Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 6i - Manual (Page 78)

78
Configuring and Managing RAID
RAID Configuration Functions
NOTE:
Dell OpenManage Storage Management can perform all the same tasks as
and more tasks than the BIOS Configuration Utility.
After you attach physical disks, use a configuration utility to organize your SAS
drives and SATA drives into virtual disks. If the operating system is not yet
installed, use the BIOS Configuration Utility to perform this procedure.
NOTE:
The PERC 6 controllers support Dell-qualified SATA physical disks.
Use the configuration utilities to perform the following tasks:
• Access controllers, virtual disks, and physical disks individually
• Select a host controller to work on
• Create hot spare physical disks
• Configure virtual disks
• Initialize one or more virtual disks
• Perform consistency checks
• Rebuild failed physical disks
• Preserve the cache data, known as pinned cache, from a virtual disk that
goes offline or is deleted for any reason
The following sections describe the menu options and provide detailed
instructions used to perform the configuration tasks. They apply to the BIOS
Configuration Utility. The following is a list of the procedures used to configure
physical disks into virtual disks.
1 Define virtual disks using a group of physical disks.
NOTE:
A disk group is deleted when the last virtual disk in the disk group is
deleted.
2 Designate hot spares (optional).
For more information, see "Managing Dedicated Hot Spares" on page 94.
3 Save the configuration information.
4 Initialize the virtual disks.
For the detailed configuration procedures, see "Physical Disk
Management" on page 104.
Dell_PERC6.1_UG.book Page 78 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 4:18 PM