Promise Technology VTRAK 15100, Руководство пользователя

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Chapter 7: Technology Background
153
Hot Spare Drive(s)
A hot spare is a disk drive that is connected to the logical drive system but is not
assigned as a member of the logical drive. In the event of the failure of a drive
within a functioning fault tolerant logical drive, the hot spare is activated as a
member of the logical drive to replace a drive that has failed.
VTrak will replace a failing disk drive in a logical drive with an unassigned drive, if
one is available. The unassigned drive is not part of any logical drive. Such a
drive is called a
hot spare drive. There are two types:
• Global – An unassigned disk drive available to any logical drive on the
VTrak.
• Dedicated – An unassigned disk drive that can only be used by a specified
logical drive.
The hot spare policy function lets you select whether a logical drive will access
any unassigned disk drive or a designated drive in the event of disk drive failure.
See
Chapter 4: Command Line Utility or the WebPAM User Manual for
information on how to make this setting.
The spare drive effectively takes the place of the failed drive and the RAID
system immediately begins to rebuild data onto the drive. When the rebuild is
complete, the logical drive is returned to fault tolerant status.
Once the failed drive is replaced, the new drive is automatically recognized as a
hot spare and will be activated in the event of a subsequent drive fault.
Maintaining a hot spare drive is a good precaution to protect your logical drive
integrity in the event of 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.
Depending on the operating system you use, there may or may not be various
capacity limitations applicable for the different types of partitions.