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3Ware 9550SX Series User Manual

Other manuals for 9550SX Series: User Manual, User Manual, Quick Install Manual, User Manual

Summary of 9550SX Series

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    3ware ® serial ata raid controller supports the 9550sx models pn 720-0126-02 november 2005 user guide.

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    Copyright ©2004-2005 applied micro circuits corporation (amcc). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the proper written consent ...

  • Page 3: Table of Contents

    Www.3ware.Com i table of contents about this guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V how this guide is organized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

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    Ii 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 browser requirements for 3dm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 setting up mozilla . . . . . ...

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    Www.3ware.Com iii specifying a hot spare through 3bm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 enabling and disabling the unit write cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137 enabling and disabling the unit write cache through 3dm . . . . . . . . . . ....

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    Iv 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide cancelling a rebuild and restarting it with a different drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185 verifying units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186 verifying a unit through 3dm ....

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    Www.3ware.Com v about this guide 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide provides instructions for configuring and maintaining your 3ware 9550sx controller. This guide assumes that you have already installed your controller in your system. If you have not yet done so, see 3ware 9550sx ser...

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    Vi 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 2. Getting started provides a summary of the steps required to install and set up your 3ware raid controller. 3. First-time raid configuration using 3bm provides step-by-step instructions for configuring raid units if you have just installed the ...

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    Conventions www.3ware.Com vii conventions the following conventions are used through this guide: 3bm and 3bm 2 both refer to the 3ware bios manager, version 2. 3dm and 3dm 2 both refer to the 3ware disk manager, version 2. In the sections that describe using 3dm, current controller is used to refer ...

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    Viii 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

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    Www.3ware.Com 1 1 introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 3ware 9550sx controllers are part of the amcc 3ware 9000 series serial ata family of controllers. This chapter introduces the features and concepts of the 9000 series as a whole, and the 9550sx in particular. It includes the following s...

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    Chapter 1. Introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 2 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide what’s new with the 3ware 9550sx controllers enhancements and changes in version 9.3 of the software for the 3ware 9000 series controllers include the following features and benefits for the...

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    System requirements www.3ware.Com 3 operating system 3ware raid controllers may be used with: windows 2000, windows xp, windows server 2003, both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 red hat linux, 32-bit and 64-bit x86 suse linux, 32-bit and 64-bit x86 fedora core other versions of linux using the open source lin...

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    Chapter 1. Introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 4 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide understanding raid concepts and levels 3ware raid controllers use a redundant array of inexpensive disks (raid) to increase your storage system’s performance and provide fault tolerance (pro...

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    Understanding raid concepts and levels www.3ware.Com 5 available raid configurations the following raid levels and configurations are available for drives attached to a 3ware raid controller: raid 0 raid 1 raid 5 raid 10 raid 50 single disk jbod hot spare raid 0 provides striping, but no mirroring o...

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    Chapter 1. Introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 6 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide raid 1 also known as a mirrored array. Mirroring is done on pairs of drives. Mirrored disk arrays write data to two drives using raid 1 algorithms (see figure 2). This gives your system faul...

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    Understanding raid concepts and levels www.3ware.Com 7 raid 10 this array is a combination of raid 1 with raid 0. Striped and mirrored arrays for fault tolerance and high performance. Requires a minimum of four drives to use both raid 0 and raid 1 techniques. When drives are configured as a striped ...

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    Chapter 1. Introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 8 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide single disk a single drive that has been configured as a unit through 3ware software. (3bm, 3dm 2, or cli). Like disks in other raid configurations, single disks contain 3ware disk control b...

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    Understanding raid concepts and levels www.3ware.Com 9 drive capacity considerations the capacity of each drive is limited to the capacity of the smallest drive in the array. The total array capacity is defined as follows: through drive coercion, the capacity used for each drive is rounded down so t...

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    Chapter 1. Introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 10 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide as spares for each other. The capacity used for each drive is rounded down to the nearest gb for drives under 45 gb (45,000,000,000), and rounded down to the nearest 5 gbytes for drives ove...

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    3ware tools for configuration and management www.3ware.Com 11 3bm (3ware bios manager) 3bm is a bios level tool for creating, deleting, and maintaining disk arrays, rebuilding arrays, designating hot spares, and setting controller policies. 3bm is the tool most frequently used to configure units imm...

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    Chapter 1. Introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 12 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting features several 3ware raid controller features aid in monitoring and troubleshooting your drives. Smart monitoring (self-monitoring, analysis a...

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    Monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting features www.3ware.Com 13 battery backup unit (bbu) installed, the cache stored on the 3ware controller can be restored. Storsave profiles allow you to set the level of protection versus performance that is desired for a unit when write cache is enabled (...

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    Chapter 1. Introducing the 3ware® 9000 series controller 14 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

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    Www.3ware.Com 15 2 getting started with your 3ware raid controller setting up your 3ware raid controller involves these main steps: physically install the controller and drives configure the raid unit and drives install the driver and make the operating system aware of the new drives set up manageme...

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    Chapter 2. Getting started with your 3ware raid controller 16 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide cli for configuration, go ahead and boot to the os, install the driver and the 3dm 2 software, and then configure your units. You may want to refer to the following information: chapter 6...

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    Www.3ware.Com 17 table 4: initial default settings for policies policy default value where to change controller-level settings auto-rebuild enabled 3bm, 3dm, cli auto-carving disabled 3bm, 3dm, cli carve size 2048 cli drives per spinup 1 3bm, cli delay between spinup 6 seconds 3bm, cli export unconf...

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    Chapter 2. Getting started with your 3ware raid controller 18 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

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    Www.3ware.Com 19 3 first-time raid configuration using 3bm if you will install the operating system on and boot from a unit managed through the new 3ware raid controller, follow the steps in this chapter to use the 3ware bios manager (3bm) to configure the unit and install the driver. If the operati...

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    Chapter 3. First-time raid configuration using 3bm 20 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide to launch 3bm 1 power up or reboot your system. 2 while the system is starting, watch for a screen similar to figure 5. Figure 5. 3ware bios screen 3 press alt-3 immediatelyto bring up the 3ware ...

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    Basic steps for creating a unit www.3ware.Com 21 5 if you plan to make changes to your configuration and need to backup data before continuing, press esc and do so now. Otherwise, press any key to continue. Figure 7. Warning message when you start 3bm to select the drives and create a disk unit 1 se...

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    Chapter 3. First-time raid configuration using 3bm 22 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3 make sure that the proper drives are listed. Figure 9. Create disk array display, raid 0 example to select the desired raid configuration 1 (optional) press enter in the array name field and ty...

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    Basic steps for creating a unit www.3ware.Com 23 figure 11. Stripe sizes for a raid 5 to set other parameters for the unit while creating a unit through 3bm, you can set several parameters that effect the unit (write cache, drive queuing mode, and continue on error when rebuild), and you can select ...

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    Chapter 3. First-time raid configuration using 3bm 24 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3 if you have additional drives, go ahead and configure an additional raid unit or designate a hot spare. Then continue on with these steps. (for details about hot spares, see page 25.) 4 if you ...

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    Specifying a hot spare www.3ware.Com 25 trade-offs to cancelling initialization: raid configurations that begin initialization automatically will not be fault tolerant until initialization is complete. Performance of these units will be lower until initialization is complete. When initializing is do...

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    Chapter 3. First-time raid configuration using 3bm 26 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide if a hot spare is already enabled, you can disable it by following the same process. Note: in order to replace a failed drive in a degraded unit, a hot spare drive must have the same or larger st...

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    What next? Www.3ware.Com 27 what next? The final steps in setting up your raid units are to load the 3ware driver and make the units available to your operating system. For details, turn to chapter 4, “driver installation.” after installing the driver, you may also want to install 3ware’s browser-ba...

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    Chapter 3. First-time raid configuration using 3bm 28 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

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    Www.3ware.Com 29 4 driver installation the final steps in setting up your raid units are to load the 3ware driver and make the units available to your operating system. If the unit you have created will be your system's boot device, you install the driver for the controller as you install the operat...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 30 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide driver installation under windows note: before installing the 3ware driver, you must have already physically installed your 3ware raid controller in the system. Consult the 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller qu...

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    Driver installation under windows www.3ware.Com 31 creating a 3ware driver diskette if you are installing windows on a new unit or drive managed by the 3ware raid controller, you must create a 3ware driver diskette. To create a driver diskette 1 insert the 3ware software cd into your system. 2 when ...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 32 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 6 if the “digital signature not found” message appears, click yes to continue the installation. (if there are multiple controllers in the system, you will see this message once for each controller.) 7 continue with ...

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    Driver installation under windows www.3ware.Com 33 1 click the next button and respond to the questions the wizard displays using the default selections. 2 when the wizard prompts you to select a device driver, click have disk, and then indicate that it is on the cd or floppy. 3 if the “digital sign...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 34 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 7 when the second completing the found new hardware screen appears, click finish. Figure 17. Completing found new hardware wizard after the driver has been installed, continue with the instructions under “making uni...

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    Driver installation under windows www.3ware.Com 35 3 if the “digital signature not found” message appears, click yes to continue the installation. 4 when the completing the found new hardware wizard screen appears (figure 19), click finish. Figure 19. Completing found new hardware wizard 5 if the “c...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 36 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 7 when the second completing the found new hardware screen appears, click finish. Figure 21. Completing found new hardware wizard after the driver has been installed, continue with the instructions below under “maki...

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    Driver installation under windows www.3ware.Com 37 making units managed by a 3ware controller available to windows after the 3ware driver has been installed, you need to partition and format the new units or disks. 1 remove the driver diskette or cd, reboot the system, and log in as the system admin...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 38 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide driver installation under linux note: before installing the 3ware driver, you must have already installed your 3ware raid controller in the system. Consult the 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller quick install g...

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    Driver installation under linux www.3ware.Com 39 obtaining 3ware linux drivers obtain the 3ware driver for linux from one of these two sources: 3ware software cd-rom . Compiled and tested drivers for red hat and suse linux are included on this cd. 3ware web site. You can download the latest compiled...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 40 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide determining the current version of your 3ware driver if you already have a 3ware controller installed, you can check the current driver version, using either 3dm 2, 3bm 2, or the cli. (for details, see “viewing info...

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    Driver installation under linux www.3ware.Com 41 3 in the 3ware driver & firmware disk images menu, click the button for the driver disk you want to create. A confirmation window opens. 4 insert a blank diskette into a drive and click the yes button to begin creating the driver floppy diskette. Note...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 42 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 5 when prompted, select the proper language and keyboard types for your locality. 6 if asked for what type of media, select local cd-rom since you are installing from the red hat cd-rom. Installing the 3ware driver ...

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    Driver installation under linux www.3ware.Com 43 module naming conventions 3w-9xxx.* refers to the specific module you will copy in the examples shown in steps 3 and 4. The name of the module you will copy ( 3w-9xxx.* ) varies, depending on the kernel; however you will always copy it to a file named...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 44 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 7 if you are using the grub boot loader, skip to step 8. If you are using the lilo boot loader, run lilo to update the boot record on disk by typing the following: /sbin/lilo the output should be similar to: added l...

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    Driver installation under linux www.3ware.Com 45 driver installation under suse linux materials required 3ware software cd-rom floppy diskette, if you need to make a driver diskette. Suse linux installation cd-rom/dvd (not required if suse linux is already installed on another drive.) creating a sus...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 46 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3 insert the 3ware linux driver installation diskette. 4 click ok and continue with the installation. Installing the 3ware driver on a suse linux system that boots from a different device 1 log in as root. 2 edit /e...

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    Driver installation under linux www.3ware.Com 47 note: if the driver installation fails, confirm that the correct driver was installed from the cd-rom. If a driver is not available for your system, you will need to compile your own driver. For more information, see 3ware knowledgebase article 14546 ...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 48 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide driver installation under freebsd note: before installing the 3ware driver, you must have already installed your 3ware raid controller in the system. Consult the 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller quick install...

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    Driver installation under freebsd www.3ware.Com 49 installing the driver under freebsd the steps you follow to install the driver and make your raid unit available depend on whether it will be your boot device. These instructions provide step-by-step instructions for the following situations: “insta...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 50 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 8 load the driver from the floppy. For example, if the floppy drive is disk0, type load disk0:twa.Ko 9 run boot . The system should now be able to boot. 10 after the system boots up, do the following: a create a dir...

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    Driver installation under freebsd www.3ware.Com 51 7 at the loader prompt, run lsdev to make sure the floppy drive has been discovered. 8 run load disk0:twa.Ko (assuming disk0 is the floppy drive) 9 run boot . The system should now be able to boot. 10 after the system boots up, change the kernel bui...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 52 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide specifying 0 in the above line prints no debug messages, whereas specifying 10 prints a lot of debug messages. 11 rebuild the kernel and install the new kernel. 12 reboot with the rebuilt kernel. Installing the 3war...

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    Driver installation under freebsd www.3ware.Com 53 f edit the file " files.I386 " and add the lines shown below dev/twa/tw_cl_fwimg.C optional twa dev/twa/w_cl_init.C optional twa dev/twa/tw_cl_intr.C optional twa dev/twa/tw_cl_io.C optional twa dev/twa/tw_cl_misc.C optional twa dev/twa/tw_osl_cam.C...

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    Chapter 4. Driver installation 54 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

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    Www.3ware.Com 55 5 3ware bios manager 2 (3bm 2) this section describes the basics of using 3ware bios manager 2 (3bm 2), one of the tools you can use to configure and maintain the units connected to your 3ware 9550sx raid controller. For information about doing particular tasks in 3bm, refer to the ...

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    Chapter 5. 3ware bios manager 2 (3bm 2) 56 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3 press alt-3 immediatelyto bring up the 3ware bios manager (3bm). Normally your 3ware configuration remains on-screen for just a few seconds. However, if a unit has degraded, the screen indicates the probl...

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    Exiting the 3bm configuration utility www.3ware.Com 57 note: if you have a combination of 7000/8000-series and 9000-series controllers in your system, the 7000/8000-series controllers are not listed on the selection screen shown in figure 24. Instead, an additional bios summary will appear for the 7...

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    Chapter 5. 3ware bios manager 2 (3bm 2) 58 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide working in the 3bm screens the main 3bm screen (figure 26) shows the current configuration for the drives attached to your controller, and a list of any available drives. Unusable and incomplete drives are ...

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    Working in the 3bm screens www.3ware.Com 59 listed here in other units, you must first delete them. For more information, see “deleting a unit” on page 150. If any of the sections are not shown, it means that there are no items of that type connected to the controller. Table 5 lists how to move arou...

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    Chapter 5. 3ware bios manager 2 (3bm 2) 60 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide return to starting values for this session in the 3ware bios manager f6 note: f6 cannot bring back previous policy settings; they are saved when you exit the policy screen. Rescan the controller and update ...

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    Adjusting bios loading settings www.3ware.Com 61 adjusting bios loading settings 3bm 2 includes the following settings that let you customize the behavior of the bios for the selected 9550sx controller. You can access these settings by selecting settings > bios settings from the main 3bm screen. Pow...

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    Chapter 5. 3ware bios manager 2 (3bm 2) 62 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide to change bios settings 1 on the main 3bm screen, tab to settings and press enter. 2 on the pop-up menu, select bios and press enter. The bios options settings screen appears. Figure 27. Bios option setting...

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    Displaying controller information www.3ware.Com 63 displaying controller information the controller information screen shows you details about your controller, and about the version of associated software installed on your system. To see the controller information 1 on the main 3bm screen, tab to in...

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    Chapter 5. 3ware bios manager 2 (3bm 2) 64 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

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    Www.3ware.Com 65 6 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) note: 3dm 2 includes software developed by the openssl project for use in the openssl toolkit ( http://www.Openssl.Org/ ). 3ware disk manager 2 (3dm 2) allows you to manage and view the status of 3ware raid controllers and associated drives. 3dm runs as ...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 66 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide browser requirements for 3dm 3dm runs in most current web browsers. Tested and supported browsers include: mozilla 1.2 and above internet explorer 5.5 and above firefox 1.02 and above netscape 7 and above add...

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    Installing 3dm www.3ware.Com 67 installing 3dm 3dm 2 can be installed from the main 3ware cd that came with your 3ware raid controller. You can also download the current version from the website at http://www.3ware.Com/support/download.Asp . 3dm must be installed on the system in which the controlle...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 68 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide to allow remote administration, uncheck the second checkbox. When the second checkbox is checked, only localhost connections are allowed. Internet and intranet connections are not allowed. (you can change thi...

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    Installing 3dm www.3ware.Com 69 in the sender field, enter the email address from which the email notifications will be sent. This is typically the local host name. (you can change these settings later within 3dm.) scsi figure 30. 3dm e-mail notification preferences 7 continue with the installation ...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 70 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide notes: you can start 3dm later by choosing 3dm2 from the start/ programs/3ware/3dm2 menu. If you change, add, or remove an ip address, or change the machine name of the machine on which you have installed 3dm...

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    Installing 3dm www.3ware.Com 71 to specify initial setup for 3dm 2 during installation, you will be prompted with a series of questions that determine initial 3dm settings. You can change these later, from within 3dm. (the first question appears for linux, but not for freebsd.) 1 was rpm used to ins...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 72 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide uninstalling 3dm under linux or freebsd to uninstall 3dm for linux or freebsd 1 insert the 3ware software installation cd-rom into the cd-rom drive. 2 mount the cd-rom disk: mount /dev/cdrom /mnt 3 change the...

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    Starting 3dm and logging in www.3ware.Com 73 starting 3dm and logging in 3dm runs as a service under windows, and as a daemon under linux. It is a good idea to leave 3dm running on the system that contains your 3ware raid controller. That way email alerts can be sent by 3dm, and administrators can m...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 74 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide viewing 3dm remotely via a standard web browser when remote administration is enabled, you can use 3dm to check status and administer your 3ware raid controller from a browser on any computer, over an interne...

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    Working with the 3dm screens www.3ware.Com 75 working with the 3dm screens 3dm’s features are organized on a series of pages you view in your browser. After you log in to 3dm, the summary page shows a list of controllers installed in the computer at the url you specified. Note: if you expect to see ...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 76 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3dm menus the 3dm menu bar groups access to a number of 3dm pages on menus, and provides direct link access to others. Figure 33. 3dm menu bar status information is available from the information menu. You ca...

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    Working with the 3dm screens www.3ware.Com 77 viewing information about different controllers in 3dm if you have more than one controller in the system, you select the one you want to see details about from the drop-down list at the right of the menu bar. This drop-down is available on all pages tha...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 78 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide unit information page shows a list of the units on the current controller and provides summary information about each unit. To see this page, choose information > unit information from the menu bar or click a...

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    Setting up 3dm preferences www.3ware.Com 79 setting up 3dm preferences the 3dm 2 settings page lets you define preference settings that affect the overall operation of 3dm. Most of these settings are specified initially during installation of 3dm. On the 3dm 2 settings page you can perform the follo...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 80 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3 type the current password in the current password field. If you are changing the password for the first time, the factory-set default password is 3ware . 4 enter the new password in the new password field a...

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    Setting up 3dm preferences www.3ware.Com 81 enter the e-mail address(es) to which notifications are sent. (separate multiple addresses with a comma (,) or a semicolon (;). Enter the smtp server name or ip of your mail server. 3 click save e-mail settings. To send a test message you can send a test m...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 82 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide setting the incoming port # you can set the port which 3dm uses to listen for incoming messages. If you are not sure which port would be the best to use, leave this set to the default port of 888. To set the ...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 83 3dm 2 reference this section includes details about the fields and features available on the pages you work with throughout 3dm 2. It is organized by page, as the pages are organized on the 3dm menu bar. Controller summary page controller details page unit informatio...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 84 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide note: the software version shown in the screenshots in this manual are preliminary examples only. For the current released and tested version number, refer to the 9000 release notes. The summary page appears ...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 85 controller details page figure 35. Controller details page the controller details page appears when you choose information > controller details from the menu bar. The controller details page provides detailed information about the controller specified in the drop-dow...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 86 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide unit information page figure 36. Unit information page the unit information page appears when you choose information > unit information from the menu bar, or when you click an id number on the controller summ...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 87 note: 3dm 2 displays the capacity (in mbytes or gbytes) the same way that microsoft windows and linux operating systems do: as 1kb = 1024 bytes. Previous versions of 3dm 1.X used the 1kb = 1000 bytes definition. Consequently capacities of units listed under 3dm v 1.X...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 88 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide details of a unit. To return to the list of units, click unit information in the menu bar. The unit details page shows details about a particular unit. The specific information shown depends on what type of u...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 89 drive information page figure 38. Drive information page the drive information page appears when you choose information > drive information from the menu bar, or when you click a port # on the unit details page. If you arrive at this page from the port # hyperlink on...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 90 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide removed. (in the event of a problem, the status shown for the drive can be useful to customer support.) note: in most cases, the status of the drive will not correspond to the status of the unit, shown on the...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 91 extra drive information ncq supported and ncq enabled. Some drives support ncq (native command queuing), which can result in increased performance for some applications, usually server-type applications. In order to make use of native command queuing, the feature mus...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 92 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide controller settings page figure 40. Controller settings page the controller settings page appears when you choose management > controller settings from the menu bar. The controller settings page lets you view...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 93 processing time will be given to background tasks rather than i/o. The furthest right buttons set the firmware to the slowest background rates, giving maximum processing time to i/o. For additional information, see “about background tasks” on page 169. Unit policies ...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 94 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide available.) when this policy is set, ecc errors are ignored when they are encountered during a rebuild. When this policy is not set, a rebuild will abort upon encountering an ecc error and the unit will be se...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 95 other controller settings for 9000-series controllers, the other controller settings displays information about additional settings, most of which can only be changed in the bios (3bm). For more information see “viewing and setting controller policies” on page 117. T...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 96 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide for additional information, see “viewing and setting controller policies” on page 117. Scheduling page figure 41. Scheduling page for 9000-series controllers, the scheduling page appears when you choose manag...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 97 you can also enable or disable use of the schedule for the selected background tasks by selecting either follow schedule or ignore schedule. When these schedules are set to be ignored, these tasks can be performed at any time, and are not restricted to the scheduled ...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 98 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide udma mode may be downgraded from ata 150 to ata 133, to ata 100, to 66, to 33. This check is also done every time the system is booted. Check smart thresholds. This test checks to see whether smart thresholds...

  • Page 109

    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 99 the maintenance page lets you perform maintenance tasks on existing units on the current controller (shown in the drop-down list on the menu bar), and lets you create new units by configuring available drives. Information about the maintenance page is organized under...

  • Page 110

    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 100 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide in addition, if there is a unit with the status inoperable before a rescan (for example, a raid 5 unit missing 2 or more drives), and a rescan finds drives that complete the unit, the inoperable unit will be...

  • Page 111

    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 101 drive information port. The port to which the drive is connected. Model. The model of the drive. Capacity. The capacity (size) of the drive. Status . The status of the drive: ok, not supported, not present, and so forth. If you need help regarding a status displayed...

  • Page 112

    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 102 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide note: if the unit has not previously been initialized and you click verify unit, the initialization process starts. Initialization cannot be halted, so no stop verify link appears. (initialization can be pau...

  • Page 113

    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 103 after you have specified changes to the unit, the unit maintenance screen reflects your changes and shows the percentage of migration completed. While the unit is migrating, you can still access the unit as normal but the performance will be lower. You can adjust th...

  • Page 114

    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 104 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide warning: physically removing drives which are not in hotswap carriers can result in a system hang or may even damage the system and the drive. Delete unit. Deletes the selected unit and allows you to use the...

  • Page 115

    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 105 and then click create unit. You will be prompted to select the unit type, name, stripe size (if applicable), and unit policy settings. A window like the one in figure 43 shows the drives you selected, and lets you specify configuration settings. Figure 43. Configuri...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 106 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide the default stripe size of 64kb will give the best performance with applications that have many sequential reads and writes. A larger stripe size will give better performance with applications that have a lo...

  • Page 117

    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 107 alarms page figure 45. Alarms page the alarms page appears when you click monitor > alarms on the menu bar. This page displays a list of aens (asynchronous event notifications) received from the controller displayed in the drop-down list in the menu bar. Up to 1000 ...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 108 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide clear alarms. The clear alarms button removes all alarms shown in the list. Sev. Shows the severity of the event. Three levels are provided: errors are shown next to a red box warnings are shown next to a ye...

  • Page 119

    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 109 serial number . Indicates the bbu serial number. Bbu ready. Indicates if the bbu is able to backup the 3ware raid controller or not. If the bbu is “ready”, write cache can be enabled on the 3ware raid controller. When the status is not “ready,” write caching is auto...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 110 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide generated based on the measured temperature. In the case of a temperature error, the bbu status will change to “fault” and the battery will be disconnected electronically. Estimated backup capacity. Indicate...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 111 3dm 2 settings page figure 47. 3dm 2 settings page the 3dm 2 settings page appears when you click 3dm 2 settings on the menu bar. Use this page to set preferences, including email notification for alarms, passwords, page refresh frequency, whether remote access is p...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 112 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide warning will send e-mail for alarms with severity of warning and error. A severity of error will send e-mail for alarms with severity of error. Sender. Enter the email address which will appear in the “from”...

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    3dm 2 reference www.3ware.Com 113 http settings listening port. This field specifies the http: port to be used by 3dm when listening for communications. The default port setting is 888. If you change this port, make sure the port you specify is not being used. Failure to do so will cause 3dm to stop...

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    Chapter 6. 3ware disk manager (3dm 2) 114 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

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    Www.3ware.Com 115 configuring your controller this section describes how to view details about the controller, check it’s status, and change configuration settings that affect the controller and all of the drives connected to it. It is organized into the following sections: viewing information about...

  • Page 126

    Chapter 7. Configuring your controller 116 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide for more information about this page, see “controller summary page” on page 83. 2 to see details about a particular controller, click the id link for that controller. The controller details page appears. Fo...

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    Viewing and setting controller policies www.3ware.Com 117 viewing and setting controller policies the following controller-wide policies can be adjusted as appropriate for your equipment. Export jbod (unconfigured) disks. This setting indicates whether jbod disks should be exported to the operating ...

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    Chapter 7. Configuring your controller 118 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide as the carvesize) is created as multiple chunks that can be addressed by the operating system as separate volumes. The default carvesize is 2 tb. The carvesize can only be changed using the cli, however the...

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    Viewing and setting controller policies www.3ware.Com 119 to view controller polices in 3bm you can also view and change these controller polices in 3bm, as shown in figure 49. 1 on the main 3bm screen, tab to settings and press enter. 2 on the pop-up menu, select controller policies and press enter...

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    Chapter 7. Configuring your controller 120 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide if jbod disks are not exported to the operating system, they will appear as available drives in 3dm, and can be configured as single disks or spares, and included in other raid configurations. If you change...

  • Page 131

    Viewing and setting controller policies www.3ware.Com 121 disabling write cache on unit degrade note: this procedure applies only to 9500s controllers. For 9550sx controllers, this feature is integrated into the storsave profile. You can choose whether you want the write cache to be automatically di...

  • Page 132

    Chapter 7. Configuring your controller 122 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide the main use of auto-carving is to gain use of the full capacity in units greater than 2 tb. This is because windows 2000, windows 2003, windows xp, and freebsd 4.X, do not currently recognize unit capacity...

  • Page 133

    Viewing and setting controller policies www.3ware.Com 123 the default of 2 tb, up to 8 individual 2 tb volumes will be created from the unit. For example, a 5 tb unit would become 3 volumes; two 2 tb volumes and one 1 tb volume. (after creating as many volumes as possible of the specified carvesize,...

  • Page 134

    Chapter 7. Configuring your controller 124 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide enabling auto-rebuild allows you to add a drive to the controller and have it be available for a rebuild, without having to specify it as a spare. (for 9500s controllers, you need to tell the controller to ...

  • Page 135

    Www.3ware.Com 125 configuring units a unit is any configured disk or array of disks connected to your 3ware raid controller. This section includes instructions for performing the following configuration tasks: creating a new unit creating a hot spare enabling and disabling the unit write cache setti...

  • Page 136

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 126 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide unit policies that affect how the unit will be handled you can make some types of changes to the raid configuration later, and you can change the unit name and the unit policies. For details, see “changing an existin...

  • Page 137

    Creating a new unit www.3ware.Com 127 stripe size, if appropriate for the raid level in general, smaller stripe sizes are better for sequential i/o, such as video, and larger stripe sizes are better for random i/o (such as databases). Striping size is not applicable for raid 1, because it is a mirro...

  • Page 138

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 128 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide figure 51. 3dm maintenance page 1 in 3dm, choose management > maintenance. 2 in the available drives list, select the drives you want to include in the unit by marking the checkbox in front of the port number for eac...

  • Page 139

    Creating a new unit www.3ware.Com 129 figure 52. Configuring a unit in 3dm 4 in the window, select the raid configuration you want. 5 if stripe size applies to the raid type you select, select a stripe size. 6 optional: in the name box, enter a name for the unit (up to 21 characters, including dashe...

  • Page 140

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 130 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide in linux, a device node will now be associated with each unit created. In windows, the device manager will reflect the changes under the disk drives icon. 10 partition and format the unit. Steps will vary depending o...

  • Page 141

    Creating a new unit www.3ware.Com 131 figure 55. Asterisks next to selected drives 2 after all drives for the unit are selected, tab to the create unit button and press enter. Tip: you can also press alt-c to choose create unit. 3 on the 3ware disk array screen, make sure that the proper drives are ...

  • Page 142

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 132 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 7 tab to the field stripe size and select the desired striping size (16, 64, or 256 kb). Figure 58. Stripe sizes for a raid 5 8 (optional) tab through the policy fields and make any appropriate changes to the setting...

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    Creating a new unit www.3ware.Com 133 11 type y to continue, delete any existing data on the drives, and create the unit. 12 partition and format the units, as described under “partitioning and formatting units” on page 133. Note: for raid 5 units with 5 or more disks, and raid 50 units with a subun...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 134 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide b select storage. C select disk management. 4 follow the steps that appear on-screen to write a signature to the drive. 5 right-click on the drive and select create volume. 6 follow the steps that appear on-screen to...

  • Page 145

    Creating a hot spare www.3ware.Com 135 creating a hot spare you can designate an available drive as a hot spare. If a redundant unit degrades and a hot spare the size of the degraded disk (or larger) is available, the hot spare will automatically replace the failed drive in the unit without user int...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 136 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide specifying a hot spare through 3bm 1 on the main 3bm screen, in the list of available drives, highlight the drive you want to use. 2 type s to specify that the selected drive will be the hot spare. You’ll see the wor...

  • Page 147

    Enabling and disabling the unit write cache www.3ware.Com 137 enabling and disabling the unit write cache write cache is used to store data locally in memory on the drive before it is written to the disk drive media, allowing the computer to continue with its next task. Enabling write cache results ...

  • Page 148

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 138 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide enabling and disabling the unit write cache through 3dm 1 choose management > controller settings from the menu bar in 3dm. 2 in the unit policies section of the controller settings page, check the write cache box to...

  • Page 149

    Setting the storsave profile for a unit www.3ware.Com 139 5 press enter to display the choices, use the arrow keys to select the setting you want, and press enter again to choose it. 6 tab to the ok button and press enter to select it. You return to the main 3bm screen. 7 when you are finished makin...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 140 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide fua (force unit access) . Fua commands are a way that the raid controller or a program (such as a database program) can ensure that data is actually written to the disk drive media, and is not stored in cache. When a...

  • Page 151

    Enabling or disabling queuing for a unit www.3ware.Com 141 setting the storsave profile through 3dm 1 choose management > controller settings from the menu bar in 3dm. 2 in the unit policies section of the controller settings page, select the profile you want to use from the drop-down list in the st...

  • Page 152

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 142 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide in order to make use of ncq, the feature must be enabled at both the drive and the controller. You can enable support for ncq in the 3ware 9550sx controller on a per-unit basis, as described below. You can see whethe...

  • Page 153

    Setting other unit policies through 3dm www.3ware.Com 143 setting other unit policies through 3dm for 9000-series controllers, you can enable or disable two other unit policies: auto-verify and configure on source error during rebuild. (for details about these unit policies, see the 3dm reference se...

  • Page 154

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 144 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide changing an existing configuration with 3ware 9000 series raid controllers you can convert one raid configuration into another while the unit is online. This process is known as raid level migration (rlm). Note: unit...

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    Changing an existing configuration www.3ware.Com 145 figure 63. Raid level migration example typically, a unit is reconfigured with the same or more storage capacity. Sometimes additional drives are added. The following table shows valid reconfigurations, some of which will require the addition of m...

  • Page 156

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 146 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide note: once migration starts, the unit stays in the migrating state until the migration process is complete. The migration process cannot be aborted, and must be allowed to finish before a rebuild or verify to the uni...

  • Page 157

    Changing an existing configuration www.3ware.Com 147 expanding unit capacity can be accomplished while the unit is online, without experiencing any data loss. This process is also referred to as online capacity expansion (oce). To expand a unit’s capacity 1 in 3dm 2, choose management > maintenance....

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 148 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide note: this step can only be done after the system has completed the migration or online capacity process. The operating system will not see the capacity until that process is complete. To inform the operating system ...

  • Page 159

    Naming a unit www.3ware.Com 149 naming a unit units attached to 9000-series controllers can be given unique names to more easily identify them. A unit can be assigned a name when it is created. The name can also be added or changed later. Naming a unit through 3dm 1 make sure the appropriate control...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 150 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide deleting a unit you delete a unit—either an array of disks, or a single disk—when you want to reconfigure the unit, or use the drives for other purposes. After you delete a unit, the drives appear in the list of avai...

  • Page 161

    Deleting a unit www.3ware.Com 151 4 in 3dm, choose management > maintenance. 5 in the unit maintenance table on the maintenance page, select the unit you want to remove and click delete unit (figure 64). Figure 64. Deleting a unit through 3dm 6 when a message asks you to confirm, click ok. Configura...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 152 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide figure 65. Unit successfully deleted through 3dm deleting a unit through 3bm 1 at the main 3bm screen, select the unit in the list of exportable units by highlighting it and pressing enter or space. An asterisk appea...

  • Page 163

    Deleting a unit www.3ware.Com 153 figure 66. Deleting a unit in 3bm 4 tab to the ok button and press enter. You return to the main 3bm screen, and the drives associated with the unit now appear in the list of available drives. Remember: the unit is not actually deleted and no data is overwritten unt...

  • Page 164

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 154 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide removing a unit removing a unit allows you to safely remove drives from a controller in order to move the unit to another controller or to store the drives for safekeeping purposes. This process is sometimes referred...

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    Removing a unit www.3ware.Com 155 under windows, go to start > administrative tools > computer management, and select disk management. Remove the logical drive letter for the unit. Under linux and freebsd, you can unmount the unit with this command: umount 3 in 3dm, choose management > maintenance. ...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 156 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3 tab to the maintain unit button and press enter. 4 in the pop-up menu, select remove and press enter. You can now physically remove the drives and move them to another controller. If you have a hot swap carrier, yo...

  • Page 167

    Moving a unit from one controller to another www.3ware.Com 157 unlocking drives configured on a 9500s controller when drives are configured into a unit on a 9500s controller, they become locked for use with 9500s series controllers. If you want to use these drives on an older 3ware controller, a non...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 158 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide warning: drives configured on the 9500s controllers cannot be used with older 3ware controllers, non-3ware controllers, or directly on the motherboard without first deleting the existing configuration to unlock the d...

  • Page 169

    Moving a unit from one controller to another www.3ware.Com 159 to move legacy jbod units under windows 1 install the 9000 controller in your system, while leaving the 8000 controller installed. 2 install the windows driver. (for details, see “driver installation under windows” on page 30.) 3 power d...

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    Chapter 8. Configuring units 160 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide to move a secondary storage unit from a 9500s to a 9550sx controller 1 power down the computer. 2 remove the 9500s controller. 3 install the 9550sx controller in the computer. 4 attach the drives that were on the 950...

  • Page 171

    Removing a drive www.3ware.Com 161 the drive will appear in the list of available drives. You can now use it in a new raid configuration, or as a replacement drive in the event that another drive degrades. If you want to use this drive as a spare, see “creating a hot spare” on page 135. Removing a d...

  • Page 172

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 162 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide to remove a drive 1 in 3dm, choose management > maintenance. On the maintenance page, remove drive links appear next to all drives that can be removed from units, and next to drives in the available drives list. 2 lo...

  • Page 173

    Rescanning the controller www.3ware.Com 163 figure 68. Result of removing drive from unit in 3dm rescanning the controller when you make a change by physically adding or removing drives or units, you can have 3dm rescan the controller to update the list of units and available drives shown on the mai...

  • Page 174

    Chapter 8. Configuring units 164 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 2 on the maintenance page, click rescan controller. 3dm scans the controller for information about units and drives, and updates the information shown on the maintenance page. To rescan the controller through 3bm 1 f...

  • Page 175

    Www.3ware.Com 165 9 maintaining units 3ware raid controllers include a number of features in the firmware that help maintain the integrity of your drives, check for errors, repair bad sectors, and rebuild units when drives degrade. In addition, 3ware bios manager (3bm) and 3ware disk manager (3dm) p...

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    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 166 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide figure 69. Drilling down to check status information for details about specific pages with summary and detailed status information, see these topics in the 3dm reference section: “controller summary page” on page 83 ...

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    Reviewing alarms and errors www.3ware.Com 167 reviewing alarms and errors 3dm provides several levels of detail about events: a summary log of all alarms on the alarms page a detailed error listing, available for download from the controller details page smart data for individual drives viewing alar...

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    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 168 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide downloading an error log you can download an error log containing information from the firmware log. This can be useful when troubleshooting certain types of problems. For example, you might want to send the saved fi...

  • Page 179

    About background tasks www.3ware.Com 169 about background tasks background tasks are maintenance tasks that help maintain the integrity of your drives and data. These tasks include initialization of new units rebuilds when units have become degraded unit verification migration of an on-line raid fro...

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    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 170 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide occurs. (for more information, see “setting background task rate” on page 175.) you can also postpone initialization until a scheduled time. (for details, see “scheduling background tasks” on page 176). Note: units t...

  • Page 181

    About background tasks www.3ware.Com 171 initialization of raid 1, raid 10 will take place automatically the first time the unit is verified. Initialization of a raid 1 unit results in data from one disk (the disk on the lower channel number) being copied to the other disk. In raid 10 units, data fr...

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    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 172 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide when the initialization is complete, the unit is guaranteed to be redundant again. The initialization does not erase user data. About rebuilds fault tolerant raid units provide data redundancy by duplicating informat...

  • Page 183

    About background tasks www.3ware.Com 173 verification is useful because it can provide early warning of a disk drive problem or failure. For example, if the verification process encounters many error locations, it may be an indication of an excessive number of grown defects on the drive. This allows...

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    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 174 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide rewrites the redundant data to the error location to force the drive to reallocate the error location. A notification of repair is posted. The result is a restoration of drive and data integrity; the primary and redu...

  • Page 185

    About background tasks www.3ware.Com 175 about self-tests two self-tests can be set, to check whether udma mode can be upgraded, and whether smart thresholds have been exceeded. Initially, these tests are set to run every 24 hours. You can change the schedule for when they are run, and you can disab...

  • Page 186

    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 176 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide scheduling background tasks you can set up scheduling windows for when background tasks can occur, so that routine maintenance of storage media occurs at times that will be least likely to interfere with peak i/o tim...

  • Page 187

    Scheduling background tasks www.3ware.Com 177 scheduled task duration if a rebuild completes within a scheduled time, it will not start over come next schedule time block, unless someone degrades the unit and starts another rebuild on the unit in the meantime. Rebuilds occur at the scheduled time wh...

  • Page 188

    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 178 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide turning on or off use of a task schedule turning on the schedule for rebuild/migrate and verify tasks forces rebuilds, migrates, and verifies to be performed only during the time specified by the schedule. If the sch...

  • Page 189

    Scheduling background tasks www.3ware.Com 179 removing a task schedule by default, daily task schedules are defined, each starting at 12:00 am and running for 24 hours. A maximum of seven schedules can be defined. When seven schedules are shown for any of the tasks, you must remove a schedule before...

  • Page 190

    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 180 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 5 click the add new slot button. The page refreshes and the new schedule is added to the list. Note: the scheduled tasks can be added in any order. For example a new task scheduled for tuesday (slot-2) will preempt t...

  • Page 191

    Rebuilding units www.3ware.Com 181 rebuilding units if a hot spare is specified and a redundant unit degrades, an event notification is generated and the hot spare dynamically replaces the failed drive in the redundant unit without user intervention. The rebuild process will automatically be launche...

  • Page 192

    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 182 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide rebuilding a unit through 3dm when a drive on a unit degrades, you replace it with an available drive and then rebuild the unit. For units on 9550sx controllers, if auto-rebuild is enabled and a drive is available, s...

  • Page 193

    Rebuilding units www.3ware.Com 183 rebuilding units through 3bm when a raid unit becomes degraded, it is marked as such, and the drive(s) that failed are marked as not in use in the 3bm screens. Figure 70, shows an example of how a degraded raid 5 unit appears in 3bm. Figure 70. Degraded raid 5 arra...

  • Page 194

    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 184 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 3 if your degraded unit has a drive indicated as not in use, the drive may still be usable. Try rebuilding with the not in use drive intact. Simply select the unit (highlight it and press enter) and then select the r...

  • Page 195

    Rebuilding units www.3ware.Com 185 figure 73. Rebuild disk array screen 5 press enter to select the ok button to continue. You are returned to the main screen; “rebuilding” appears next to the unit you selected. 6 press f8 to save your changes and exit 3bm. The unit will begin rebuilding about ten m...

  • Page 196

    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 186 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide verifying units for redundant units, verify checks the redundancy of the unit. For example it will check parity for a raid 5 or check data consistency for a raid 1. If the unit you checked is not a redundant unit, ve...

  • Page 197

    Verifying units www.3ware.Com 187 verifying a unit through 3dm 1 in 3dm, choose management > maintenance. 2 in the unit maintenance section of the maintenance page, select the unit you want to verify and click verify unit. 3dm puts the selected unit in verifying mode. If verify scheduling is not ena...

  • Page 198

    Chapter 9. Maintaining units 188 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide notes: if a unit that requires initialization has not previously been initialized, selecting verify unit starts initialization. This is because fault-tolerant units cannot be verified until after they are initialized...

  • Page 199

    Www.3ware.Com 189 10 maintaining your controller this section contains instructions for how to perform tasks that help you maintain your controller, including: determining the current version of your 3ware driver updating the driver and firmware viewing battery information testing battery capacity d...

  • Page 201

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 191 6 when details about the download you requested appear, click the link for the item you want to download. Depending on the item you selected, you may see either .Zip (for windows) or .Tgz (for linux/freebsd) files to download. 7 read and agree to th...

  • Page 202

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 192 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide to update the 3ware driver and firmware using the update utility 1 download and extract the driver files, as described on page 190. 2 backup any critical data prior to updating the 3ware driver. 3 log in t...

  • Page 203

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 193 if either your driver or firmware are current, the screen reflects that. . Figure 77. Update utility showing drivers already current if the firmware image is not found with the driver files, you will see an error message, and the 3ware driver/firmwa...

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    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 194 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide figure 79. Update utility showing only driver available note: if you have multiple controllers in your system, your screen will look slightly different, so that you can update the firmware for one or all c...

  • Page 205

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 195 7 if a dialog box prompts you to restart your computer, click yes to do so. (if you were working from a driver diskette, be sure to remove the floppy diskette before windows reboots.) 8 if the driver you are installing is unsigned, you will receive ...

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    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 196 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide when the 3ware driver/firmware update dialog box appears, it lists the number of controllers in your system, shows available updates for the device driver, and available firmware updates for the first cont...

  • Page 207

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 197 5 in the control panel window, double-click on the system icon. 6 click on the hardware tab and then click on the device manager tab. 7 open the scsi and raid controllers selection. 8 locate and double-click on the applicable 3ware serial ata raid c...

  • Page 208

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 198 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 11 if your system has windows xp service pack 2, the first screen asks whether you want to connect to windows update. Select “no, not this time” and click next. Figure 82. Windows xp service pack 2 windows...

  • Page 209

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 199 13 at the next screen (figure 84) choose “don’t search. I will choose the driver to install” and click next. Figure 84. Search for driver screen 14 when the select the device driver screen appears (figure 85), click the have disk… button. Figure 85....

  • Page 210

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 200 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 15 when the install from disk dialog box appears (figure 86), enter the correct path name to the driver. If you created a driver diskette, insert it now. (the path will be a: if you are using a diskette in...

  • Page 211

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 201 18 when the completing the hardware update wizard screen appears, click finish. 19 if you are prompted to restart the system, do so. Shortly after clicking finish, or after the machine reboots, the first screen of the hardware update wizard appears ...

  • Page 212

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 202 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 21 when the second completing the found new hardware screen appears, click finish. Figure 89. Completing found new hardware wizard.

  • Page 213

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 203 updating the 3ware driver under red hat 1 download and extract the driver, as described on page 190. 2 backup any critical data prior to updating the 3ware driver. 3 change the directory to the location with the extracted driver. 4 copy the files to...

  • Page 214

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 204 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide for red hat smp mkinitrd –v –f initrd- smp.Img smp for red hat bigmem mkinitrd –v –f initrd- bigmem.Img bigmem for red hat hugemem mkinitrd –v –f initrd- hugmem.Img hugmem 7 if you are using lilo, run lilo...

  • Page 215

    Updating the driver and firmware www.3ware.Com 205 7 complete the upgrade by upgrading the initial ramdisk. (skip to step 10 if you prefer to use insmod 3w-9xxx.O, instead.) make sure the file / etc/sysconfig/kernel contains the following line: initrd_modules=”3w-9xxx” note: other modules may be lis...

  • Page 216

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 206 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 5 load the driver kldload twa.Ko if units are present, you should see unit information in the system log (usually, /var/log/messages ). 6 if you wish to load the driver automatically every time the system ...

  • Page 217

    Viewing battery information www.3ware.Com 207 viewing battery information the battery backup unit (bbu) is an add-on card that can be attached to a 3ware 9000 raid controller to supply power from a battery pack in the event of a system power loss. This allows the controller to use write-caching for ...

  • Page 218

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 208 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide testing battery capacity batteries in the bbu need to be replaced periodically. A battery test should be run every four weeks in order to get a reliable estimate of battery capacity, and to determine when ...

  • Page 219

    Testing battery capacity www.3ware.Com 209 figure 91. Bbu information screen while battery is testing to test the battery in a bbu in 3bm 1 at the main 3bm screen, tab to the bbu button and press enter. 2 tab to test battery capacity and press enter. Figure 92. Battery backup information screen in 3...

  • Page 220

    Chapter 10. Maintaining your controller 210 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

  • Page 221

    Www.3ware.Com 211 11 troubleshooting for support, troubleshooting tips, frequently asked questions, software releases, and compatibility information related to 3ware raid controllers, refer to: 3ware support page at: http://www.3ware.Com/support/ 3ware knowledgebase: http://www.3ware.Com/kb/kb.Asp 3...

  • Page 222

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 212 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide problems and solutions hardware installation q1: the 3ware bios screen never appears. The 3ware raid controller may not be installed properly. Reinstall the hardware and reboot. There may also be a problem with the mo...

  • Page 223

    Problems and solutions www.3ware.Com 213 remember that creating or deleting a raid unit overwrites any existing data on the member drives. Reinstall your operating system. If you installed your operating system when you installed the 3ware raid controller, you may have made a mistake in installing t...

  • Page 224

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 214 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide aen messages aen (asynchronous event notifications) are messages issued by the 3ware raid controller when an error is detected such or when an action is completed. These are summarized in table 10. Descriptions of eac...

  • Page 225

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 215 00fh smart threshold exceeded 019h drive removed 01ah drive inserted 01eh unit inoperable 01fh unit operational 020h prepare for shutdown (power-off) 021h downgrade udma mode 022h upgrade udma mode 023h sector repair completed 024h buffer integrity test failed 025h cac...

  • Page 226

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 216 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 03ah drive power on reset detected 03bh rebuild paused 03ch initialize paused 03dh verify paused 03eh migration paused 03fh flash file system error detected 040h flash file system repaired 041h unit number assignments...

  • Page 227

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 217 aen error message details 001h controller reset occurred the 3ware raid controller has detected a soft reset from the device driver. If the 3ware raid controller fails to respond to the device driver within a reasonable amount of time, the device driver may issue a sof...

  • Page 228

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 218 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 005h rebuild completed the 3ware raid controller has successfully completed a rebuild. The completion of the rebuild changes the state of the array from rebuilding to ok. The data is now redundant. 006h incomplete uni...

  • Page 229

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 219 drive is a failure of a command that is pending from the 3ware raid controller to complete within a reasonable amount of time. If the 3ware raid controller detects this condition, it notifies the user, prior to entering the recovery phase, by displaying this aen. Possi...

  • Page 230

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 220 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide attached to the 3ware raid controller is monitored daily. If a failure of any drive is determined to be likely, the user is notified by this aen. 3ware recommends that you replace any drive that has the smart attribut...

  • Page 231

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 221 possible causes of udma crc errors are bad interface cables or cable routing problems through electrically noisy environments (e.G., cables are too close to the power supply). 022h upgrade udma mode during the self-test, if a drive is found to not be in the optimal udm...

  • Page 232

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 222 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide typically, the lost cached write notification would be an indication of a catastrophic failure of the drives in the array, such as loss of power to multiple drives in an array. 026h drive ecc error reported this aen m...

  • Page 233

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 223 02ah verify failed this aen indicates that the data integrity verification function (see aen 029h) has terminated with an error. For each raid level being verified, this may mean: single, jbod, and spare. A single drive returned an error, possibly because of a media de...

  • Page 234

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 224 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 030h drive not supported 3ware 8000 and 9000 series serial ata controller only support ultradma- 100/133 drives when using the parallel to serial ata converter. This aen indicates that an unsupported drive was detecte...

  • Page 235

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 225 039h buffer ecc error corrected this aen will be sent when the controller has detected and corrected a memory ecc error. 03ah drive power on reset detected if the controller detects that a drive has been power-cycled, it will send this aen. The controller may degrade t...

  • Page 236

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 226 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide configuration parameters which are lost will then return to their default values. 041h unit number assignments lost the 3ware raid controller tries to keep the unit numbers persistent across soft resets. This aen will...

  • Page 237

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 227 047h battery voltage is too low the battery backup unit measures and evaluates the battery pack voltage on a continuous basis. If the voltage is too low to operate, this aen will be posted to the user. This indicates that the battery pack must be replaced. The battery ...

  • Page 238

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 228 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide 04dh battery temperature is too high the battery backup unit measures and evaluates the battery pack temperature on a continuous basis. If the temperature is too high to operate, this aen will be posted to the user. T...

  • Page 239

    Aen messages www.3ware.Com 229 053h battery capacity test is overdue the recommended time interval for running the battery capacity test is once every 4 weeks. If a battery capacity test has not been completed in the last 4 weeks this aen will be sent to the host, and once every week thereafter. 055...

  • Page 240

    Chapter 11. Troubleshooting 230 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide threshold. This indicates that the battery pack should be replaced soon because the battery is becoming weak. 05dh battery health check failed the battery backup unit periodically evaluates the health of the battery a...

  • Page 241

    Www.3ware.Com 231 a glossary 3bm 2. 3ware bios manager. The 3ware bios (basic input output system) manager is a basic interface used to view, maintain, and manage 3ware controllers, disks, and units, without having to boot the operating system. 3bm is included with the controller and is updated when...

  • Page 242

    Appendix a. Glossary 232 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide configuration . The raid level set for a unit. Controller id number. The unique scsi number in the windows environment, or the channel number in the linux environment, of a particular controller. Typically assigned by the op...

  • Page 243

    Www.3ware.Com 233 to another controller. Compare to delete, which erases all unit configuration information from the drive. Exportable unit or drive . In 3bm (bios), exportable units and drives are those that will be available to the operating system when you boot your computer. Fault tolerant . A r...

  • Page 244

    Appendix a. Glossary 234 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide migration. The process of changing the characteristics of a unit. The change can be to expand the capacity of the array (oce), change the stripe size of the array, change the array from redundant to non-redundant, or to chan...

  • Page 245

    Www.3ware.Com 235 remove a unit. The process of making a unit unavailable to the controller and the operating system. After a unit is removed it can be hot swapped out of the system.This is sometimes referred to as exporting a unit. Rlm (raid level migration). The process of using an existing unit o...

  • Page 246

    Appendix a. Glossary 236 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

  • Page 247

    Www.3ware.Com 237 b compliance and conformity statements federal communications commission 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 provid...

  • Page 248

    Appendix b. Compliance and conformity statements 238 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide microsoft windows hardware quality lab (whql) amcc is committed to microsoft windows hardware quality labs (whql) certification for all its products. However, a product’s software drivers are typi...

  • Page 249

    Www.3ware.Com 239 c warranty, technical support, and service limited warranty raid controller hardware. 3-year hardware warranty: amcc warrants this product against defects in material and workmanship for a period of thirty-six (36) months from the date of original purchase. Amcc, at no charge and a...

  • Page 250

    Appendix c. Warranty, technical support, and service 240 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide exclusions this warranty does not cover any damage to this product which results from accident, abuse, misuse, natural or personal disaster, or any unauthorized disassembly, repair or modifica...

  • Page 251

    Amcc technical support and services www.3ware.Com 241 please use the original packing material contents of the box when exchanging or returning a product. For information about the status of a replacement, please contact amcc technical support. Amcc technical support and services product information...

  • Page 252

    Appendix c. Warranty, technical support, and service 242 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.

  • Page 253: Index

    Www.3ware.Com 243 index numerics 2tb auto-carving 117 2tb support 121 3bm changing configuration 144 creating a unit 130 deleting a unit 152 details about a controller 116 exporting unconfigured disks 119 help 63 hot spare 136 main screen 58 navigation 59 ordering units 133 partitioning and formatti...

  • Page 254

    244 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide battery capacity test completed (050h) 228 battery capacity test is overdue (053h) 229 battery capacity test started (04eh) 228 battery charging completed (056h) 229 battery charging fault (057h) 229 battery charging started (055h) 229 battery h...

  • Page 255

    Www.3ware.Com 245 battery capacity test is overdue (053h) 229 battery capacity test started (04eh) 228 battery charging completed (056h) 229 battery charging fault (057h) 229 battery charging started (055h) 229 battery health check completed (052h) 228 battery health check failed (05dh) 230 battery ...

  • Page 256

    246 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide drive removed (019h) 220 drive timeout detected (009h) 218 driver compiling for linux 47 current version, determining 189 installation 29 installation under freebsd 48 installation under linux 38 installation under windows 30 updating 190 freebs...

  • Page 257

    Www.3ware.Com 247 maintenance page, 3dm 98 media scans 12 media scans (verification of non-redundant units) 173 menus, 3dm 76 messages, error 214 migrating a unit 102, 144 about 174 migration completed (035h) 224 migration failed (034h) 224 migration paused (03eh) 225 migration started (033h) 224 mi...

  • Page 258

    248 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide so-dimm not compatible (037h) 224 so-dimm not detected (038h) 224 software installation, troubleshooting 212 some data lost (025h) 221 some data lost (05fh) 230 source drive ecc error overwritten (02ch) 223 source drive error occurred (02dh) 223...

  • Page 259

    Www.3ware.Com 249 verify unit, 3dm 101 verifying definition 235 verifying units 186 viewing 3dm remotely 74 volumes in a unit 88 resulting from auto-carvings 88 w warranty 239 whql 238 working in 3bm 59 write cache 12, 93 disable on unit degrade 121 disable on unit degrade policy (viewing in 3dm) 95...

  • Page 260

    250 3ware 9550sx serial ata raid controller user guide.