone other than a Promise or a Promise-authorized service center.
Chapter 7: Support Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages for consumer products, so the above limitation may not apply to you. This warranty gives specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights that vary from state to state. This limited warranty is governed by the State of California.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Return ONLY the specific product covered by the warranty (do not ship cables, manuals, diskettes, etc.), with a copy of your proof of purchase to: USA and Canada: Promise Technology, Inc. Customer Service Dept. Attn.: RMA # ______ 47654 Kato Road Fremont, CA 94538 Other Countries: Return the product to your dealer or retailer. Contact them for instructions before shipping the product.
Appendix A: Partition and Format In order for your operating system to recognize and work with the physical drives attached to your SuperTrak EX Controller card, the drives must be partitioned and formatted.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 3. Click the Next button to start the Wizard. 4. In the following windows, choose Disk 1 to Initialize. Do not choose any disks to Convert. Click the Finish button to Initialize the logical disk. 5. Right-click the Unallocated portion of Disk 1 and choose New Partition... from the popup menu. The New Partition Wizard appears.
Appendix A: Partition and Format 6. Click the Next button to start the wizard. 7. In the following windows, do the following actions. Click Next to move to the next window. • 8.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual When formatting is complete, your logical disk will appear as a hard drive in the Disk Management window (above) and the My Computer window (below).
Appendix B: Upgrades • Updating SuperTrak BIOS and Firmware (page 207) • Updating WebPAM PRO (page 208) Updating SuperTrak BIOS and Firmware Follow this procedure to upgrade the BIOS and Firmware on your SuperTrak EX4650, EX8650, EX8654, or EX8658 Controller card. The SuperTrak card must be properly installed in your PC or server in order to perform the update. See “Installing the SuperTrak Card” on page 8 for more information. Downloading BIOS and Firmware File 1.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Updating WebPAM PRO Follow this procedure to upgrade the WebPAM PRO Software on your PC or server. Downloading the WebPAM PRO Update File 1. Go to the Promise website http://www.promise.com/support. 2. Click Downloads. 3. Click the Select Product popup menu and choose SuperTrak EX4350/ EX8650/EX8654/EX8658. 4. Click the Select Category popup menu and choose Utility. 5. Click the GO button. The list of the current WebPAM PRO software displays.
Appendix C: Battery Backup Unit The Battery Backup Unit (BBU) maintains power to the cache on the SuperTrak EX Controller card, when a power failure occurs to the Host PC. The failure could be due to a problem with the PC’s power supply, a cessation of electrical service, or an accidental disconnection of the power cable. When power is interrupted, any data in the controller’s cache is lost.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Installing the BBU Warning The electronic components on the SuperTrak EX Controller cards are sensitive to damage from Electro-Static Discharge (ESD). Observe appropriate precautions at all times when handling the SuperTrak card or its subassemblies. Warning Before installing the BBU onto SuperTrak EX Controller card, backup any important or useful data. Failure to follow this accepted PC practice could result in data loss.
Appendix C: Battery Backup Unit Figure 2. BBU module connectors on EX4650. Other models are similar SuperTrak EX Controller Battery Assembly BBU module connector 8. From the opposite side of the SuperTrak EX Controller card, insert and snug the three screws to secure the Battery Assembly. Figure 3. Three screws secure the Battery Assembly. The EX4650 is shown. Other models are similar Back of SuperTrak EX Controller Mounting screw 1 of 3 9.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual 10. Replace the screw holding the SuperTrak EX Controller card to the system case. 11. Attach the SAS multi-lane cables to the SuperTrak EX Controller card. 12. Replace the cover of your system. 13. Power-up the system and launch WebPAM PRO. See “Logging into WebPAM PRO” on page 83. After installation and power-up, a new battery takes several hours to charge. From that time, it should show Fully Charged. See “Viewing Battery Information” on page 118.
Appendix D: LED Backplane Connections To set up LED configuration for your enclosure or PC, make your backplane connections as shown below. You can make connections for: • Aggregate LEDs • Global LEDs in two colors • Direct connection – Individual fault and activity LEDs For SuperTrak EX8654 and EX8658, note that only the interior SAS Ports have individual LED pins. For more information, see “Installing the SuperTrak Card” on page 8 and the user manual for your PC or enclosure. Figure 1.
3.3 V 1 1 1 1 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω 1 330 Ω 1 1 330 Ω 330 Ω 1 330 Ω 2 214 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Fault and Activity LEDs Fault LEDs 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 pin pitch 2.54 mm for header 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 LED activity = Low SuperTrak Controller Card Backplane 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω 330 Ω Activity LEDs Backplane 3.3 V SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Figure 2.
Appendix D: LED Backplane Connections To set up your system for direct (fault and activity) LEDs, you must know how the SuperTrak’s firmware status corresponds to LED behavior. That relationship is shown in the table below.
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Index buzzer 80 information 120 settings 119 silencing 119 testing 119 Numerics 10GBTruncate 174 2 TB limitation 173 A About This Manual 1 add host 96 subsystem 96 Agent, WebPAM PRO 20, 97, 102 alias controller 117 disk array 62, 63, 132 logical drive 65, 67, 132, 136 physical drive 125 subsystem 105 Auto Rebuild enable 110 axles RAID 50 163 RAID 60 166 specify number 66, 132 C capacity disk array 61 logical drive 65, 132, 136 physical drive 59 spare drive 69, 150 capacity coercion defined 174 settings
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual D drivers diskette 42 downloading 41 RedHat Linux 51 SuSE Linux 52 USB memory stick 42 Windows 2000 49 Windows Server 2003 Windows Vista 43 Windows XP 47 dedicated spare drive 175 degraded logical drive 143 delete disk array 63, 134 Event Frame 90 host 97 logical drive 67, 137 scheduled activity 113 spare drive 75, 151 subsystem 97 user 94 disk array capacity 61 create 16, 62 create advanced 132 create automatically 129 create express 130 create manually 132 delete 63, 134
Index Extended SMTP 101 information, cont.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Linux installing drivers 51, 52 installing WebPAM PRO 29 list disk arrays 61 logical drives 64 physical drives 59, 122 scheduled activities 111 spare drives 73, 149 locate disk array 127 logical drive 144, 153 physical drive 122 logging into WebPAM PRO 37, 83 logging out of WebPAM PRO 91 logical drive 2 TB limitation 173 axles 66, 132 capacity 18, 65, 132, 136 check table 147 create 17, 65, 136 critical 68, 189 degraded 143 delete 67, 137 information 64, 143, 144, 154 initia
Index overview of SuperTrak 2 problems logical drive 68, 189 physical drive 60, 189 Product Overview 2 P partition logical drive 176, 203 password change 93 WebPAM PRO 38, 85 PCI-Express slot 8, 210 PDM and Media Patrol 184 defined 184 running on a physical drive 111 running on disk array 140 triggers 110, 184 PFA condition 126 physical drive alias 125 capacity 59 capacity coercion 118, 174 configuration status 124 failure 189 find failed 70 force offline/online 125 global settings 123 information 59,
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Read Check Table 148 reassigned block threshold setting save, cont.
Index spare drive capacity 69, 150 create 73, 150 dedicated to array 74, 150 dedicated to disk arrays 149 defined 175 delete 75, 151 information 73 list 73, 149 physical drive ID 73 revertible 74, 149, 150 settings 74, 151 spare check 152 status 73, 149 specifications 6 stale condition 126 statistics clear 105 controller 117 logical drive 145 physical drive 124 status disk array 61, 62, 134 email 99 logical drive 62, 64, 65 logical drives 143 physical drive 59, 124, 135 spare drives 73, 149 subsystem 106 w
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Time Sync 79 Tomcat server 100 Transition automatic 187 defined 185 disk array 141 manual 187 settings 109 transport, prepare disk array Tree View 87 troubleshooting 189 W warranty 199 web server settings 99 status 99 WebPAM PRO Agent 20, 97, 102 alias for subsystem 105 background activity run 110 schedule 111 settings 109 battery information 118 browser support 3, 21 buzzer 119 CIM client settings 102 CIM server settings 102 components 20 controller info 115 settings 117
Index WebPAM PRO, cont. event frame refresh 101 extended SMTP 101 External SSL Security option WebPAM PRO, cont.
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual Windows installing drivers 43–50 installing WebPAM PRO 22 write cache policy defined 174 logical drive 65, 67, 133, 137 Write Check Table Y yellow ! 226 189 148
