Gateway E-842R, User Manual

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CHAPTER 4: Configuring your storage solution www.gateway.com
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Manually configuring a storage solution
Creating disk arrays
Configuring a storage solution requires some planning to make sure that you
define the correct RAID level and array options, hot spares, and logical drives
for your solution requirements.
This section steps you through the process to configure and manage your disk
arrays, assign hot spares, and create logical drives.
This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of RAID concepts.
RAID levels
The following are the drive requirements for each supported RAID level:
Terminology
The following describes some of the terminology used when creating disk arrays
and logical drives:
RAID Level Minimum No. of Drives Maximum No. of Drives
0 1 12
1 2 12
5 3 12
10 4 12
50 6 12
Term Description
Array A group of disk drives that are combined together to create a
single large storage area. As many as 64 arrays are supported, each
containing as many as 16 drives per array. There is no capacity limit
for the arrays.
Back-off Percent In order to let drives from a different family or manufacturer be
used as a replacement for a drive in an array, we recommend that
you reserve a small percentage of the drive’s capacity when
creating the array. You can select from 0 to 10 percent. This is
sometimes known as
Reserved Capacity .
Cache Flush Array This is the array that is used to automatically flush cache data in
a situation where power has failed to some of the drives.
Chunk Size This is the amount of data that is written on a single drive before
the controller moves to the next drive in the stripe.