SATA RAID Cards USER Manual

SATA RAID Cards

ARC-1110/1120/1130/1160/1170

( 4/8/12/16/24-port PCI-X SATA RAID Controllers )

ARC-1110ML/1120ML/1130ML/1160ML

( 4/8-port Infinband connector and 12/16-port Multi-lane connector PCI-X SATA RAID Controllers )

ARC-1210/1220/1210ML/1220ML/1230/

1260/1280/

( 4/8/12/16/24-port PCI-Express SATA RAID Controllers )

ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML

(12/16/24-port PCI-Express SATA RAID Controllers)

USER Manual

Version: 3.4

Issue Date: June, 2007

Microsoft WHQL Windows Hardware Compatibility

Test

ARECA is committed to submitting products to the Microsoft Windows

Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL), which is required for participation in the

Windows Logo Program. Successful passage of the WHQL tests results in both the “Designed for Windows” logo for qualifying ARECA PCI-X and

PCI-Express SATA RAID controllers and a listing on the Microsoft Hard ware Compatibility List (HCL).

Copyright and Trademarks

The information of the products in this manual is subject to change without prior notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of the vendor, who assumes no liability or responsibility for any errors that may appear in this manual. All brands and trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. This manual contains materials protected under International Copyright Conventions. All rights reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without the written permission of the manufacturer and the author. All inquiries should be addressed to Areca Technology Corporation.

FCC STATEMENT

This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against interfer ence in a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses, and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in ac cordance with the instructions, may cause harmful interference to radio communications. However, there is no guarantee that interference will not occur in a particular installation.

Contents

1. Introduction .............................................................. 10

1.1 Overview .......................................................................

1 0

1.2 Features ........................................................................

12

2. Hardware Installation ............................................... 16

2.1 Before Your begin Installation ...........................................

16

2.2 Board Layout ..................................................................

1 7

2.3 Installation .....................................................................

2 3

3. McBIOS RAID Manager .............................................. 42

3.1 Starting the McBIOS RAID Manager ...................................

42

3.2 McBIOS Configuration manager .........................................

4 3

3.3 Configuring Raid Sets and Volume Sets ..............................

44

3.4 Designating Drives as Hot Spares ......................................

44

3.5 Using Quick Volume /Raid Setup Configuration ....................

4 5

3.6 Using RAID Set/Volume Set Function Method ......................

46

3.7 Main Menu ....................................................................

48

3.7.1 Quick Volume/RAID Setup ...........................................

49

3.7.2 Raid Set Function ....................................................... 5 2

3.7.2.1 Create Raid Set .................................................... 53

3.7.2.2 Delete Raid Set ..................................................... 5 4

3.7.2.3 Expand Raid Set .................................................... 5 4

• Migrating ...................................................................... 55

3.7.2.4 Activate Incomplete Raid Set ................................... 5 6

3.7.2.5 Create Hot Spare ................................................... 57

3.7.2.6 Delete Hot Spare ................................................... 57

3.7.2.7 Raid Set Information .............................................. 5 8

3.7.3 Volume Set Function ................................................... 5 8

3.7.3.1 Create Volume Set ................................................. 5 9

• Volume Name ................................................................

61

• Raid Level .....................................................................

61

• Capacity .......................................................................

62

• Stripe Size ....................................................................

6 3

• SCSI Channel ................................................................

64

• SCSI ID ........................................................................

64

• SCSI LUN ......................................................................

6 5

• Cache Mode ..................................................................

6 5

3.7.3.2 Delete Volume Set .................................................

66

• Tag Queuing ..................................................................

66

3.7.3.3 Modify Volume Set .................................................

6 7

• Volume Growth ..............................................................

68

• Volume Set Migration ......................................................

69

3.7.3.4 Check Volume Set ..................................................

69

3.7.3.5 Stop Volume Set Check ..........................................

69

3.7.3.6 Display Volume Set Info. ........................................ 70

3.7.4 Physical Drives ........................................................... 7 1

3.7.4.1 View Drive Information .......................................... 7 1

3.7.4.2 Create Pass-Through Disk ....................................... 7 2

3.7.4.3 Modify a Pass-Through Disk ..................................... 7 2

3.7.4.4 Delete Pass-Through Disk ....................................... 73

3.7.4.5 Identify Selected Drive ........................................... 73

3.7.5 Raid System Function ................................................. 7 4

3.7.5.1 Mute The Alert Beeper ........................................... 7 4

3.7.5.2 Alert Beeper Setting ............................................... 75

3.7.5.3 Change Password .................................................. 75

3.7.5.4 JBOD/RAID Function .............................................. 7 6

3.7.5.5 Background Task Priority ........................................ 77

3.7.5.6 Maximum SATA Mode ............................................. 77

3.7.5.7 HDD Read Ahead Cache ......................................... 7 8

3.7.5.8 Stagger Power On .................................................. 7 8

3.7.5.9 Empty HDD slot HDD ............................................. 7 9

3.7.5.10 HDD SMART Status Polling ....................................

8 0

3.7.5.11 Controller Fan Detection .......................................

8 0

3.7.5.12 Disk Write Cache Mode .........................................

81

3.7.5.13 Capacity Truncation ..............................................

81

3.7.6 Ethernet Configuration (12/16/24-port) .........................

82

3.7.6.1 DHCP Function ......................................................

8 3

3.7.6.2 Local IP address ....................................................

84

3.7.6.3 Ethernet Address ...................................................

8 5

3.7.7 View System Events ...................................................

8 5

3.7.8 Clear Events Buffer .....................................................

86

3.7.9 Hardware Monitor .......................................................

86

3.7.10 System Information ..................................................

86

4. Driver Installation ..................................................... 88

4.1 Creating the Driver Diskettes ............................................

88

4.2 Driver Installation for Windows .........................................

89

4.2.1 New Storage Device Drivers in Windows Server 2003 ......

89

4.2.2 Install Windows 2000/XP/2003 on a SATA RAID Volume ..

9 0

4.2.2.1 Installation procedures ...........................................

9 0

4.2.2.2 Making Volume Sets Available to Windows System .....

91

4.2.3 Installing controller into an existing Windows 2000/XP/2003

Installation ........................................................................

92

4.2.3.1 Making Volume Sets Available to Windows System .....

9 3

4.2.4 Uninstall controller from Windows 2000/XP/2003 ............

94

4.3 Driver Installation for Linux ..............................................

9 5

4.4 Driver Installation for FreeBSD ..........................................

9 5

4.5 Driver Installation for Solaris 10 ........................................

96

4.6 Driver Installation for Mac 10.x .........................................

96

4.7 Driver Installation for UnixWare 7.1.4 ................................

9 7

4.8 Driver Installation for NetWare 6.5 ....................................

9 7

5. ArcHttp Proxy Server Installation ............................. 98

5.1 For Windows...................................................................

99

5.2 For Linux ..................................................................... 100

5.3 For FreeBSD ................................................................. 10 1

5.4 For Solaris 10 x86 ......................................................... 10 2

5.5 For Mac OS 10.x ........................................................... 10 2

5.6 ArcHttp Configuration .................................................... 103

6. Web Browser-based Configuration

......................... 107

6.1 Start-up McRAID Storage Manager ................................. 107

• Another method to start-up McRAID Storage Manager from

Windows Local Administration .......................................... 10 8

6.1.1 Through Ethernet port (Out-of-Band) ......................... 10 9

6.2 SATA RAID controller McRAID Storage Manager .................

11 0

6.3 Main Menu ..................................................................

111

6.4 Quick Function ..............................................................

111

6.5 RaidSet Functions .........................................................

112

6.5.1 Create Raid Set .......................................................

112

6.5.2 Delete Raid Set ........................................................

11 3

6.5.3 Expand Raid Set .......................................................

114

6.5.4 Activate Incomplete Raid Set .....................................

114

6.5.5 Create Hot Spare .....................................................

11 5

6.5.6 Delete Hot Spare ......................................................

11 5

6.5.7 Rescue Raid Set .......................................................

11 5

6.6 Volume Set Functions ....................................................

116

6.6.1 Create Volume Set ....................................................

116

• Volume Name ..............................................................

11 7

• Raid Level ..................................................................

11 7

• Capacity .....................................................................

11 7

• Greater Two TB Volume Support .....................................

11 7

• Initialization Mode ........................................................

118

• Stripe Size ..................................................................

118

• Cache Mode ................................................................

118

• SCSI Channel/SCSI ID/SCSI Lun ....................................

118

• Tag Queuing ................................................................

118

6.6.2 Delete Volume Set ....................................................

119

6.6.3 Modify Volume Set ....................................................

119

6.6.3.1 Volume Set Migration ...........................................

12 0

6.6.4 Check Volume Set ....................................................

121

6.6.5 Stop VolumeSet Check ..............................................

121

6.7 Physical Drive ..............................................................

121

6.7.1 Create Pass-Through Disk ..........................................

122

6.7.2 Modify Pass-Through Disk ..........................................

122

6.7.3 Delete Pass-Through Disk ..........................................

12 3

6.8 System Controls ...........................................................

124

6.8.1 System Config .........................................................

124

• System Beeper Setting .................................................

124

• Background Task Priority ...............................................

124

• JBOD/RAID Configuration ..............................................

124

• Maximun SATA Supported .............................................

124

• HDD Read Ahead Cache ................................................

124

• Stagger Power on ........................................................

12 5

• Empty HDD Slot LED ....................................................

126

• HDD SMART Status Polling.............................................

126

• Disk Write Cache Mode .................................................

12 7

• Disk Capacity Truncation Mode .......................................

12 7

6.8.2 Ethernet Configuration (12/16/24-port) .......................

128

6.8.3 Alert by Mail Configuration (12/16/24-port) ................

129

• SNMP Trap Configurations ............................................. 13 1

• SNMP System Configurations ......................................... 13 1

• SNMP Trap Notification Configurations ............................. 13 1

6.8.5 NTP Configuration (12/16/24-port) ............................. 13 1

• NTP Sever Address ....................................................... 13 1

• Time Zone ................................................................... 13 2

• Automatic Daylight Saving............................................. 13 2

6.8.6 View Events/Mute Beeper .......................................... 13 2

6.8.7 Generate Test Event ................................................. 13 2

6.8.8 Clear Events Buffer ................................................... 133

6.8.9 Modify Password ...................................................... 133

6.8.10 Update Firmware ................................................... 13 4

6.9 Information .................................................................. 13 4

6.9.1 RaidSet Hierarchy ..................................................... 13 4

6.9.2 System Information .................................................. 13 4

6.9.3 Hardware Monitor ..................................................... 13 6

Appendix A ................................................................. 137

Upgrading Flash ROM Update Process .................................... 137

Upgrading Firmware Through McRAID Storage Manager ........... 137

Appendix B .................................................................. 140

Battery Backup Module (ARC-6120-BAT) ................................

14 0

BBM Components ...........................................................

14 0

Status of BBM ................................................................

14 0

Installation ....................................................................

14 0

Battery Backup Capacity ..................................................

141

Operation ......................................................................

141

Changing the Battery Backup Module ................................

142

BBM Specifications ..........................................................

142

Appendix C .................................................................. 143

SNMP Operation & Definition ................................................

14 3

Appendix D .................................................................. 150

Event Notification Configurations ........................................ 150

A. Device Event .............................................................. 150

B. Volume Event ............................................................. 15 1

C. RAID Set Event .......................................................... 15 2

D. Hardware Monitor Event .............................................. 15 2

Appendix E .................................................................. 154

RAID Concept ......................................................... 154

RAID Set ......................................................................... 15 4

Volume Set ...................................................................... 15 4

Ease of Use Features ......................................................... 155

• Foreground Availability/Background Initialization .............. 155

• Array Roaming ............................................................. 155

• Online Capacity Expansion ............................................. 155

• Online RAID Level and Stripe Size Migration .................... 157

• Online Volume Expansion .............................................. 15 8

High availability .................................................................. 15 8

•

Global Hot Spares .......................................................... 15 8

•

Hot-Swap Disk Drive Support .......................................... 15 9

•

Auto Declare Hot-Spare ................................................. 15 9

•

Auto Rebuilding ............................................................

16 0

•

Adjustable Rebuild Priority ..............................................

16 0

High Reliability ...................................................................

161

•

Hard Drive Failure Prediction ...........................................

161

•

Auto Reassign Sector......................................................

161

•

Consistency Check .........................................................

162

Data Protection ..................................................................

162

•

BATTERY BACKUP .........................................................

162

•

RECOVERY ROM .............................................................

16 3

Appendix F .................................................................. 164

Understanding RAID ...........................................................

164

•

RAID 0 .........................................................................

164

•

RAID 1 .........................................................................

16 5

•

RAID 1E .......................................................................

166

•

RAID 3 .........................................................................

166

•

RAID 5 .........................................................................

16 7

•

RAID 6 .........................................................................

168

Appendix G .................................................................. 171

General Troubleshooting Tips ............................................... 17 1

Appendix H .................................................................. 176

Technical Support ............................................................... 17 6

Glossary ...................................................................... 177

2TB .............................................................................. 177

Array ............................................................................ 177

ATA .............................................................................. 177

Auto Reassign Sector ..................................................... 177

Battery Backup Module .................................................... 17 8

BIOS ............................................................................ 17 8

Cache ........................................................................... 17 8

Consistency Check .......................................................... 17 8

Driver ........................................................................... 17 8

Hot Spare ...................................................................... 17 9

Hardware RAID versus Software RAID .............................. 17 9

Hot Swap ...................................................................... 17 9

NVRAM .......................................................................... 17 9

Parity ............................................................................ 17 9

PCI Express .................................................................. 17 9

PCI-X ...........................................................................

18 0

RAID ............................................................................

18 0

Rebuild .........................................................................

18 0

SATA (Serial ATA) ...........................................................

18 0

SMART ..........................................................................

181

SNMP ............................................................................

181

Volume Set ....................................................................

181

Write-back .....................................................................

181

Write-through ................................................................

181

XOR-Engine ...................................................................

182

INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction

This section presents a brief overview of the SATA RAID Series controller, ARC-1110/1110ML/1120/1120ML/1130/1130ML/1160/

1160ML/1170 (4/8/12/16/24-port PCI-X SATA RAID Controllers) and

ARC-1210/1220/1210ML/1220ML/1230/1230/1231ML/1260/1261ML/

1280/1280ML (4/8/12/16/24-port PCI-Express SATA RAID Controllers).

1.1 Overview

The ARC-11xx and ARC-12xx Series of high-performance Serial ATA

RAID controllers support a maximum of 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 SATA

II peripheral devices (depending on model) on a single controller.

The ARC-11xx series for the PCI-X bus and the ARC-12xx Series for the PCI-Express bus. When properly configured, these SATA controllers provide non-stop service with a high degree of fault tolerance through the use of RAID technology and can also provide advanced array management features.

The 4 and 8 port SATA RAID controllers are low-profile PCI cards, ideal for 1U and 2U rack-mount systems. These controllers utilize the same RAID kernel that has been field-proven in Areca existing external RAID controllers, allowing Areca to quickly bring stable and reliable RAID controllers to the market.

Unparalleled Performance

The SATA RAID controllers provide reliable data protection for desktops, workstations, and servers. These cards set the stan dard with enhancements that include a high-performance Intel I/O

Processor, a new memory architecture, and a high performance PCI bus interconnection. The 8/12/16/24-port controllers with the RAID

6 engine built-in can offer extreme-availability RAID 6 functionality.

This engine can concurrently compute two parity blocks with per formance very similar to RAID 5. The controllers by default support

256MB of ECC SDRAM memory. The 12/16/24 port controllers sup port one DDR333 SODIMM socket that allows for upgrading up to

1GB of memory. The 12/16/24 port controllers support one DDR2-

533 DIMM socket that allows for upgrading up to 2GB of memory.

The controllers use Marvell 4/8 channel SATA PCI-X controller

10

INTRODUCTION

chips, which can simultaneously communicate with the I/O proces sor and read or write data on multiple drives.

Unsurpassed Data Availability

As storage capacity requirements continue to rapidly increase, us ers require greater levels of disk drive fault tolerance, which can be implemented without doubling the investment in disk drives. RAID

1 (mirroring) provides high fault tolerance. However, half of the drive capacity of the array is lost to mirroring, making it too costly for most users to implement on large volume sets due to dobuling the number of drives required. Users want the protection of RAID 1 or better with an implementation cost comparable to RAID 5. RAID

6 can offer fault tolerance greater than RAID 1 or RAID 5 but only consumes the capacity of 2 disk drives for distributed parity data.

The 8/12/16/24-port RAID controllers provide RAID 6 functionality to meet these demanding requirements.

The SATA RAID controllers also provide RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5 or JBOD configurations. Its high data availability and protection is derived from the following capabilities: Online RAID Capacity Ex pansion, Array Roaming, Online RAID Level / Stripe Size Migration,

Dynamic Volume Set Expansion, Global Online Spare, Automatic

Drive Failure Detection, Automatic Failed Drive Rebuilding, Disk

Hot-Swap, Online Background Rebuilding and Instant Availabil ity/Background Initialization. During the controller firmware flash upgrade process, it is possible that an error results in corruption of the controller firmware. This could result in the device becoming non-functional. However, with our Redundant Flash image feature, the controller will revert back to the last known version of firmware and continue operating. This reduces the risk of system failure due to firmware crashes.

Easy RAID Management

The SATA RAID controller utilizes built-in firmware with an embed ded terminal emulation that can access via hot key at BIOS bootup screen. This pre-boot manager utility can be used to simplify the setup and management of the RAID controller. The controller firmware also contains a ArcHttp browser-based program that can be accessed through the ArcHttp proxy server function in Windows,

11

INTRODUCTION

Linux, FreeBSD and more environments. This Web browser-based

RAID management utility allows both local and remote creation and modification RAID sets, volume sets, and monitoring of RAID status from standard web browsers.

1.2 Features

Adapter Architecture

• Intel IOP 331 I/O processor (ARC-11xx series)

• Intel IOP 332/IOP 333 I/O processor (ARC-12xx series)

• Intel IOP341 I/O processor (ARC-12x1ML/ARC-1280ML/1280)

• 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X Bus compatible

• PCI Express X8 compatible

• 256MB on-board DDR333 SDRAM with ECC protection (4/8-port)

• One SODIMM Socket with default 256 MB of DDR333 SDRAM

with ECC protection, upgrade to 1GB (12, 16 and 24-port cards

only)

• One DIMM Socket with default 256 MB of DDR2-533 SDRAM

with ECC protection, upgrade to 2GB(ARC-12xxML, ARC-1280)

• An ECC or non-ECC SDRAM module using X8 or X16 chip organi

-zation

• Support up to 4/8/12/16/24 SATA ll drives

• Write-through or write-back cache support

• Multi-adapter support for large storage requirements

• BIOS boot support for greater fault tolerance

• BIOS PnP (plug and play) and BBS (BIOS boot specification)

support

• Supports extreme performance Intel RAID 6 functionality

• NVRAM for RAID event & transaction log

• Battery backup module (BBM) ready (Depend on mother

board)

RAID Features

• RAID level 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6 (R6 engine inside) and JBOD

• Multiple RAID selection

• Array roaming

• Online RAID level/stripe size migration

• Online capacity expansion & RAID level migration simultaneously

• Online volume set growth

• Instant availability and background initialization

• Automatic drive insertion / removal detection and rebuilding

• Greater than 2TB per volume set for 64-bit LBA

12

INTRODUCTION

• Redundant flash image for adapter availability

• Support S.M.A.R.T, NCQ and OOB staggered spin-up capable

drives

Monitors/Notification

• System status indication through LED/LCD connector, HDD

activity/fault connector, and alarm buzzer

• SMTP support for email notification

• SNMP agent supports for remote SNMP Manager

• I2C Enclosure Management Ready (IOP331/332/333)

• I2C & SGPIO Enclosure Management Ready (IOP341)

RAID Management

• Field-upgradeable firmware in flash ROM

• Ethernet port support on 12/16/24-port

In-Band Manager

• Hot key boot-up McBIOS RAID manager via BIOS

• Support controller’s API library, allowing customer to write its

own AP

• Support Command Line Interface (CLI)

• Browser-based management utility via ArcHttp proxy server

• Single Admin Portal (SAP) monitor utility

• Disk Stress Test (DST) utility for production in Windows

Out-of-Band Manager

• Firmware-embedded browser-based RAID manager, SMTP

manager, SNMP agent and Telnet function via Ethernet port

(for 12/16/24-port Adapter)

• Support controller’s API library for customer to write its own

AP (for 12/16/24-port Adapter)

• Push Button and LCD display panel (option)

Operating System

• Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003

• Red Hat Linux

• SuSE Linux

• FreeBSD

• Novell Netware 6.5

• Solaris 10 X86/X86_64

• SCO Unixware 7.1.4

• Mac OS 10.X (no_bootable)

(For latest supported OS listing visit http://www.areca.com.tw)

13

INTRODUCTION

Internal PCI-X RAID Card Comparison (ARC-11XX)

1110 1120 1130 1160

RAID processor

Host Bus Type

RAID 6 support

Cache Memory

Drive Support

Disk Connector

1170

YES

256MB

YES

256MB

IOP331

PCI-X 133MHz

YES

One SO -

DIMM

YES

One SO -

DIMM

YES

One SO -

DIMM

4 * SATA ll 8 * SATA ll 12 * SATA ll 16 * SATA ll 24 * SATA ll

SATA SATA SATA SATA SATA

RAID processor

Host Bus Type

RAID 6 support

PCI-X RAID Card Comparison (ARC-11XXML)

1110ML 1120ML 1130ML 1160ML/1160ML2

Yes YES

IOP331

PCI-X 133MHz

YES YES

Cache Memory

Drive Support

256MB 256MB

4 * SATA ll 8 * SATA ll

Disk Connector Infinband Infinband

One SODIMM

12 * SATA ll

Multi-lane

One SODIMM

16 * SATA ll

Multi-lane/4*SFF-8087

Internal PCI-Express RAID Card Comparison (ARC-12XX)

1210/1210ML 1220/1220ML 1230 1260

RAID processor

Host Bus Type

RAID 6 support

Cache Memory

IOP332

N/A

256MB

YES

IOP333

PCI-Express X8

256MB

Drive Support 4 * SATA ll 8 * SATA ll

Disk Connector SATA/SFF-8088 SATA/2* SFF-8088

YES

One SODIMM One SODIMM

12 * SATA ll

SATA

YES

16 * SATA ll

SATA

14

INTRODUCTION

Internal PCI-Express RAID Card Comparison (ARC-12X1ML/1280)

1231ML 1261ML 1280ML 1280

RAID processor

Host Bus Type

RAID 6 support

Cache Memory

IOP341

PCI-Express X8

YES YES YES

One DDR2 DIMM (Default 256MB, Upgrade to 2GB)

YES

Drive Support

Disk Connector

12 * SATA ll

3*SFF-8087

16 * SATA ll

4*SFF-8087

24 * SATA ll

6*SFF-8087

24 * SATA ll

24*SATA

15

HARDWARE INSTALLATION

2. Hardware Installation

This section describes the procedure for installing the SATA RAID con trollers.

2.1 Before Your begin Installation

Thank you for purchasing the SATA RAID Controller as your RAID data storage and management system. This user guide gives you a simple step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring the SATA RAID Controller. To ensure personal safety and to protect your equipment and data, please read the information carefully in pack content list before you begin installing.

Package Contents

If any items listed in your package is missing, please contact your local dealer before proceeding with installation

(disk drives and disk mounting brackets are not included)

:

ARC-11xx Series SATA RAID Controller

• 1 x PCI-X SATA RAID Controller in an ESD-protective bag

• 4/8/12/16/24 x SATA interface cables (one per port)

• 1 x Installation CD

• 1 x User Manual

ARC-11xxML/12xxML Series SATA RAID Controller

• 1 x PCI-X SATA RAID Controller in an ESD-protective bag


• 1 x User Manual

ARC-12xx Series SATA RAID Controller

• 1 x PCI-Express SATA RAID Controller in an ESD-protective bag

• 4/8/12/16/24 x SATA interface cables (one per port)


• 1 x User Manual

16


2.2 Board Layout

Follow the instructions below to install a PCI RAID Card into your

PC / Server.

Figure 2-1, ARC-1110/1120 (4/8-port PCI-X SATA RAID Controller)

Figure 2-2, ARC-1210/1220 (4/8-port PCI-Express SATA RAID Con troller)

17


Figure 2-3, ARC-1110ML/1120ML (4/8-port PCI-X SATA RAID Con troller)

18

Figure 2-4, ARC-1210ML/1220ML (4-port PCI Express SAS RAID

Controller)


Figure 2-5, ARC-1130/1160 (12/16-port PCI-X SATA RAID Control ler)

Figure 2-6, ARC-1130ML/1160ML (12/16-port PCI-X SATA RAID

Controller)

19


Figure 2-7, ARC-1230/1260 (12/16-port PCI-EXpress SATA RAID

Controller)

20

Figure 2-8, ARC-1170 (24-port PCI-X SATA RAID Controller)


Figure 2-9, ARC-1280 (24-port PCI-Express SATA RAID Controller)

Figure 2-10, ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML (12/16/24-port PCI-Ex press SATA RAID Controller)

21


Tools Required

An ESD grounding strap or mat is required. Also required are stan dard hand tools to open your system’s case.

System Requirement

The controller can be installed in a universal PCI slot and requires a motherboard that:

ARC-11xx series required one of the following:

• Complies with the PCI Revision 2.3 32/64-bit 33/66MHz, 3.3V.

• Complies with the PCI-X 32/64-bit 66/100/133 MHz, 3.3V.

ARC-12xx series requires:

• Complies with the PCI-Express X8

The SATA RAID controller may be connected to up to 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 SATA ll hard drives using the supplied cables.

Optional cables are required to connect any drive activity LEDs and fault LEDs on the enclosure to the SATA RAID controller.

Installation Tools

The following items may be needed to assist with installing the

SATA RAID controller into an available PCI expansion slot.

• Small screwdriver

• Host system hardware manuals and manuals for the disk or enclosure being installed.

Personal Safety Information

To ensure personal safety as well as the safety of the equipment:

• Always wear a grounding strap or work on an ESD-protective mat.

• Before opening the system cabinet, turn off power switches and unplug the power cords. Do not reconnect the power cords until you have replaced the covers.

22


Warning:

High voltages may be found inside computer equipment. Be fore installing any of the hardware in this package or remov ing the protective covers of any computer equipment, turn off power switches and disconnect power cords. Do not re connect the power cords until you have replaced the covers.

Electrostatic Discharge

Static electricity can cause serious damage to the electronic com ponents on this SATA RAID controller. To avoid damage caused by electrostatic discharge, observe the following precautions:

• Do not remove the SATA RAID controller from its anti-static packaging until you are ready to install it into a computer case.

• Handle the SATA RAID Controller by its edges or by the metal mounting brackets at its each end.

• Before you handle the SATA RAID controller in any way, touch a grounded, anti-static surface, such as an unpainted portion of the system chassis, for a few seconds to discharge any built-up static electricity.

2.3 Installation

Follow the instructions below to install a SATA RAID controller into your PC / Server.

Step 1. Unpack

Unpack and remove the SATA RAID controller from the package.

Inspect it carefully, if anything is missing or damaged, contact your local dealer.

Step 2. Power PC/Server Off

Turn off computer and remove the AC power cord. Remove the system’s cover. See the computer system documentation for in struction.

23


Step 3. Install the PCI RAID Cards

To install the SATA RAID controller remove the mounting screw and existing bracket from the rear panel behind the selected PCI slot. Align the gold-fingered edge on the card with the selected

PCI expansion slot. Press gently but firmly down to ensure that the card is properly seated in the slot, as shown in Figure 2-11. Next, screw the bracket into the computer chassis. ARC-11xx controllers can fit in both PCI (32-bit/3.3V) and PCI-X slots. It can get the best performance installed in a 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X slot. ARC-12xx controllers require a PCI-Express 8X slot.

Figure 2-11, Insert SATA RAID controller into a PCI-X slot

24

Step 4. Mount the Cages or Drives

Remove the front bezel from the computer chassis and install the

Cages or SATA Drives in the computer chassis. Loading drives to the drive tray if cages are installed. Be sure that the power is con nected to either the Cage backplane or the individual drives.


Figure 2-12, Mount Cages & Drives

Step 5 Connect the SATA cable

Model ARC-11XX and ARC-12XX controllers have dual-layer SATA internal connectors. If you have not yet connected your SATA cables, use the cables included with your kit to connect the control ler to the SATA hard drives.

The cable connectors are all identical, so it does not matter which end you connect to your controller, SATA hard drive, or cage back plane SATA connector.

Figure 2-13, SATA Cable

Note:

The SATA cable connectors must match your HDD cage.

For example: Channel 1 of RAID Card connects to channel 1 of HDD cage, channel 2 of RAID Card connects to channel 2 of HDD cage, and follow this rule.

25


Step 5-2. Connect the Multi-lance cable

Model ARC-11XXML has multi-lance internal connectors, each of them can support up to four SATA drives. These adapters can be installed in a server RAID enclosure with a Multi-lance connector

(SFF-8470) backplane. Multi-lance cables are not included in the

ARC-11XXML package.

If you have not yet connected your Multi-lance cables, use the cables included with your enclosure to connect your controller to the Multi-lance connector backplane. This type of cable will depend on what enclosure you have. The following diagram shows one ex ample picture of Multi-lane cable.

Unpack and remove the PCI RAID cards. Inspect it carefully. If any thing is missing or damaged, contact your local dealer.

Figure 2-14, Multi-Lance Cable

26

Step 5-3. Connect the Min SAS 4i to 4*SATA cable

Model ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML have Min SAS 4i (SFF-8087) internal connectors, each of them can support up to four SATA drives. These adapters can be installed in a server RAID enclosure with a standard SATA connector backplane. Min SAS 4i to SATA cables are included in the ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML package.

The following diagram shows the picture of MinSAS 4i to 4*SATA cables.

Unpack and remove the PCI RAID cards. Inspect it carefully. If anything is missing or damaged, contact your local dealer.


Figure 2-15, Min SAS 4i to 4*SATA

For Sideband cable signal Please refer to page 51 for SGPIO bus.

Step 5-4. Connect the Min SAS 4i to Multi-lance cable

Model ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML have Min SAS 4i internal connectors, each of them can support up to four SATA drives. These controllers can be installed in a server RAID enclosure with a Multilance connector (SFF-8470) backplane. Multi-lance cables are not included in the ARC-12XXML package.

If you have not yet connected your Min SAS 4i to Multi-lance cables, buy the Min SAS 4i to Multi-lance cables to fit your enclosure. And connect your controller to the Multi-lance connector backplane. The type of cable will depend on what enclosure you have. The following diagram shows one example picture of Min SAS

4i to Multi-lance cable.


Figure 2-16, Min SAS 4i to Multi-lance

27


Step 5-5. Connect the Min SAS 4i to Min SAS 4i cable

Model ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML have Min SAS 4i internal connectors, each of them can support up to four SATA drives.

These adapters can be installed in a server RAID enclosure with a

Min SAS 4i internal connector backplane. Min SAS 4i cables are not included in the ARC-12XXML package.

This Min SAS 4i cable has eight signal pins to support four SATA drives and six pins for the SGPIO (Serial General Purpose Input/

Output) side-band signals. The SGPIO bus is used for efficient LED management and for sensing drive Locate status. Please see page

52 for the details of the SGPIO bus.

Figure 2-17, Min SAS 4i to Min SAS 4i


•

Min SAS 4i cable (SFF-8087) Signal

Figure 2-18, Min SAS 4i cable (SFF-8087)

28


Name

HDD R0+

HDD R0-

HDD R1+

HDD R1A6

Sideband 0 A8

Sideband 1 A9

Sideband 2 A10

Pin

A2

A3

A5

Sideband 6 A11

HDD R2+ A13

HDD R2A14

HDD R3+

HDD R3-

GND

A16

A17

HDD T3+

HDD T3-

A1, A4, A7, A12, A15, A18 GND

Name

HDD T0+

HDD T0-

HDD T1+

HDD T1-

Sideband 7

Sideband 3

Sideband 4

Sideband 5

HDD T2+

HDD T2-

Table-1 Min SAS 4i cable(SFF8087) pin assignment

B6

B8

B9

B10

Pin

B2

B3

B5

B11

B13

B14

B16

B17

B1, B4, B7, B12, B15, B18

Step 5-6. Connect the Min SAS 4x to Min SAS 4x cable

Model ARC-1280ML/12X1ML have external Min SAS 4x (SFF-8088) connectors, each of them can support up to four SATA drives. These adapters can be installed in a server RAID enclosure with a Min

SAS 4x connector backplane. External Min SAS 4x cables are not included in the ARC-1280ML/12X1ML package.

Figure 2-19, Min SAS 4x to Min SAS 4x

29


If you have not yet connected your Min SAS 4x cables , use the cables included with your enclosure to connect your controller to the Min SAS 4x backplane. This type of cable will depend on what enclosure you have. The above diagram shows one example picture of Min SAS 4x cable.


Step 6 Install the LED cable (optional)

ARC-1XXX Series Fault/Activity Header Intelligent Electronics

Schematic.

30

The intelligent LED controller outputs a low-level pulse to deter mine if status LEDs are attached to pin sets 1 and 2. This allows automatic controller configuration of the LED output. If the logi cal level is different between the fist 2 sets of the HDD LED header

(LED attached to Set 1 but not Set 2), the controller will assign the first HDD LED header as the global indicator connector. Otherwise, each LED output will show only individual drive status.

The SATA RAID controller provides four kinds of LED status connec tors.

A: Global indicator connector, which light up when any drive is ac tive.

B: Individual LED indicator connector, for each drive channel.

C: I

2

C connector, for SATA proprietary backplane enclosure.

D: SGPIO connector for SAS Backplane enclosure


The following diagrams and description describes each type of con nector.

Note:

A cable for the global indicator comes with your computer system. Cables for the individual drive LEDs may come with a drive cage, or you may need to purchase them.

A: Global Indicator Connector

If the system use only a single global indicator, attach the global indicator cable to the two pins HDD LED connector. The following diagrams show the connector and pin locations.

Figure 2-20, ARC-

1110/1120/1210/1220 global LED connection for Computer Case.

Figure 2-21, ARC-

1130/1160/1230/1260 global LED connection for Computer Case.

31


Figure 2-22, ARC-1170 global LED connection for Computer Case.

Figure 2-23, ARC-1280 global LED connection for

Computer Case.

32

Figure 2-24, ARC-1231ML/

1261ML/1280ML global LED connection for Computer

Case.


B: Individual LED indicator connector

Connect the cables for the drive activity LEDs and fault LEDs be tween the backplane of the cage and the respective connector on the SATA RAID controller. The following describes the fault/activity

LED.

LED Normal Status

Activity LED When the activity LED is illu minated, there is I/O activity on that disk drive. When the

LED is dark, there is no activ ity on that disk drive.

Fault LED When the fault LED is solid illuminated, there is no disk present and When the fault

LED is off, that disk is pres ent and status is normal.

When the "Identify Drive" is selected, the selected drive

Fault LED will blank.

N/A

Problem Indication

When the Fault LED is slow blink ing (2 times/sec), that indicate disk drive has failed and should be hot-swapped immediately.

When the activity LED is illuminat ed and Fault LED is fast blinking

(10 times/sec) that indicate there is rebuilding activity on the disk drive.

Figure 2-25, ARC-

1110/1120/1210/1220

Individual LED indica tors connector, for each channel drive.

33


Figure 2-26, ARC-

1130/1160/1230/1260

Individual LED indica tors connector, for each channel drive.

Figure 2-27, ARC-1170

Individual LED indicators connector, for each chan nel drive.

34

Figure 2-28, ARC-1280

Individual LED indicators connector, for each chan nel drive.


Figure 2-29, ARC-1231ML/

1261ML/1280ML Individual

LED indicators connector, for each channel drive.

C: I

2

C Connector

You can also connect the I

2

C interface to a proprietary SATA backplane enclosure. This can reduce the number of activity LED and/or fault LED cables. The I display.

2

C interface can also cascade to an other SATA backplane enclosure for the additional channel status

Figure 2-30, Activity/Fault LED I

2

C connector connected between

SATA RAID Controller & SATA HDD Cage backplane.

35


Figure 2-31, Activity/Fault LED I

2

C connector connected between

SATA RAID Controller & 4 SATA HDD backplane.

Note:

Ci-Design has supported this feature in its 4-port 12-6336-

05A SATA ll backplane.

The following is the I

2

C signal name description for LCD & Fault/Ac tivity LED.

PIN

1

3

5

7

Description

power (+5V)

LCD Module Interrupt

LCD Module Serial Data

Fault/Activity Serial Data

PIN

2

4

6

8

Description

GND

Fault/Activity Interrupt

Fault/Activity clock

LCD Module clock

36

D: SGPIO bus

The preferred I/O connector for server backplanes is the Min SAS

4i internal serial-attachment connector. This connector has eight signal pins to support four SATA drives and six pins for the SGPIO

(Serial General Purpose Input/Output) side-band signals.


The SGPIO bus is used for efficient LED management and for sensing drive Locate status. See SFF 8485 for the specification of the SGPIO bus.The number of drives supported can be increased, by a factor of four, by adding similar backplane to maximum of 24 drives (6 backplanes)

LED Management: The backplane may contain LEDs to indicate drive status. Light from the LEDs could be transmitted to the out side of the server by using light pipes mounted on the SAS drive tray. A small CPLP on the backplane, connected via the SGPIO bus to a ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML SATA RAID controller, could control the LEDs. Activity: blinking/controller access Fault: solid illuminated

Drive Locate Circuitry: The locate of a drive may be detected by sensing the voltage level of one of the pre-charge pins before and after a drive is installed. Fault blinking 2 Times/Second.

The following signal defines the SGPIO assignments for the Min

SAS 4i connector in ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML.

PIN

SideBand0

SideBand2

SideBand4

SideBand6

Description

SClock (Clock Signal)

Ground

SDataOut (Serial data output bit stream)

Reserved

PIN

SideBand1

SideBand3

SideBand5

SideBand7

Description

SLoad (Last clock of a bit stream)

Ground

SDataIn (Serial data input bit stream)

Reserved

The following signal defines the sideband connector which can work with Areca sideband cable.

37


The sideband header is located at backplane. For SGPIO to work properly, please connect Areca 8-pin sideband cable to the sideband header as shown above. See the table for pin definitions.

Step 7. Re-check the SATA HDD LED and Fault LED Cable connections

Be sure that the proper failed drive channel information is dis played by the Fault and HDD Activity LEDs. An improper connec tion will tell the user to ‘‘Hot Swap’’ the wrong drive. This will remove the wrong disk (one that is functioning properly) from the controller. This can result in failure and loss of system data.

Step 8. Power up the System

Check the installation thoroughly, reinstall the computer cover, and reconnect the power cord cables. Turn on the power switch at the rear of the computer (if equipped) and then press the power button at the front of the host computer.

Step 9. Configure volume set

The SATA RAID controller configures RAID functionality through the

McBIOS RAID manager. Please refer to Chapter 3, McBIOS RAID manager, for the detail regarding configuration. The RAID controller can also be configured through the McRAID storage manager soft ware utility with ArcHttp proxy server installed through on-board

Lan port or LCD module. For this option, please reference Chapter

6,

Web Browser-Based

Configuration or LCD configuration menu.

Step 10. Install the controller driver

For a new system:

• Driver installation usually takes places as part of operating sys tem installation. Please refer to Chapter 4 Diver Installation for the detail installation procedure.

In an existing system:

• Install the controller driver into the existing operating system.

38


Please refer to the Chapter 4, Driver Installation, for the detailed installation procedure.

Note:

Look for newest release versions of drivers please download from http://www.areca.com.tw

Step 11. Install ArcHttp proxy Server

The SATA RAID controller firmware has embedded the web-browser

RAID manager. ArcHttp proxy driver will enable it. The browserbased RAID manager provides all of the creation, management, and monitor SATA RAID controller status. Please refer to the

Chapter 5 for the detail ArcHttp proxy server installation. For SNMP agent function, please refer to Appendix C.

Step 12. Determining the Boot sequences

The SATA RAID controller is a bootable controller. If your system already contains a bootable device with an installed operating sys tem, you can set up your system to boot a second operating sys tem from the new controller. To add a second bootable controller, you may need to enter setup and change the device boot sequence so that the SATA RAID controller heads the list. If the system BIOS setup does not allow this change, your system may not be con figurable to allow the SATA RAID controller to act as a second boot device.

Summary of the installation

The flow chart below describes the installation procedures for

SATA RAID controller. These procedures include hardware installa tion, the creation and configuration of a RAID volume through the

McBIOS, OS installation and installation of SATA RAID controller software.

39


The software components configure and monitor the SATA RAID controller via ArcHttp Proxy Server.

Configuration Utility

McBIOS RAID Manager

McRAID Storage Manager

(Via Archttp proxy server)

Operating System supported

OS-Independent

Windows 2000/XP/2003, Linux, Free -

BSD, NetWare, UnixWare, Solaris and

Mac

Windows 2000/XP/2003 SAP Monitor (Single Admin portal to scan for multiple RAID units in the net work, Via ArcHttp proxy server)

SNMP Manager Console Integration Windows 2000/XP/2003, Linux and

FreeBSD

40

McRAID Storage Manager

Before launching the firmware-embedded web server, McRAID stor age manager, you can to install the ArcHttp proxy server on your server system or through on-board Lan-port (if equipped). If you need additional information about installation and start-up of this function, see the McRAID Storage Manager section in Chapter 6.

SNMP Manager Console Integration

• Out of Band-Using Ethernet port (12/16/24-port Controller)

Before launching the firmware-embedded SNMP agent in the sever, you need first to enable the fireware-embedded SNMP agent function on your SATA RAID controller. If you need


additional information about installation and start-up this function, see the section 6.8.4 SNMP Configuration (12/16/24port)

• In-Band-Using PCI-X/PCIe Bus (4/8/12/16/24-port

Controller)

Before launching the SNMP agent in the sever, you need to en able the fireware-embedded SNMP community configuration first and install Areca SNMP extension agent in your server system.

If you need additional information about installation and start-up the function, see the SNMP Operation & Installation section in the

Appendix C

Single Admin Portal (SAP) Monitor

This utility can scan for multiple RAID units on the network and monitor the controller set status. It also includes a disk stress test utility to identify marginal spec disks before putting the RAID unit into a production environment.

For additional information, see the utility manual in the packaged

CD-ROM or download it from the web site http://www.arec.com.tw

41

BIOS CONFIGURATION

3. McBIOS RAID Manager

The system mainboard BIOS automatically configures the following

SATA RAID controller parameters at power-up:

• I/O Port Address

• Interrupt channel (IRQ)

• Adapter ROM Base Address

Use McBIOS to further configure the SATA RAID controller to suit your server hardware and operating system.

3.1 Starting the McBIOS RAID Manager

This section explains how to use the McBIOS Setup Utility to con figure your RAID system. The BIOS Setup Utility is designed to be user-friendly. It is a menu-driven program, residing in the firm ware, which allows you to scroll through various menus and submenus and select among the predetermined configuration options.

When starting a system with an SATA RAID controller installed, it will display the following message on the monitor during the startup sequence (after the system bios startup screen but before the operating system boots):

ARC-1xxx RAID Ctrl - DRAM: 128(MB) / #Channels: 8

BIOS: V1.00 / Date: 2004-5-13 - F/W: V1.31 / Date: 2004-5-31

I/O-Port=F3000000h, IRQ=11, BIOS ROM mapped at D000:0h

No BIOS disk Found, RAID Controller BIOS not installed!

Press <Tab/F6> to enter SETUP menu. 9 second(s) left <ESC to Skip>..

42

The McBIOS configuration manager message remains on your screen for about nine seconds, giving you time to start the config ure menu by pressing

Tab

or

F6

. If you do not wish to enter con figuration menu, press <

ESC

> to skip configuration immediately.

When activated, the McBIOS window appears showing a selection dialog box listing the SATA RAID controllers that are installed in the system.

The legend at the bottom of the screen shows you what keys are enabled for the windows.


Areca Technology Corporation RAID Controller Setup <V1.0, 2004/05/20>

Select An Adapter To Configure

( 3/14/ 0)I/O=DD200000h, IRQ = 9

ArrowKey Or AZ:Move Cursor, Enter: Select, ** Select & Press F10 to Reboot**

Use the Up and Down arrow keys to select the adapter you want to configure. While the desired adapter is highlighted, press the

<

Enter

> key to enter the Main Menu of the McBIOS Configuration

Utility.

Controller I/O Port:F3000000h, F2: Select Controller, F10: Reboot System

Areca Technology Corporation RAID Controller

Main Menu

Quick Volume/Raid Setup

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Raid System Function

Ethernet Configuration

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Verify Password

ArrowKey Or AZ:Move Cursor, Enter: Select, ESC: Escape, L:Line Draw, X: Redraw

Note:

The manufacture default password is set to

0000

; this password can be modified by selecting

Change Password

in the

Raid System

Function

section.

3.2 McBIOS Configuration manager

The McBIOS configuration utility is firmware-based and is used to configure raid sets and volume sets. Because the utility resides in the SATA RAID controller firmware, operation is independent of any operating systems on your computer. This utility can be used to:

• Create RAID sets,

• Expand RAID sets,

43


• Add physical drives,

• Define volume sets,

• Modify volume sets,

• Modify RAID level/stripe size,

• Define pass-through disk drives,

• Modify system functions, and

• Designate drives as hot spares.

3.3 Configuring Raid Sets and Volume Sets

You can configure RAID sets and volume sets with McBIOS RAID manager automatically using Quick Volume/Raid Setup or manually using Raid Set/Volume Set Function. Each configuration method re quires a different level of user input. The general flow of operations for RAID set and volume set configuration is:

Step

1

2

3

4

5

Action

Designate hot spares/pass-through drives (optional).

Choose a configuration method.

Create RAID sets using the available physical drives.

Define volume sets using the space available in the RAID Set.

Initialize the volume sets and use volume sets (as logical drives) in the host OS.

3.4 Designating Drives as Hot Spares

Any unused disk drive that is not part of a RAID set can be desig nated as a Hot Spare. The “Quick Volume/Raid Setup” configuration will add the spare disk drive and automatically display the appro priate raid level from which the user can select. For the “Raid Set

Function configuration” option, the user can use the “Create Hot

Spare” option to define the hot spare disk drive.

When a Hot Spare disk drive is being created using the “Create Hot

Spare” option (in the Raid Set Function), all unused physical de vices connected to the current controller appear:

Choose the target disk by selecting the appropriate check box.

Press the

Enter

key to select a disk drive, and press

Yes

in the

Create Hot Spare to designate it as a hot spare.

44


3.5 Using Quick Volume /Raid Setup Con figuration

Quick Volume / Raid Setup Configuration collects all available drives and includes them in a RAID set. The RAID set you create is associated with exactly one volume set. You will only be able to modify the default RAID level, the stripe size, and the capacity of the new volume set. Designating drives as Hot Spares is also possible in the raid level selection option. The volume set default settings will be:

Parameter

Volume Name

SCSI Channel/SCSI ID/SCSI LUN

Cache Mode

Tag Queuing

Volume Set # 00

0/0/0

Write Back

Yes

Setting

The default setting values can be changed after configuration is complete. Follow the steps below to create arrays using the RAID

Set / Volume Set method:

Step

1

2

Action

Choose

Quick Volume /Raid Setup

from the main menu. The available

RAID levels with hot spare for the current volume set drive are displayed.

It is recommend that you drives of the same capacity in a specific array.

If you use drives with different capacities in an array, all drives in the raid set will be set to the capacity of the smallest drive in the raid set.

The numbers of physical drives in a specific array determines which RAID levels that can be implemented in the array.

RAID 0 requires 1 or more physical drives.

RAID 1 requires at least 2 physical drives.

RAID 1+Spare requires at least 3 physical drives.

RAID 1E requires at least 4 physical drives.



RAID 3 +Spare requires at least 4 physical drives.

RAID 5 + Spare requires at least 4 physical drives.


RAID 6 + Spare requires at least 5 physical drives.

Highlight the desired

RAID level

for the volume set and press the

Enter

key to confirm.

45


3

4

5

6

7

8

The capacity for the current volume set is entered after highlighting the desired RAID level and pressing the

Enter

key.

The capacity for the current volume set is displayed. Use the

UP

and

DOWN

arrow keys to set the capacity of the volume set and press the

Enter

key to confirm. The available stripe sizes for the current volume set are then displayed.

Use the

UP

and

DOWN

arrow keys to select the current volume set stripe size and press the

Enter

key to confirm. This parameter specifies the size of the stripes written to each disk in a RAID 0, 1, 5 or 6 Volume

Set. You can set the stripe size to 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, 64 KB, or

128 KB. A larger stripe size provides better read performance, especially when the computer preforms mostly sequential reads. However, if the computer preforms random read requests more often, choose a smaller stripe size.

When you are finished defining the volume set, press the

Enter

key to confirm the Quick Volume And Raid Set Setup function.

Foreground (Fast Completion) Press

Enter

key to define fast initialization or Selected the Background (Instant Available). In the background Ini tialization, the initialization proceeds as a background task, the volume set is fully accessible for system reads and writes. The operating system can instantly access to the newly created arrays without requiring a reboot and waiting the initialization complete. In Fast Initialization, the initialization proceeds must be completed before the volume set ready for system accesses.

Initialize the volume set you have just configured.

If you need to add additional volume set, using main menu Create Vol ume Set function.

46

3.6 Using RAID Set/Volume Set Function

Method

In “Raid Set Function”, you can use the “Create Raid Set Function” to generate a new RAID set. In “Volume Set Function”, you can use the “Create Volume Set function” to generate an associated volume set and and configuration parameters.

If the current controller has unused physical devices connected, you can choose the “Create Hot Spare” option in the “Raid Set

Function” to define a global hot spare. Select this method to con figure new raid sets and volume sets. The “Raid Set/Volume Set

Function” configuration option allows you to associate volume sets with partial and full RAID sets.


Step

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Action

To setup the Hot Spare (option), choose

RAID Set Function

from the main menu. Select the

Create Hot Spare

and press the

Enter

key to define the Hot Spare.

Choose RAID Set Function from the main menu. Select Create RAID Set and press the Enter key.

The “Select a Drive For Raid Set” window is displayed showing the SATA drives connected to the SATA RAID controller.

Press the

UP

and

DOWN

arrow keys to select specific physical drives.

Press the

Enter

key to associate the selected physical drive with the cur rent RAID set.

It is recommend that you drives of the same capacity in a specific array.

If you use drives with different capacities in an array, all drives in the raid set will be set to the capacity of the smallest drive in the raid set.

The numbers of physical drives in a specific array determines which RAID levels that can be implemented in the array.

RAID 0 requires 1 or more physical drives.


RAID (1+0) requires at least 4 physical drives.




After adding the desired physical drives to the current RAID set, press

Yes to confirm the “Create Raid Set” function.

An “Edit The Raid Set Name” dialog box appears. Enter 1 to 15 alphanu meric characters to define a unique identifier for this new raid set. The default raid set name will always appear as Raid Set. #. Press Enter to finish the name editing.

Press the

Enter

key when you are finished creating the current RAID

Set. To continue defining another RAID set, repeat step 3. To begin vol ume set configuration, go to step 8.

Choose the

Volume Set Function

from the Main menu. Select

Create

Volume Set

and press the

Enter

key.

Choose a RAID set from the “Create Volume From Raid Set” window.

Press the Enter key to confirm the selection.

Choosing Foreground (Fast Completion) or Background (Instant Avail ability) initiation: during Background Initialization, the initialization proceeds as a background task and the volume set is fully accessible for system reads and writes. The operating system can instantly access the newly created arrays without requiring a reboot and waiting for initializa tion complete. In Fast Initialization, the initialization must be completed before the volume set is ready for system accesses. In Fast Initialization, initiation is completed more quickly but volume access by the operating system is delayed.

If space remains in the raid set, the next volume set can be configured.

Repeat steps 8 to 10 to configure another volume set.

47


Note:

A user can use this method to examine the existing configura tion. The “modify volume set configuration” method provides the same functions as the “create volume set configuration” method. In the volume set function, you can use “modify volume set” to change all volume set parameters except for capacity (size).

3.7 Main Menu

The main menu shows all functions that are available for executing actions, which is accomplished by clicking on the appropriate link.



Note:

Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Verify Password

The manufacture default password is set to

0000

; this password can be modified by selecting

Change Password

in the

Raid System

Function

section.


Option Description

Quick Volume/Raid Setup Create a default configuration based on the number of physical disk installed

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Create a customized RAID set

Create a customized volume set

Physical Drives


View individual disk information

Setup the RAID system configuration


View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System Information

Ethernet LAN setting (ARC-1x30/1x60/1x70 only)

Record all system events in the buffer

Clear all information in the event buffer

Show the hardware system environment status

View the controller system information

48


This password option allows user to set or clear the raid controller’s password protection feature. Once the password has been set, the user can only monitor and configure the raid controller by providing the correct password. The password is used to protect the internal

RAID controller from unauthorized entry. The controller will only prompt for the password when entering the Main menu from the initial screen. The SATA RAID controller will automatically return to the initial screen when it does not receive any command in twenty seconds.

3.7.1 Quick Volume/RAID Setup

“Quick Volume/RAID Setup” is the fastest way to prepare a RAID set and volume set. It requires only a few keystrokes to com plete. Although disk drives of different capacity may be used in the RAID set, it will use the capacity of the smallest disk drive as the capacity of all disk drives in the RAID set. The “Quick Vol ume/RAID Setup” option creates a RAID set with the following properties:

1. All of the physical drives are contained in one RAID set.

2. The RAID level, hot spare, capacity, and stripe size options are selected during the configuration process.

3. When a single volume set is created, it can consume all or a portion of the available disk capacity in this RAID set.

4. If you need to add an additional volume set, use the main menu “Create Volume Set” function.

The total number of physical drives in a specific RAID set deter mine the RAID levels that can be implemented within the RAID



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Total 4 Drives

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid 0

Raid 1 + 0

Raid 1 + 0 + Spare

Raid 3

Raid 5

Raid 3 + Spare

Raid 5 + Spare

Raid 6


49


Set. Select “

Quick Volume/RAID Setup”

from the main menu; all possible RAID level will be displayed on the screen.

If volume capacity will exceed 2TB, controller will show the

“Greater 2 TB volume Support” sub-menu.



Main Menu

Greater Two TB Volume Support


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Total 4 Drives

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid 0

Raid 1 + 0

No

Use 64bit LBA

Raid 1 + 0 + Spare

Raid 3

Raid 5

Raid 3 + Spare

Raid 5 + Spare

Raid 6


•

No

It keeps the volume size with max. 2TB limitation.

•

LBA 64

This option use 16 bytes CDB instead of 10 bytes. The maximum volume capacity up to 512TB.

This option works on different OS which supports 16 bytes CDB. such as :

Windows 2003 with SP1

Linux kernel 2.6.x or latter

•

For Windows

It change the sector size from default 512 Bytes to 4k Bytes. the maximum volume capacity up to 16TB.

This option works under Windows platform only. And it

CAN NOT

be converted to Dynamic Disk, because 4k sector size is not a standard format.

For more details please download PDF file from

ftp://ftp.areca.

com.tw/RaidCards/Documents/Manual_Spec/Over2TB_

050721.zip

50


A single volume set is created and consumes all or a portion of the disk capacity available in this raid set. Define the capacity of volume set in the Available Capacity popup. The default value for the volume set, which is 100% of the available capacity, is displayed in the selected capacity. To enter a value less than the available capacity, type the new value and press the

Enter

key to accept this value. If the volume set uses only part of the RAID

Set capacity, you can use the “

Create Volume Set”

option in the main menu to define additional volume sets.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Total 4 Drives

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid 0

Raid 1 + 0

Available Capacity : 160.1GB

Selected Capacity : 160.1GB

Raid 1 + 0 + Spare

Raid 3

Raid 5

Raid 3 + Spare

Raid 5 + Spare

Raid 6


Stripe size

This parameter sets the size of the stripe written to each disk in a RAID 0, 1, 5, or 6 logical drive. You can set the stripe size to 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, 64 KB, or 128 KB.

A larger stripe size produces better-read performance, especially if your computer does mostly sequential reads. However, if you



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Total 4 Drives




View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid 0

Raid 1 + 0

Raid 1 + 0 + Spare

Raid 3

Raid 5

Raid 3 + Spare

Raid 5 + Spare

Raid 6

Select Strip Size

4K

8K

16K

32K

64K

128K


51


are certain that your computer performs random reads more of ten, select a smaller stripe size.

Press the

Yes

key in the “Create Vol/Raid” Set dialog box, the

RAID set and volume set will start to initialize it.



Main Menu



Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Total 4 Drives


Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid 0

Raid 1 + 0

Raid 1 + 0 +

Spare

Raid 3

Raid 5

Raid 3 + Spare

Raid 6

Select Strip Size

Yes

No

4K

8K

16K

32K

64K

128K


Select “Foreground (Faster Completion)” or “Background (Instant

Available)” for initialization.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Total 4 Drives




View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid 0

Raid 1 + 0

Raid 1 + 0 + Spare

Raid 3

Raid 5

Raid 3 + Spare

Raid 5 + Spare

Raid 6

Initialization Mode

Yes

No

4K

8K

16K

32K

64K

128K


3.7.2 Raid Set Function

Manual Configuration gives complete control of the RAID set set ting, but it will take longer to configure than “Quick Volume/Raid

Setup” configuration. Select “Raid Set Function” to manually con figure the raid set for the first time or delete existing RAID sets and reconfigure the RAID set.

52




Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information


3.7.2.1 Create Raid Set

To define a RAID set, follow the procedure below:

1. Select “Raid Set Function” from the main menu.

2. Select “Create Raid Set “ from the “Raid Set Function” dialog box.

3. A “Select SATA Drive For Raid set” window is displayed showing the SATA drives connected to the current controller.

Press the

UP

and

DOWN

arrow keys to select specific physical drives. Press the Enter key to associate the selected physical drive with the current RAID Set. Repeat this step; the user can add as many disk drives as are available to a single RAID set.

When finish selecting SATA drives for RAID set, press the

Esc

key. A Create Raid Set confirmation screen appears, select the

Yes

option to confirm it.



Main Menu

Raid Set Function


Create Raid Set

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Select IDE Drives For Raid Set

[*]Ch01| 80.0GBST380013AS



View System Events

[ ]Ch08| 80.0GBST380013AS

Hardware Monitor

System information


53


4. An “Edit The Raid Set Name” dialog box appears. Enter 1 to

15 alphanumeric characters to define a unique identifier for the

RAID Set. The default RAID set name will always appear as Raid

Set. #.



Main Menu

Raid Set Function


Create Raid Set

Delete Raid Set

Expand Raid Set


Edit The Raid Set Name

Delete Hot Spare

Raid Set Information

Hardware Monitor

System information

Select IDE Drives For Raid Set

[*]Ch01| 80.0GBST380013AS


View System Events

Clear Event Buffer


3.7.2.2 Delete Raid Set

To erase and reconfigure a RAID set competely, you must delete it and re-create the raid set first. To delete a raid set, select the raid set number that user want to delete in the “Select Raid Set to Delete” screen. The “Delete Raid Set” dialog box appears, then press

Yes

key to delete it. Warning, data on RAID set will be lost if this option is used.




Raid Set Function

Delete Raid Set

Physical Drives


Create Hot Spare

View System Events

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01


Hardware Monitor

System information

Are you Sure?

Yes

No


3.7.2.3 Expand Raid Set

Instead of deleting a RAID set and recreating it with additional

54




Main Menu

Raid Set Function


Raid Set Function

Delete Raid Set

Exp



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Select Drives For Raid Set Expansion

Activate Raid Set

Create Hot Spare

Delete Hot Spare

Are you Sure?

Yes

No

ArrowKey Or AZ:Move Cursor, Enter: Select, ESC: Escape, L:Line Draw, X: Redraw disk drives, the “Expand Raid Set” function allows the users to add disk drives to the RAID set that have already been created.

To expand a raid set:

Select the “Expand Raid Set” option. If there is an available disk, then the “Select SATA Drives For Raid Set Expansion” screen appears.

Select the target RAID set by clicking on the appropriate radio button. Select the target disk by clicking on the appropriate check box.

Press the

Yes

key to start the expansion on the RAID set.

The new additional capacity can be utilized by one or more volume sets. Follow the instruction presented in the volume set

Function to modify the volume sets; operation system specific utilities may be required to expand operating system partitions.

Note:

1. Once the Expand Raid Set process has started, user cannot stop it. The process must be completed.

2. If a disk drive fails during raid set expansion and a hot spare is available, an auto rebuild operation will occur after the RAID set expansion completes.

• Migrating

55





Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

The Raid Set Information

Expand Raid Set

Activate Raid Set

Create Hot Spare

Delete Hot Spare

Free Capacity : 144.1GB

Min Member Disk Size : 40.0GB

Member Disk Channels : 1234


Migration occurs when a disk is added to a RAID set. Migration status is displayed in the raid status area of the Raid set infor mation screen when a disk is being added to a Raid set. Migrat ing status is also displayed in the associated volume status area of the Volume Set Information when a disk is added to a RAID set.

3.7.2.4 Activate Incomplete Raid Set

The following screen is shows “Raid Set Information” after one of its disk drive was removed in the power off state.



Main Menu

Raid Set Function


Create Raid Set

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Create Hot Spare

Raid State : Migrating


Hardware Monitor

Total Capacity : 160.1GB

Free Capacity : 144.1GB




When one of the disk drives is removed in power off state, the

Raid set state will change to Incomplete State. If a user wants to continue to work while the SATA RAID controller is powered on, the user can use the “Activate Raid Set” option to active the

RAID set. After user selects this function, the Raid State will change to Degraded Mode.

56


3.7.2.5 Create Hot Spare




Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Expand Raid Set

Activate Raid Set

Create Hot Spare

Delete Hot Spare

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Are you Sure?

Yes

No


When you choose the “Create Hot Spare” option in the Raid Set

Function, all unused physical devices connected to the current controller will result in the following:

Select the target disk by clicking on the appropriate check box.

Press the

Enter

key to select a disk drive and press

Yes

in the

“Create Hot Spare” to designate it as a hot spare.

The create Hot Spare option gives you the ability to define a global hot spare.

3.7.2.6 Delete Hot Spare

Select the target Hot Spare disk to delete by clicking on the ap propriate check box.

Press the

Enter

keys to select a disk drive, and press

Yes

in the

“Delete Hot Spare” window to delete the hot spare.



Main Menu

Raid Set Function


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



Clear Event Buffer

Select The HotSpare Device To be Deleted

Create Hot Spare

Delete Hot Spare


Hardware Monitor

System information

Are you Sure?

Yes

No


57


3.7.2.7 Raid Set Information

To display Raid Set information, move the cursor bar to the de sired RAID set number, then press the

Enter

key. The “Raid Set

Information” will display.

You can only view information for the RAID set in this screen.



Main Menu

Raid Set Function


Raid Set Function

Expand Raid Set

Activate Raid Set

Create Hot Spare

Delete Hot Spare



58


3.7.3 Volume Set Function



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Create Volume Set

Delete Volume Set



Check Volume Set

StopVolume Check

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information


A volume set is seen by the host system as a single logical de vice; it is organized in a RAID level within the controller utiliz ing one or more physical disks. RAID level refers to the level of data performance and protection of a volume set. A volume set can consume all of the capacity or a portion of the available disk capacity of a RAID set. Multiple volume sets can exist on a RAID set. If multiple volume sets reside on a specified RAID set, all


volume sets will reside on all physical disks in the RAID set. Thus each volume set on the RAID set will have its data spread evenly across all the disks in the RAID set. This is with regards in having more than one volumw set using some of the available disks and another volume set using other disks.

3.7.3.1 Create Volume Set

1. Volume sets of different RAID levels may coexist on the same raid set.

2. Up to 16 volume sets can be created by the SATA RAID controller.

3. The maximum addressable size of a single volume set is not limited to 2 TB as with other cards that support only 32-bit mode.

To create a volume set, follow the following steps:

1. Select the “Volume Set Function” from the Main menu.

2. Choose the “Create Volume Set” from “Volume Set Functions” dialog box screen.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Delete Volume Set



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

StopVolume Check


3. The “Create Volume From RAID Set” dialog box will be ap peared. This screen displays the existing arranged RAID sets.

Select the RAID set number and press the

Enter

key. The “Vol ume Creation” dialogue is displayed in the screen.

4. A window with a summary of the current volume set’s set tings. The “

Volume Creation

” option allows user to select the volume name, capacity, RAID level, strip size, Disk Info, Cache mode and tag queuing. The user can modify the default val ues in this screen; the modification procedures are in section

3.5.3.3.

59




Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives Volume Name : Volume Set # 00

Raid Level : 5

Capacity : 160.1GB

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0

Cache Mode : Write Back

Tag Queuing : Enabled


5. After completing the modification of the volume set, press the

Esc key to confirm it. An “Initialization” screen is presented.

• Select Foreground (Faster Completion) for Faster Initializa tion of the selected volume set.

• Select Background (Instant Available) for Normal Initializa tion of the selected volume set.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Check Volume Set

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

Foreground (Faster Completion)

Background (Instant Available)

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 to create additional volume sets.

7. The initialization percentage of volume set will be displayed at the button line.

60

• Volume Name




Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Volume Name : Volume Set # 00

Raid Level : 5

Capacity : 160.1GB

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0

Edit The Volume Name



V olume Set # 00


The default volume name will always appear as Volume Set #.

You can rename the volume set providing it does not exceed the 15 characters limit.

• Raid Level



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

StopVolume Check

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

Raid Level : 5

Capacity : 160.1GB

View System Events

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0

Select Raid Level



0

0 + 1

3

5

6


Set the RAID level for the volume set. Highlight Raid Level and press <

Enter

>.

The available RAID levels for the current volume set are dis played. Select a RAID level and press the

Enter

key to confirm.

61


• Capacity



Main Menu


Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Physical Drives

Volume Creation

Delete Volume Set



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer


Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




The maximum available volume size is the default value for the first setting. Enter the appropriate volume size to fit your ap plication. The capacity value can be increased or decreased by the

UP

and

DOWN

arrow keys. The capacity of each volume set must be less than or equal to the total capacity of the RAID set on which it resides.

If volume capacity will exceed 2TB, controller will show the

Greater 2 TB volume Support sub-menu.



Main Menu

Greater Two TB Volume Support


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Total 4 Drives

No

Use 64bit LBA


View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Raid 0

Raid 1 + 0

Raid 1 + 0 + Spare

Raid 3

Raid 5

Raid 3 + Spare

Raid 5 + Spare

Raid 6


62


•

No

It keeps the volume size with max. 2TB limitation.

•

LBA 64

This option use 16 bytes CDB instead of 10 bytes. The maximum volume capacity up to 512TB.

This option works on different OS which supports 16 bytes CDB. such as :

Windows 2003 with SP1

Linux kernel 2.6.x or latter

•

For Windows

It change the sector size from default 512 Bytes to 4k Byetes. the maximum volume capacity up to 16TB.

This option works under Windows platform only. And it

CAN NOT

be converted to Dynamic Disk, because 4k sector size is not a standard format.


ftp://ftp.

areca.com.tw/RaidCards/Documents/Manual_Spec/

Over2TB_050721.zip



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Physical Drives

Volume Creation

Delete Volume Set



View System Events

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

StopVolume Check

Clear Event Buffer

Capacity : 160.1GB

Stripe Size : 64K

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




• Stripe Size

This parameter sets the size of the segment written to each disk in a RAID 0, 1, 5, or 6 logical drive. You can set the stripe size to 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, 64 KB, or 128 KB.

63


• SCSI Channel



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Physical Drives

Volume Creation

Delete Volume Set


Capacity : 160.1GB

View System Events

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

StopVolume Check

Clear Event Buffer

SCSI Channel : 0

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




The SATA RAID controller function simulates a SCSI RAID con troller. The host bus represents the SCSI channel. Choose the

SCSI Channel. A “Select SCSI Channel” dialog box will appears; select the channel number and press the

Enter

key to confirm it.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Physical Drives


StopVolume Check

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Volume Creation

Raid Set # 00

Capacity : 160.1GB

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




• SCSI ID

Each device attached to the SATA card, as well as the card it self, must be assigned a unique SCSI ID number. A SCSI chan nel can connect up to 15 devices. It is necessary to assign a

64


SCSI ID to each device from a list of available SCSI IDs.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Raid Set # 00

Capacity : 160.1GB

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




• SCSI LUN

Each SCSI ID can support up to 8 LUNs. Most SCSI controllers treat each LUN as if it were a SCSI disk.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Raid Set # 00

Capacity : 160.1GB

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




• Cache Mode

User can set the cache mode to either “Write-Through Cache” or “Write-Back Cache”.

65


• Tag Queuing



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Delete Volume Set

Modify Volume Set

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Volume Creation

Volume Set Function



View System Events

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0



This option, when enabled, can enhance overall system perfor mance under multi-tasking operating systems. The Command

Tag (Drive Channel) function controls the SCSI command tag queuing support for each drive channel. This function should normally remain enabled. Disable this function only when using older drives that do not support command tag queuing.

3.7.3.2 Delete Volume Set

To delete volume set from a RAID set, move the cursor bar to the “Volume Set Functions” menu and select the “Delete Volume

Set” item, then press the

Enter

key. The “Volume Set Func tions” menu will show all Raid Set # items. Move the cursor bar to a RAID set number, then press the

Enter

key to show all volume sets within that Raid Set. Move the cursor to the volume set number that is to be deleted and press

Enter

to delete it.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Modify Volume Set

Check Volume Set

StopVolume Check

Display Volume Info.

Hardware Monitor

System information

Select Volume To Delete

Volume Set # 00

Delete Volume Set

Yes

No


66


3.7.3.3 Modify Volume Set



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Delete Volume Set


StopVolume Check

Display Volume Info.

Hardware Monitor

System information


Use this option to modify volume set configuration. To modify volume set values from RAID set system function, move the cursor bar to the “Volume Set Functions” menu and select the

“Modify Volume Set” item, then press the

Enter

key. The “Vol ume Set Functions” menu will show all RAID set items. Move the cursor bar to a RAID set number item, then press the

Enter

key to show all volume set items. Select the volume set from the list to be changed, press the

Enter

key to modify it.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Select Volume To Modify

Volume Name : Volume Set # 00

Hardware Monitor

System information

SCSI Channel : 0

SCSI ID : 0

SCSI LUN : 0




As shown, volume information can be modified at this screen.

Choose this option to display the properties of the selected vol ume set; all values can be modified except the capacity.

67


• Volume Growth

Use this option to expand a raid set when a disk is added to the system. The additional capacity can be used to enlarge the volume set size or to create another volume set. The “Modify

Volume Set Function” can support the “volume set expansion” function. To expand the volume set capacity from the “Raid Set

System Function”, move the cursor bar to the “Volume Set Vol ume Capacity” item and entry the capacity size. Select “Confirm

The Operation” and select on the “Submit” button to complete the action. The volume set starts to expand.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Check Volume Set

StopVolume Check

Clear Event Buffer

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

RAID Level : 6

Hardware Monitor

System information

Member Disk : 4

Cache Attribute : Write-Back



To Expand an existing volume noticed:

•

Only the last volume can expand capacity.

•

When expand volume capacity, you can’t modify stripe size or

modify raid revel simultaneously.

•

You can expand volume capacity, but can’t reduce volume

capacity size.

•

After volume expansion, the volume capacity can't be

decreased.

For Greater 2TB expansion:

•

If your system installed in the volume, don't expanded the

volume capacity greater 2TB, currently OS can’t support boot

up from a greater 2TB capacity device.

•

Expanded over 2TB used LBA64 mode. Please make sure your

OS supports LBA 64 before expand it.

68


• Volume Set Migration

Migrating occurs when a volume set is migrating from one RAID level to another, when a volume set strip size changes, or when a disk is added to a RAID set. Migration status is displayed in the volume status area of the “Volume Set Information” screen when moving from one RAID level to another, when a volume set strip size changes, or when a disk is added to a RAID set.

3.7.3.4 Check Volume Set

Use this option to verify the correctness of the redundant data in a volume set. For example, in a system with a dedicated parity disk drive, a volume set check entails computing the parity of the data disk drives and comparing those results to the contents of the dedicated parity disk drive. To check volume set from

“Raid Set System Function”, move the cursor bar to the “Volume

Set Functions” menu and select the “Check Volume Set” item, then press the

Enter

key. The “Volume Set Functions” menu will show all Raid Set number items. Move the cursor bar to an

Raid Set number item and then press the

Enter

key to show all

Volume Set items. Select the volume set to be checked from the list and press

Enter

to select it. After completing the selection, the confirmation screen appears, presses

Yes

to start the check.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Select Volume To Check

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

Check The Volume ?

Yes

No


3.7.3.5 Stop Volume Set Check

Use this option to stop all of the “Check Volume Set” operations.

69


3.7.3.6 Display Volume Set Info.



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information


To display volume set information, move the cursor bar to the desired volume set number and then press the

Enter

key. The

“Volume Set Information” will be shown. You can only view the information of this volume set in this screen, not modify it.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Check Volume Set

StopVolume Check

Clear Event Buffer

Raid Set # 00

Raid Set # 01

RAID Level : 6

Hardware Monitor

System information

Cache Attribute : Write-Back



70


3.7.4 Physical Drives



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Create Pass-Through Disk

Modify Pass-Through Disk

Delete Pass-Through Disk

Identify Selected Drive

Hardware Monitor

System information


Choose this option from the Main Menu to select a physical disk and perform the operations listed above.

3.7.4.1 View Drive Information



Ch01


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Disk Capacity : 80.0 GB


Ch04| 80.0GB|RaidSet Member|ST380013AS


Hardware Monitor

System information

SMART Read Error Rate : 200 (51)

SMART Spinup Time : 173 (21)

SMART Reallocation Count : 200 (140)

SMART Seek Error Rate : 200 (51)

SMART Spinup Retries : 100 (51)

SMART Calibration Retries : 100 (51)


71


When you choose this option, the physical disks connected to the SATA RAID controller are listed. Move the cursor to the de sired drive and press

Enter

to view drive information.

3.7.4.2 Create Pass-Through Disk



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Delete Pass-Through Disk

SCSI LUN : 0


Yes

No


A Pass-Through Disk is not controlled by the SATA RAID con troller firmware and thus cannot be a part of a volume set. The disk is available directly to the operating system as an individual disk. It is typically used on a system where the operating sys tem is on a disk not controlled by the SATA RAID controller firm ware. The SCSI Channel, SCSI ID, SCSI LUN, Cache Mode, and

Tag Queuing must be specified to create a pass-through disk.

3.7.4.3 Modify a Pass-Through Disk

Use this option to modify Pass-Through Disk Attributes. To select and modify a Pass-Through Disk from the pool of Pass-Through

Disks, move the cursor bar to the “Physical Drive Function” menu and select the “Modify Pass-Through Drive” option and then press the

Enter

key. The “Physical Drive Function” menu will show all Raid Pass-Through Drive number options. Move the cursor bar to the desired item and then press the

Enter

key to show all Pass-Through Disk Attributes. Select the parameter from the list to be changed and them press the

Enter

key to modify it.

72


3.7.4.4 Delete Pass-Through Disk



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Delete Pass-Through

Identify Selected Drive

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

Delete Pass-Through

Yes

No


To delete a Pass-through drive from the Pass-through drive pool, move the cursor bar to the “Physical Drive Function” menu and select the “Delete Pass-Through Drive” item, then press the

Enter

key. The “Delete Pass-Through confirmation” screen will appear; select

Yes

to delete it.

3.7.4.5 Identify Selected Drive



Main Menu

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Select The Drive




Ch08| 80.0GB| Pass Throught |ST380013AS

System information


You can used the "Identify Drive" feature to prevent removing the wrong drive, the selected drive Fault LED will blank when the

"Identify Drive" is selected.

73


3.7.5 Raid System Function

To set the raid system function, move the cursor bar to the main menu and select the “Raid System Function” item and then press

Enter

key. The “Raid System Function” menu will show multiple items. Move the cursor bar to an item, then press

Enter

key to select the desired function.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives




View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information


3.7.5.1 Mute The Alert Beeper



Main Menu


Mute The Alert Beeper

Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



Yes

No

Background Task Priority

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Empty HDD slot LED

HDD SMART Status Polling

Controller Fan Detection

Disk Write Cache Mode

Capacity Truncation


The “Mute The Alert Beeper” function item is used to control the

SATA RAID controller Beeper. Select

yes

and press the

Enter

key in the dialog box to turn the beeper off temporarily. The beeper will still activate on the next event.

74


3.7.5.2 Alert Beeper Setting




Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Maximum SATA Mode

HDD Read Ahead Cache

Stagger Power on

Hardware Monitor

System information



Capacity Truncation

Disabled

Enabled


The “Alert Beeper Setting” item is used to Disabled or Enable the

SATA RAID controller alarm tone generator. Select “Disabled” and press the

Enter

key in the dialog box to turn the beeper off.

3.7.5.3 Change Password




Alert Beeper Setting

Change Password

JBOD/RAID Function


Maximum SATA Mode

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Empty HDD slot LED




Capacity Truncation

Enter New Password


The manufacture default password is set to 0000.

The password option allows user to set or clear the password pro tection feature. Once the password has been set, the user can monitor and configure the controller only by providing the cor -

75


rect password. This feature is used to protect the internal RAID system from unauthorized access. The controller will check the password only when entering the Main menu from the initial screen. The system will automatically go back to the initial screen if it does not receive any command in 20 seconds.

To set or change the password, move the cursor to “Raid System

Function” screen, press the “Change Password” item. The “Enter

New Password” screen will appear.

To disable the password, only press

Enter

in both the “Enter

New Password” and “Re-Enter New Password” column. The ex isting password will be cleared. No password checking will occur when entering the main menu.




Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

RAID



Capacity Truncation


3.7.5.4 JBOD/RAID Function

JBOD is an acronym for “

just a Bunch Of Disks

”. It represents a volume set that is created by the concatenation of partitions on the disk. The operating system can see all disks when the

JBOD option is selected. It is necessary to delete any RAID set(s) on any disk(s) if switching from a

RAID

to a

JBOD

con figuration.

76


3.7.5.5 Background Task Priority



Raid Rebuild Priority

UltraLow(5%)

Low(20%)

Medium(50%)


Maximum SATA Mode


Stagger Power on

Hardware Monitor

System information



Capacity Truncation


The “

Background Task Priority

” is a relative indication of how much time the controller devotes to a rebuild operation. The

SATA RAID controller allows the user to choose the rebuild prior ity (ultralow, low, normal, high) to balance volume set access and rebuild tasks appropriately.

3.7.5.6 Maximum SATA Mode



Maximum SATA Mode


Change Password

JBOD/RAID Function


Maximum SATA Mode

View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Empty HDD slot LED




Capacity Truncation


The SATA RAID controller can support up to SATA ll, which runs up to 300MB/s, twice as fast as SATA150. NCQ is a command protocol in Serial ATA that can only be implemented on na tive Serial ATA hard drives. It allows multiple commands to be outstanding within a drive at the same time. Drives that support

NCQ have an internal queue where outstanding commands can

77


be dynamically rescheduled or re-ordered, along with the neces sary tracking mechanisms for outstanding and completed por tions of the workload. The SATA RAID controller allows the user to choose the SATA Mode: SATA150, SATA150+NCQ, SATA300,

SATA300+NCQ.

3.7.5.7 HDD Read Ahead Cache

Allow Read Ahead (Default: Enabled)—When Enabled, the drive’ s read ahead cache algorithm is used, providing maximum performance under most circumstances.





Change Password

JBOD/RAID Function

Disabled



Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information



Capacity Truncation


3.7.5.8 Stagger Power On

In a PC system with only one or two drives, the power can sup ply enough power to spin up both drives simultaneously. But in systems with more than two drives, the startup current from spinning up the drives all at once can overload the power sup ply, causing damage to the power supply, disk drives and other system components. This damage can be avoided by allowing the host to stagger the spin-up of the drives. New SATA drives have support staggered spin-up capabilities to boost reliability.

Staggered spin-up is a very useful feature for managing multiple disk drives in a storage subsystem. It gives the host the abil ity to spin up the disk drives sequentially or in groups, allowing the drives to come ready at the optimum time without straining the system power supply. Staggering drive spin-up in a multiple drive environment also avoids the extra cost of a power supply designed to meet short-term startup power demand as well as steady state conditions.

78


Areca has supported the fixed value staggered power up func tion in its previous version firmware. But from firmware version

1.39 and later, SATA RAID controller has included the option for customer to select the disk drives sequentially stagger power up value. The values can be selected from 0.4ms to 6ms per step which powers up one drive.




Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

1.0

1.5

.

STagger Power on

Empty HDD slot LED




Capacity Truncation


3.7.5.9 Empty HDD slot HDD

From firmware version 1.39 date: 04/01/2006 and later, the firmware has added the "Empty HDD Slot LED" option to setup the Failed LED light "ON "or "OFF". When each slot has a power

LED for the HDD installed identify, user can set this option to

"OFF". Choose this option "ON", the failed LED light will flash red light; if no HDD installed.





Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


Maximum SATA Mode

View System Events

STagger Power on

Empty HDD slot LED




Capacity Truncation

Empty HDD slot LED

On

OFF


79


3.7.5.10 HDD SMART Status Polling

An external RAID enclosure has the hardware monitor in the dedicated backplane that can report HDD temperature status to the controller. However, PCI cards do not use backplanes if the drives are internal to the main server chassis. The type of enclosure cannot report the HDD temperature to the controller.

For this reason, HDD SMART Status Polling was added to enable scanning of the HDD temperature function in the version 1.36 date: 2005-05-19 (and later). It is necessary to enable “HDD

SMART Status Polling” function before SMART information is accessible. This function is disabled by default.

The following screen shot shows how to change the BIOS setting to enable the Polling function.





Change Password

JBOD/RAID Function


Maximum SATA Mode


Stagger Power on

Hardware Monitor

System information




Capacity Truncation

Disabled

Enabled


3.7.5.11 Controller Fan Detection

Included in the product box is a field replaceable passive heatsink to be used only if there is enough airflow to adequately cool the passive heat sink.

The “Controller Fan Detection” function is available in the version 1.36 date: 2005-05-19 and later for preventing the

Buzzer warning. When using the passive heatsink, disable the

“Controller Fan Detection” function through this BIOS setting.

The following screen shot shows how to change the BIOS setting to disable the beeper function.

(This function is not available in the Web Browser setting.)

80






Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer


Empty HDD slot LED




Capacity Truncation

Disabled

Enabled


3.7.5.12 Disk Write Cache Mode

User can set the “Disk Write Cache Mode” to Auto, Enabled, or

Disabled. Enabled increases speed, Disabled increases reliabil ity.





Change Password

JBOD/RAID Function



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Empty HDD slot LED




Capacity Truncation


3.7.5.13 Capacity Truncation

SATA RAID controllers use drive truncation that drives from dif ferent vendors. It is more likely to be usable as spares for one another. Drive truncation slightly decreases the usable capac -

81


ity of a drive that is used in redundant units. The controller provides three truncation modes in the system configuration:

Multiples Of 10G, Multiples Of 1G, and No Truncation.

Multiples Of 10G:

If you have 120 GB drives from different vendors; chances are that the capacity varies slightly. For exam ple, one drive might be 123.5 GB, and the other 120 GB. Areca drive Truncation mode

Multiples Of 10G

uses the same capac ity for both of these drives so that one could replace the other.


If you have 123 GB drives from different ven dors; chances are that the capacity varies slightly. For example, one drive might be 123.5 GB, and the other 123.4 GB. Areca drive Truncation mode

Multiples Of 1G

uses the same capacity for both of these drives so that one could replace the other.

No Truncation:

It does not truncate the capacity.




Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

To Multiples of 10G

To Multiples of 1G


View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Empty HDD slot LED





3.7.6 Ethernet Configuration (12/16/24-port)

Use this feature to set the controller Ethernet port configuration.

It is not necessary to create reserved disk space on any hard disk for the Ethernet port and HTTP service to function; these func tions are built into the controller firmware.

82




Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information


3.7.6.1 DHCP Function

DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) allows network ad ministrators centrally manage and automate the assignment of

IP (Internet Protocol) addresses on a computer network. When using the TCP/IP protocol (Internet protocol), it is necessary for a computer to have a unique IP address in order to communi cate to other computer systems. Without DHCP, the IP address must be entered manually at each computer system. DHCP lets a network administrator supervise and distribute IP addresses from a central point. The purpose of DHCP is to provide the automatic (dynamic) allocation of IP client configurations for a specific time period (called a lease period) and to minimize the work necessary to administer a large IP network. To manually



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Local IP Address : 192.168.001.100

Ethernet Address : 00.04.D9.7F.FF.FF

Hardware Monitor

System information

Disabled

Enabled


83


configure the IP address of the controller, move the cursor bar to the Main menu “Ethernet Configuration Function” item and then press the

Enter

key. The “Ethernet Configuration” menu appears on the screen. Move the cursor bar to DHCP Function item, then press

Enter

key to show the DHCP setting. Select the “Disabled’ or ‘Enabled” option to enable or disable the DHCP function. If DHCP is disabled, it will be necessary to manually enter a static IP address that does not conflict with other de vices on the network.

3.7.6.2 Local IP address

If you intend to set up your client computers manually (no

DHCP), make sure that the assigned IP address is in the same range as the default router address and that it is unique to your private network. However, it is highly recommend to use DHCP if that option is available on your network. An IP address alloca tion scheme will reduce the time it takes to set-up client com puters and eliminate the possibilities of administrative errors and duplicate addresses. To manually configure the IP address of the controller, move the cursor bar to the Main menu Ethernet

Configuration Function item and then press the

Enter

key. The

Ethernet Configuration menu appears on the screen. Move the cursor bar to Local IP Address item, then press the

Enter

key to show the default address setting in the SATA RAID controller.

You can then reassign the static IP address of the controller.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function


Local IP Address : 192.168.001.100

Ethernet Address : 00.04.D9.7F.FF.FF

Hardware Monitor

System information

1 92.168.001.100


84


3.7.6.3 Ethernet Address

A MAC address stands for “Media Access Control” address and is unique to every single ethernet device. On an Ethernet LAN, it’s the same as your Ethernet address. When you’re connected to a local network from the SATA RAID controller Ethernet port, a correspondence table relates your IP address to the SATA RAID controller’s physical (MAC) address on the LAN.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives


View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information


3.7.7 View System Events

To view the SATA RAID controller’s information, move the cur sor bar to the main menu and select the “View Events” link, then press the

Enter

key. The SATA RAID controller’s events screen will appear.



Main Menu


Time Device Event Type ElapseTime Errors

Volume Set Function

2004-1-1 12:00:00 H/W Monitor Raid Powered On



View System Events

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information


85


Choose this option to view the system events information: Timer,

Device, Event type, Elapsed Time, and Errors. The RAID system does not have a real time clock. The Time information is the rela tive time from the SATA RAID controller powered on.

3.7.8 Clear Events Buffer

Use this feature to clear the entire events buffer.

3.7.9 Hardware Monitor

To view the RAID controller’s hardware monitor information, move the mouse cursor to the main menu and click the “Hardware

Monitor” link. The Hardware Information screen appears.

The Hardware Monitor Information provides the temperature and fan speed (I/O Processor fan) of the SATA RAID controller.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Fan Speed (RPM) : 2178

Battery Status : Not Installed


HDD #2 Temp. : --

HDD #3 Temp. : 48

Clear Event Buffer

Hardware Monitor

System information

HDD #7 Temp. : --

HDD #8 Temp. : --


86

3.7.10 System Information

Choose this option to display Main processor, CPU Instruction cache and data cache size, firmware version, serial number, controller model name, and the cache memory size. To check the system information, move the cursor bar to “System Information”


item, then press

Enter

key. All relevant controller information will be displayed.



Main Menu


Raid Set Function

Volume Set Function

Physical Drives

Main Processor : 500MHz IOP331

CPU ICache Size : 32KB


System Memory : 128MB/333MHz

Firmware Version : V1.31 2004-5-31

BOOT ROM Version : V1.34 2004-9-29

Serial Number : 1100-2116-6633

Controller Name : ARC-1120


87

DRIVER INSTALLATION

4. Driver Installation

This chapter describes how to install the SATA RAID controller driver to your operating system. The installation procedures use the following terminology:

Installing operating system on the SATA Volume

If you have a new drive configuration without an operating system and want to install operating system on a disk drive managed by the

SATA RAID Controller. The driver installation is a part of the operat ing system installation.

Installing SATA RAID controller into an existing operating system

The computer has an existing operating system installed and the

SATA RAID controller is being installed as a secondary controller.

Have all required system hardware and software components on hand before proceeding with the setup and installation.

Materials required:

• Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003, Linux, FreeBSD or more installa-

tion

CD-ROM

• SATA RAID Controller Diver CD-ROM

• SATA RAID controller

4.1 Creating the Driver Diskettes

The CD-ROM disc shipped with the SATA RAID controller is a selfbooting CD. In order to created driver diskettes for Windows,

Linux, FreeBSD or more installation drivers, your system is re quired to support booting from the CD-ROM.

If you do not have the CD-ROM disc with the package, contact your local dealer or you can also download the latest version drivers for

Windows 2000/XP/2003, Linux, freeBSD and more from the ARECA web site at http://www.areca.com.tw

88


The following steps are required to create the driver diskettes:

1. The computer system BIOS must be set to boot-up from the CD-

ROM.

2. Insert the SATA Controller Driver CD disc into the CD-ROM drive.

3. The system will boot-up from CD-ROM Drive; to create the driv er diskettes, select the “

SATA RAID controller Driver Diskette

Make Utility

”, and a screen with several choices will be displayed.

4. Move the highlight bar to the “

Create Driver Disk

” entry and press

Enter

.

5. The screen queries the SATA RAID controller support driver database and displays a list of available drivers. Move the highlight bar to the correct driver entry and press

Enter

to select.

6. The next screen will show “

Please insert a formatted diskette into drive A:!! Press any key to continue

”. Insert the formatted diskette in drive “

A

” and press any key to continue.

7. The window will display the driver building message: ”

Now is writing to Cylinder…

” as it copies the image file from the CD-

ROM to Driver Diskette.

8. The “

Write Complete !!

” message will display when the driver diskette ready.

The driver diskette is now made. Proceed to the following instruc tion for installation procedures.

4.2 Driver Installation for Windows

The SATA RAID controller can be used with Microsoft Windows

2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Windows 2003 64bit for AMD Opteron is also supported. The SATA RAID controllers support SCSI Miniport and StorPort Drivers for Windows Server

2003.

4.2.1 New Storage Device Drivers in Windows

Server 2003

89


The Storport driver is new to Windows Server 2003. Storport im plements a new architecture designed for better performance with

RAID systems and in Storage Area Network (SAN) environments.

Storport delivers higher I/O throughput, enhanced manageability, and an improved miniport interface. Storport better utilizes faster adapters through the use of reduced Delay Procedure Call (DPC) and improved queue management.

4.2.2 Install Windows 2000/XP/2003 on a SATA

RAID Volume

The following instructions explain how to install the SATA RAID controller Driver. For completed details on installing Windows, see the Windows User’s Manual.

4.2.2.1 Installation procedures

The following detailed procedure installing the SATA RAID con troller driver while installing Windows 2000/XP/2003. Have your bootable Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003 CD-ROM and follow the required procedure below to install SATA RAID controller:

1. Make sure you follow the instructions in Chapter 2 “

Hardware Installation

” to install the controller and connect the disk drives or enclosure.

2. Start the system and then press Tab+F6 to access the McBI -

OS RAID manager. Use the McBIOS manager to create the RAID set and volume set to which you will install Windows. For de tails, see Chapter 3 “

McBIOS RAID manager

”. Once a volume set is created and configured, continue with next step to install the operating system.

3. Insert the Windows setup CD and reboot the system to begin the Windows installation.

Note:

The computer system BIOS must support bootable from

CD-ROM

.

90


4. Press F6 as soon as the Windows screen shows ”

Setup is inspecting your Computer’s hardware Configuration

”. A message stating “

Press F6 to specify thrid-party RAID controller

” will display during this time. This must be done or else the Windows installer will not prompt for the driver for from the

SATA RAID controller and the driver diskette will not be recog nized.

5. The next screen will show: “

Setup could not determine the type of one or more mass storage device installed in your system.

”Selected “specify additional SCSI adapter” by pressing

S.

6. Window will prompt to place the “

Manufacturer-supplied hardware support disk

” into floppy drive A: Insert the SATA

RAID series driver diskette in drive “A:” and press

Enter

.

7. Window will check the floppy; select the correct card and

CPU type for your hardware from the listing and press

Enter

to install it.

8. After Windows scans the hardware and finds the controller, it will display:

“

Setup will load support for the following Mass Storage devices:

”

“

Windows 2K, XP,2K3 (ARC1XX0) SATA PCI-X (or PCI-

Express) RAID Controller

”. Press

Enter

to continue and copy the driver files. From this point on, simply follow the Microsoft

Windows installation procedure. Follow the on-screen instruc tions, responding as needed, to complete the installation.

9. After the installation is completed, reboot the system to load the new drivers / operating system.

10. See Chapter 5 in this manual to customize your RAID vol ume sets using Storage manager.

4.2.2.2 Making Volume Sets Available to Windows

System

When you reboot the system, log in as a system administrator.

91


Continue with the following steps to make any additional volume sets or pass-through disks accessible to Windows. This proce dure assumes that the SATA RAID controller hardware, driver, and Windows are installed and operational in your system.

1. Partition and format the new volume set or disks using Disk

Administrator: a. Choose Administrative Tools from the Start menu.

b. Choose Computer Management from the Administrative Tools menu.

c. Select Storage.

d. Select Disk Management.

2. Follow the on-screen prompts to write a signature to the drive.

3. Right click on the disk drive and select “Create Volume” from the menu.

4. Follow the on-screen prompts to create a volume set and to give a disk drive letter.

4.2.3 Installing controller into an existing Windows 2000/XP/2003 Installation

In this scenario, you are installing the controller in an existing

Windows system. To install the driver:

1. Follow the instructions in Chapter 2, the


Chapter, to install the controller and connect the disk drives or enclosure.

2. Start the system and then press Tab+F6 to enter the Mc -

BIOS-based configuration utility. Use the configuration utility to create the raid set and volume set. For details, see Chapter

3,

McBIOS RAID Manager

. Once a volume set is created and configured, continue with installation of the driver.

3. Re-Boot Windows and the OS will recognize the SATA RAID

Controller and launche the “

Found New Hardware Wizard

”,

92


which guides you in installing the SATA RAID driver.

4. The “

Upgrade Device Driver Wizard

” will pop-up and provide a choice of how to proceed. Choose “

Display a list of known drivers for this device, so that you can choose a specific driver.

” and click on

Next

.

5. When the next screen queries the user about utilizing the cur rently installed driver, click on the

Have Disk

button.

6. When the “

Install From Disk

” dialog appears, insert the

SATA RAID controller driver diskette or the shipping CD-ROM and type-in or browse to the correct path for the “

Copy manufacturer’s files from:

” dialog box.

7. After specifying the driver location, the previous dialog box will appear showing the selected driver to be installed. Click the

Next

button.

8. The “

Digital Signature Not Found

” screen will appear. Click on

Yes

to continue the installation.

9. Windows automatically copies the appropriate driver files and rebuilds its driver database.

10. The “

Found New Hardware Wizard

” summary screen ap pears; click the

Finish

button.

11. The “

System Settings Change

” dialog box appears. Re move the diskette from the drive and click

Yes

to restart the computer to load the new drivers.

12. See Chapter 5 in this manual for information on customizing your RAID volumes using Storage manager.

4.2.3.1 Making Volume Sets Available to Windows

System

When you reboot the system, log in as a system administrator.

The following steps show how to make any new disk arrays or independent disks accessible to Windows 2000/XP/2003. This

93


procedure assumes that the SATA RAID controller hardware, driver, and Windows are installed and operational in your sys tem.

1. Partition and format the new arrays or disks using Disk Ad ministrator: a. Choose Administrative Tools from the Start menu.

b. Choose Computer Management from the Administrative Tools menu.

c. Select Storage.

d. Select Disk Management.

2. Follow the on-screen prompts to write a signature to the drive.

3. Right click on the drive and select Create Volume from the menu.

4. Follow the on-screen prompts to create a volume set and to assign a disk drive letter.

4.2.4 Uninstall controller from Windows 2000/

XP/2003

To remove the SATA RAID controller driver from the Windows sys tem, follow the instructions below.

1. Ensure that you have closed all applications and are logged in with administrative rights.

2. Open

Control Panel

and start the

Add/Remove Program

icon and uninstall and software for the SATA RAID controller.

3. Go to Control Panel and select System. Select the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager Button. In Device Man ager, expand the “SCSI and RAID Controllers” section. Right click on the

ARECA SATA RAID Adapter

and select “uninstall”.

4. Click

Yes

to confirm removing the SATA RAID driver. The prompt to restart the system will then be displayed.

94


4.3 Driver Installation for Linux

This chapter describes how to install the SATA RAID controller driver to Red Hat Linux, and SuSE Linux. Before installing the SATA

RAID driver to the Linux, complete the following actions:

1. Install and configure the controller and hard disk drives accord ing to the instructions in Chapter 2


.

2. Start the system and then press Tab+F6 to enter the McBIOS

RAID manager configuration utility. Use the BIOS configuration utility to create the RAID set and volume set. For details, see

Chapter 3,


.

If you are using a Linux distribution for which there is not a com piled driver available from ARECA, you can copy the source from the SATA software CD or download the source from the ARECA website and compile a new driver.

Compiled and tested drivers for Red Hat and SuSE Linux are in cluded on the shipped CD. You can download updated versions of compiled and tested drivers for Red Hat or SuSE Linux from the

ARECA web site at http://www.areca.com.tw. Included in these downloads is the Linux driver source, which can be used to compile the updated version driver for RedHat, SuSE and other versions of

Linux.

Please refer to the “

readme.txt

” file on the included ARECA CD-

ROM or website to make driver diskette and to install driver to the system.

4.4 Driver Installation for FreeBSD

This chapter describes how to install the SATA RAID controller driver to FreeBSD. Before installing the SATA RAID driver to Free -

BSD, complete following actions:

1. Install and configure the controller and hard disk drives accord ing to the instructions in Chapter 2,

Hardware Installation.

2. Start the system and then press Tab+F6 to enter the

McBIOS

RAID Manager

configuration utility. Use the BIOS configuration

95


utility to create the raid set and volume set. For details, see Chap ter 3,


.

The supplied CD-ROM that came with the SATA RAID controller includes compiled and tested drivers for FreeBSD 4.x (4.2 and on wards) and 5.x (5.2 and onwards). To check if a more current ver sion driver is available, please see the ARECA web site at http:// www.areca.com.tw.

Please refer to the “

readme.txt

” file on the SATA RAID controller software CD-ROM or website to make driver diskette and to install driver to the system.

4.5 Driver Installation for Solaris 10

Please refer to the “readme.txt” file on the software CD or a manual from website: http://www.areca.com.tw

4.6 Driver Installation for Mac 10.x

After hardware installation, the SATA disk drives connected to the

Externl SATA RAID Adapter must be configured and the volume set units initialized by the controller before they are ready to use by the system.

You must have administrative level permissions to install Areca Mac

Driver & Software. You can install Driver& Software on your Power

Mac G5 or MacPro as below:

1. Insert the Areca Mac Driver & Software CD that came with

your Areca External SATA RAID Adapter.

2. Double-click on the following file that resides at <CD-ROM>\

packages\MacOS to add the installer on the Finder.

a). install_mraid_mac.dmg (For Power Mac G5) b). install_mraid_macpro.dmg (For MacPro)

3. Launch the installer by double-clicking the install_mraid_mac or

install_mraid_macpro virtual volume on the Finder.

4. Follow the installer steps to install Areca driver, archttp64 and

arc_cli utility at the same time.

5. Reboot your Power Mac G5 or MacPro system

96


Normally archttp64 and arc_cli are installed at the same time you install the driver for your Areca external SATA RAID adapter. Once archttp64 and arc_cli have been installed, the background task au tomatically starts each time you start your computer. There is one

MARID icon showing on your desktop. This icon is for you to start up the McRAID storage manager (by archttp64) and arc_cli utility.

Please refer to the “Mac_manual“ file on the software CD <CD-

ROM>\DOCS directory.

4.7 Driver Installation for UnixWare 7.1.4


4.8 Driver Installation for NetWare 6.5


97

ARCHTTP PROXY SERVER INSTALLATION

5. ArcHttp Proxy Server Installation

Overview

After hardware installation, the SATA disk drives connected to the SATA

RAID controller must be configured and the volume set units initialized before they are ready to use.

The user interface for these tasks can be accessed through the built-in configuration and administration utility that resides in the controller’s firmware. It provides complete control and management of the con troller and disk arrays, eliminating the need for additional hardware or software.

In addition, a software utility to configure the SATA RAID is provided on the CD-ROM delivered with SATA controller. This CD-ROM contains the software utility that can monitor, test, and support the SATA RAID controller. The software utility and McRAID storage manager can con figure and monitor the SATA RAID controller via ArcHttp Proxy Server.

The following table outlines their functions:

Configuration Utility

McBIOS RAID Manager

McRAID Storage Manager

(Via Archttp proxy server)

SAP Monitor (Single Admin portal to scan for multiple RAID units in the net work, Via ArcHttp Proxy Server)

Operating System supported

OS-Independent

Windows 2000/XP/2003, Linux, FreeBSD

NetWare, UnixwWare, Solaris and Mac

Windows 2000/XP/2003

From version 1.6 and later, the HTTP management software (ArcHttp) runs as a service or daemon, and have it automatically start the proxy for all controllers found. This way the controller can be managed re motely without having to sign in the server. The HTTP management software (ArcHttp) also has integrated the General Configuration, Mail

Configuration and SNMP Configuration. Those can be configured in lo cal or remote standard web browser.

Note:

If your controller have onboard LAN port, you don't need to install

ArcHttp proxy Server, you can use McRAID Storage Manager directly.

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5.1 For Windows

You must have administrative level permissions to install SATA

RAID software. This procedure assumes that the SATA RAID hard ware and Windows are installed and operational in your system.

Screen captures in this section are taken from a Windows XP instal lation. If you are running another version of Windows, your instala tion screen may look different, but the ArcHttp proxy server instal lation is essentially the same.

1. Insert the RAID subsystem CD in the CD-ROM drive.

2. Run the setup.exe file that resides at: <CD-ROM>\PACKAGES\

Windows\http\setup.exe on the CD-ROM.

3. The screen shows Preparing to install.

Follow the on-screen prompts to complete ArcHttp Proxy Server software installation.

A program bar appears that measures the progress of the

ArcHttp setup. When this screen complete, you have completed the ArcHttp Proxy Server software setup.

4. After a successful installation, the Setup Complete dialog box is displayed.

Click the

Finish

button to complete the installation.

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Click on the start button in the Windows 2000/XP task bar and then click Program, select the McRAID and run “ ArcHttp proxy server”. The ArcHttp dialog box appears.

1. When you select

“Controller#01(PCI)”

then click

“Start”

button. Then web broswer appears.

2. If you select

“Cfg Assistant”

then click

“Start”

button.

The ArcHttp Configuration apperas. (please refer to section 5.6

ArcHttp Configuration )

5.2 For Linux

You should have administrative level permissions to install SATA

RAID software. This procedure assumes that the SATA RAID hard ware and Linux are installed and operational in your system.

The following details the Linux installation procedure of the SATA

RAID controller software.

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1. Insert the SATA RAID controller CD in the CD-ROM drive.

2. Copy <CD-ROM>\PACKAGES\Linux\http directory to local

(Ex:/usr/local/sbin)

3. Setting up the

"archttpsrv.conf"

of ArcHttp configuration.

For example: General Configuration, Mail Configuration, SNMP

Configuration.


Usage: ./archttp32 (TCP_PORT) or ./archttp64 (TCP_PORT). It depends on your OS version.

Parameters: TCP_PORT value= 1~65535 (If TCP_PORT assigned,

Archttp will start from this port. Otherwise, it will use the setting in archttpsrv.conf )

4. Runing the ArcHttp file then ArcHttp screen appears.

Copyright (c) 2004 Areca, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Areca HTTP proxy server V1.80.240 for Areca RAID controllers.

Controller(s) list

--------------------------------------------

Controller[1](PCI) : Listen to port[81].

Cfg Assistant : Listen to port[82].

--------------------------------------------

##############################

Press CTRL-C to exit program!!

##############################

3. See the next chapter detailing the McRAID Storage Manager to customize your RAID volume set.

For Mozilla user:

Because our management need Java support, so user may need upgrade to version 1.6 or later.

5.3 For FreeBSD

You should have administrative level permissions to install SATA

RAID software. This procedure assumes that the SATA RAID hardware and FreeBSD are installed and operational in your system.

The following details FreeBSD installation procedure of the SATA



2. Copy <CD-ROM>\PACKAGES\FreeBSD\http directory to local

The next following step is the same with Linux. Please see section

5.2 For Linux.

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5.4 For Solaris 10 x86

You must have administrative level permissions to install SATA

RAID software. This procedure assumes that the SATA RAID hardware and FreeBSD are installed and operational in your system.

The following details Solaris installation procedure of the SATA



2. Copy <CD-ROM>\PACKAGES\Solaris\http directory to local

The next following step is the same with Linux. Please see section

5.2 For Linux.

5.5 For Mac OS 10.x

The McRAID manager interface can be accessed through the builtin configuration and administration utility that resides in the con troller’s firmware. It provides complete control and management of the controller and disk arrays, eliminating the need for additional hardware or software.

The ArcHttp proxy server is provided on the CD-ROM delivered with SATA card or download from the www.areca.com.tw. The firmware embedded McRAID storage manager can configure and monitor the SATA RAID controller via ArcHttp Proxy Server.

1. Login as root. Copy the ArcHttp file to a local directory.

(1). Insert the SATA RAID controller CD in the CD-ROM drive.

(2). Copy <CD-ROM>\PACKAGES\Mac\http directory to local.

Or

(1). Download from the www.areca.com.tw or from the email attachment.

2. You must have administrative level permissions to install SATA

RAID controller ArcHttp software. This procedure assumes that the

SATA RAID hardware and Mac driver are installed and operational in your system.

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The following details are the installation procedure of the SATA

RAID controller for Mac ArcHttp software.

(1).Run the archttp64 using Terminal.app by using the following command:

Usage: sudo ./archttp64 (TCP_PORT).

Parameters: TCP_PORT value= 1~65535 (If TCP_PORT assigned,

Archttp will start from this port. Otherwise, it will use the setting in the archttpsrv.conf or default 81). This is the port address assigning for the first adapter.

Such as: sudo ./archttp64 1553

(2). Archttp server console started, Controller card detected then

ArcHttp proxy server screen appears.

Copyright (c) 2004 Areca, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Areca HTTP proxy server V1.80.240 for Areca RAID controllers.

Controller(s) list

--------------------------------------------

Controller[1](PCI) : Listen to port[1553].

Cfg Assistant : Listen to port[1554].

Binding IP:[0.0.0.0]

Note: IP[0.0.0.0] stands for any ip bound to this host.

--------------------------------------------

##############################

Press CTRL-C to exit program!!

##############################

Controller [1] Http: New client [9] accepted

Controller [1] Http: New Recv 243 bytes

Controller [1] Http: Send [174] bytes back to the client

5.6 ArcHttp Configuration

The ArcHttp proxy server will automatically assign one additional port for setup its configuration. If you want to change the "archttp srv.conf" setting up of ArcHttp configuration, For example: General configuration, Mail Configuration, and SNMP Configuration, please start Web Browser by entering http://[Computer IP Address]:[cfg port number]

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The ArcHttp configuration starts.

• General Configuration

104

Binding IP 0.0.0.0: You can choose either local adminstration or remote adminstration to connect web browser.

Binding IP 127.0.0.1: Using local adminstration to connect web browser.

Binding IP 192.166.0.44: Using remote adminstration to connect web browser.

HTTP Port#: Value 1~65535

Display HTTP Connection Information To Console: Select “Yes’ to show Http send bytes and receive bytes information in the console.

Scanning PCI Device: Select “Yes” for ARC-1XXX series adapter

Scanning RS-232 Device: No

Scanning Inband Device: No

• Mail Configuration

When you open the mail configuration page, you will see following settings:

SMTP server IP Address: Enter the SMTP server IP address which is not MCRAID manager IP. Ex: 192.168.0.2

Sender Name: Enter the sender name that will be shown in the out going mail. Ex: RaidController_1

Mail address: Enter the sender email that will be shown in the out going mail, but don’t type IP to replace domain name.


Ex: [email protected]

Account: enter the valid account if your SMTP mail server need au thentication.

Password: Enter the valid password if your SMTP mail server need authentication.

MailTo Name: Enter the alert receiver name that will be shown in the outgoing mail.

Mail Address: Enter the alert receiver mail address.

Ex: [email protected]

Note:

Please make sure you have completed mail address before you submit mail configurations.

• SNMP Trap Configuration

Please refer to the 6.8.4 SNMP configuration(12/16/24-port) section.

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Configure Configuration and submit. After ArcHttp configurations have successfully submitted, the Archttp console restarts again.

Note:

Event Notification Table refer to Appendix D.

After you confirm and submit configurations, you can use

Generate Test Event feature to make sure these settings are correct.

106

WEB BROWSER-BASED CONFIGURATION

6. Web Browser-based Configuration

Before using the McRAID firmware-based browser utility, do the ini tial setup and installation of this product. If you need to boot up the operating system from a RAID volume set, you must first create a

RAID volume by using

McBIOS RAID Storage Manager

. Please refer to section 3.3

Using Quick Volume /Raid Setup Configuration

for information on creating this initial volume set.

The McRAID storage manager is firmware-based utility, which is ac cessible via the browser installed on your operating system.The Web

Browser-based McRAID Storage Manager is a HTML-based application, which utilizes the browser (IE, Netscape and Mozilla etc) installed on your monitor station.

It can be accessed through the In-Band PCI-X/PCIe bus or Out-of-Band ethernet port. The In-Band method via archttp proxy server to launch the Web Browser-based McRAID Storage Manager. The firmware-em bedded Web Browser-based McRAID storage manager allows local or remote to access it from any standard internet browser via a LAN or WAN with no software or patches required. The firmware contains

SMTP manager monitors all system events and user can select either single or multiple user notifications to be sent via LAN with “Plain Eng lish” e-mails. The firmware-embedded SNMP agent allows remote to monitor events via LAN with no SNMP agent required.

• Create RAID set,

• Expand RAID set,

• Define volume set,

• Add physical drive ,

• Modify volume set,

• Modify RAID level/stripe size,

• Define pass-through disk drives,

• Modify system function,

• Update firmware, and

• Designate drives as hot spares.

6.1 Start-up McRAID Storage Manager

With the McRAID Storage Manager, you are able to locally man age a system containing a SATA RAID controller that has Windows

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or Linux and a supported browser. A locally managed system requires all of the following components:

• A supported Web browser, which should already be installed on

the system.

• Install ArcHttp proxy server on the SATA RAID system. (Refer to

Chapter 5, Archttp Proxy Server Installation )

• Remote and managed systems must have a TCP/IP connection.

Note:

For windows, if there is no volume set created by the MC -

BIOS manager, Archttp program can not find raid card. It will show "0 controllers found". From the version 1.71 of the

Archttp and the version 1.20.00.13 of the driver, users no longer need to have a "valid raid volume" created in order to managed controller.

To configure the internal SATA RAID controller. You need to know its IP Address.

(1). Launch your McRAID Storage Manager by entering http://

[Computer IP Address]:[port number] in the web browser.

(2). When connection is established, the System Login screen appears. The SATA RAID controller default User Name is “

admin

” and the Password is “

0000

”

• Another method to start-up McRAID Storage Manager from Windows Local Administration

Screen captures in this section are taken from a Windows XP installation. If you are running another version of Windows, your screens may look different, but the ArcHttp proxy server installa tion is essentially the same.

1. To start the McRAID Storage Manager for browser-based management, selecting Controller#01(PCI) and then click the

Start

Button.

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The “Enter Network Password” dialog screen appears, type the user name and password. The RAID subsystem controller default user name is “

admin

” and the password is “

0000

”. After entering the user name and password, press Enter to access the McRAID

Storage Manager.

6.1.1 Through Ethernet port (Out-of-Band)

Areca now offers an alternative means of communication for the

PCI-X/PCIe RAID Adapter – McRAID Web Browser-based RAID

Management program. User can access the built-in configuration without needing system starting up running the ArcHttp proxy.

The Web Browser-based RAID Management program is an HTMLbased application, which utilizes the browser installed on your remote system.

To ensure proper communications between the PCI-X/PCIe RAID controller and Web browser-based RAID management, Please connect the RAID controller Ethernet LAN port to any LAN switch port.

109


The controller has embedded the TCP/IP & Web Browser-based

RAID manager in the firmware. User can remote manage the

RAID controller without adding any user specific software (plat form independent) via standard web browsers directly connected to the 10/100 Ethernet RJ45 LAN port.

To configure the External RAID subsystem on a remote machine, you need to know its IP Address. The IP address will default show in BIOS configuration of Ethernet configuration option. Launch your firmware-embedded TCP/IP & Web Browser-based RAID manager by entering http://[IP Address] in the web browser.

Note:

You can find controller Ethernet port IP address in

System

Information.

6.2 SATA RAID controller McRAID Storage

Manager

The McRAID Storage Manager current configuration screen displays the current configuration of your SATA RAID controller. It displays the Raid Set List, Volume Set List, and Physical Disk List. The raid set information, volume set information, and drive information can also be viewed by clicking on the “Raid Set Hierarchy” screen. The current configuration can also be viewed by clicking on “Raid Set

Hierarchy” in the menu.

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To display raid set information, move the mouse cursor to the desired raid set number, then click it. The raid set information will display. To display volume set information, move the mouse cur sor to the desired Volume Set number, then click it. The volume set information will display. To display drive information, move the mouse cursor to the desired physical drive number, then click it.

The drive Information will display.

6.3 Main Menu

The Main Menu shows all available functions, accessible by clicking on the appropriate link.

Individual Category

Quick Function

RaidSet Functions

VolumeSet Functions

Physical Drives

System Controls

Information

Description

Create a default configuration, which is based on the number of physical disks installed; it can modify the volume set Capacity, Raid Level, and

Stripe Size.

Create a customized raid set.

Create customized volume sets and modify the existed volume sets parameter.

Create pass through disks and modify the existing pass through drives parameters. Also provides the function to identify disk drives (blinking LED).

Setting the raid system configuration.

Viewing the controller information. The Raid Set

Hierarchy can be viewed through the RaidSet

Hierarchy item.

6.4 Quick Function

111


Note:

In Quick Create, your volume set is automatically configured based on the number of disks in your system. Use the Raid

Set Function and Volume Set Function if you prefer to cus tomize your system.

112

The number of physical drives in the SATA RAID controller deter mines the RAID levels that can be implemented with the RAID set.

You can create a raid set associated with exactly one volume set.

The user can change the RAID level, stripe size, and capacity. A hot spare option is also created depending upon the existing configura tion.

Click the “Confirm The Operation” check box and click on the Sub mit button in the Quick Create screen, the RAID set and volume set will start to initialize.

Note:

If volume capacity exceeds 2TB, controller will show the

Greater 2 TB volume Support sub-menu. Greater Two TB

Volume Support No, 64bit LBA and For Windows.


ftp://ftp.



6.5 RaidSet Functions

Use the “Raid Set Function” and “Volume Set Function” if you prefer to customize your system. Manual configuration can provide full control of the RAID set settings, but it will take longer to com plete than the “Quick Volume/Raid Setup” configuration. Select the

“Raid Set Function” to manually configure the RAID set for the first time or delete and reconfigure existing RAID sets. (A RAID set is a group of disks containing one or more volume sets.)

6.5.1 Create Raid Set

To create a raid set, click on the “Delete Raid Set” link. A “Select


The Drive For RAID Set” screen will be displayed showing the drive(s) connected to the current controller. Click on the selected physical drives within the current raid set. The default raid set name will always appear as “Raid Set. #”.

Click the “Confirm The Operation” check box and click on the

“Submit” button on the screen; the RAID set will start to initialize.

6.5.2 Delete Raid Set

To delete a RAID set, click on the “Deleted Raid Set” link. The

“

Select The RAID SET To Delete

” screen is displayed showing all existing RAID sets in the current controller. Click the RAID set number you which to delete in the select column on the delete screen.

Click the “Confirm The Operation” check box and click on the

“Submit” button in the screen to delete it.

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6.5.3 Expand Raid Set

Use this option to expand a RAID set when a disk is added to your system. This function becomes active when at least one drive is available.

114

To expand a raid set, click on the “Expand Raid Set” link. Select the target RAID set to be expanded. Click the available disk and the “Confirm The Operation” check box and then click on the

“Submit” button on the screen to add disks to the RAID set.

6.5.4 Activate Incomplete Raid Set

If one of the disk drives is removed in power off state, the raid set state will change to “Incomplete State” If the user wants to continue to power-on the SATA RAID controller, the user can use the “Activate Raid Set” option to active the RAID set. After the user completes this function, the Raid State will change to De graded Mode.


To activate the incomplete the RAID set, click on the “Activate

Raid Set” link. A “Select The RAID SET To Activate” screen is displayed showing all raid sets existing on the current controller.

Click the RAID set number to activate in the select column.

Click on the “Submit” button on the screen to activate the raid set that had a disk removed (or failed) in the power off state. The

SATA RAID controller will continue to work in degraded mode.

6.5.5 Create Hot Spare

When you choose the “Create Hot Spare” option in the “Raid Set

Function”, all unused physical devices connected to the current controller appear. Select the target disk by clicking on the ap propriate check box. Click the “Confirm The Operation” check box and click the “Submit” button in the screen to create the hot spares.

The “Create Hot Spare” option gives you the ability to define a global hot spare.

6.5.6 Delete Hot Spare

Select the target Hot Spare disk to delete by clicking on the ap propriate check box.

Click the “Confirm The Operation” check box and click the “

Submit”

button on the screen to delete the hot spares.

6.5.7 Rescue Raid Set

When the system is powered off in the RAID set update/creation period, it possibly could disappear due to this abnormal condition.

115


The “

RESCUE

” function can recover the missing RAID set infor mation. The RAID controller uses the time as the RAID set signa ture. The RAID set may have different time after the RAID set is recovered. The “

SIGANT

” function can regenerate the signature for the RAID set.

116

6.6 Volume Set Functions

A volume set is seen by the host system as a single logical device.

It is organized in a RAID level with one or more physical disks.

RAID level refers to the level of data performance and protection of a volume set. A volume set capacity can consume all or a portion of the disk capacity available in a RAID set. Multiple volume sets can exist on a group of disks in a RAID set. Additional volume sets created in a specified RAID set will reside on all the physical disks in the raid set. Thus each volume set on the RAID set will have its data spread evenly across all the disks in the RAID set.

6.6.1 Create Volume Set

1. Volume sets of different RAID levels may coexist on the same raid set.

2. Up to 16 volume sets can be created by the SATA RAID control ler.

3. The maximum addressable size of a single volume set is not limited to 2 TB because the controller is capable of 64-bit mode.

However, the operating system itself may not be capable of ad dressing more than 2 TB. See the Areca website for details.


To create a volume set on a raid set, move the cursor bar to the main menu and click on the “Create Volume Set” link. This “Select

The Raid Set To Create On It” screen will show all RAID set num bers. Click the RAID set number that to be used and then click the “Submit” button.

The “create new volume set” option allows users to select the Vol ume name, capacity, RAID level, strip size, SCSI ID/LUN, Cache mode, and tag queuing.

•

Volume Name

The default volume name will always appear as “Volume Set.

#”. You can rename the volume set providing it does not exceed the 15 characters limit.

•

Raid Level

Set the RAID level for the volume set. Highlight the desired

Raid Level and press Enter.

The available RAID levels for the current volume set are dis played. Select a RAID level and press "Enter" to confirm.

•

Capacity

The maximum volume size is the default initial setting. Enter the appropriate volume size to fit your application.

•

Greater Two TB Volume Support

If volume capacity exceeds 2TB, controller will show the

"Greater 2 TB volume Support" sub-menu. Greater Two TB

Volume Support No, 64bit LBA and For Windows options.


ftp://ftp.



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•

Initialization Mode

Press “Enter” key to define fast initialization or Selected the

Background (Instant Available). When background Initialization, the initialization proceeds as a background task, the volume set is fully accessible for system reads and writes. The operating system can instantly access to the newly created arrays without requiring a reboot and waiting the initialization complete. when

Fast Initialization, the initialization proceeds must be completed before the volume set ready for system accesses.

•

Stripe Size

This parameter sets the size of the stripe written to each disk in a RAID level 0, 1, 1E, 5 or 6 logical drive. You can set the stripe size to 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, 64 KB, or 128 KB.

A larger stripe size produces better read performance, espe cially if your computer does mostly sequential reads. However, if you are sure that your computer does random reads more often, select a smaller stripe size.

Note: RAID level 3 can’t modify stripe size.

•

Cache Mode

The SATA RAID controller supports Write-Through Cache and

Write-Back Cache.

•

SCSI Channel/SCSI ID/SCSI Lun

SCSI Channel: The SATA RAID controller function is simulated as a SCSI RAID controller. The host bus is represented as a

SCSI channel. Choose the SCSI Channel.

SCSI ID: Each SCSI device attached to the SCSI card, as well as the card itself, must be assigned a unique SCSI ID number.

A SCSI channel can connect up to 15 devices. The SATA RAID controller is a large SCSI device. Assign an ID from a list of

SCSI IDs.

SCSI LUN: Each SCSI ID can support up to 8 LUNs. Most SCSI controllers treat each LUN like a SCSI disk.

•

Tag Queuing

The Enabled option is useful for enhancing overall system performance under multi-tasking operating systems. The Com mand Tag (Drive Channel) function controls the SCSI com mand tag queuing support for each drive channel. This func -

118


tion should normally remain enabled. Disable this function only when using older SCSI drives that do not support command tag queuing

6.6.2 Delete Volume Set

To delete a volume set from RAID set, move the cursor bar to the main menu and click on the “Delete Volume Set” link. The “Select

The Raid Set To Delete” screen will show all RAID set numbers.

Click a raid set number and the “Confirm The Operation” check box and then click the “Submit” button to show all volume set items in the selected raid set. Click a volume set number and the

“Confirm The Operation” check box and then click the “Submit” button to delete the volume set.

6.6.3 Modify Volume Set

To modify a volume set from a raid set:

(1). Click on the “Modify Volume Set” link.

(2). Click the volume set check box from the list that you wish to modify. Click the “Submit” button. The following screen appears.

Use this option to modify the volume set configuration. To modify volume set attributes from “Raid Set System” function, move the cursor bar to the volume set attribute menu and click it. The

“modify value” screen appears. Move the cursor to an attribute item and then click the attribute to modify the value. After you complete the modification, click the “Confirm The Operation” check box and click the “Submit” button to complete the action.

The user can modify all values except capacity.

119


To Expand an existing volume noticed:

•

Only the last volume can expand capacity.

•

When expand volume capacity, you can’t modify stripe size or

modify raid revel simultaneously.

•

You can expand volume capacity, but can’t reduce volume

capacity size.

•

After volume expansion, the volume capacity can't be

decreased.

For Greater 2TB expansion:

•

If your system installed in the volume, do not expanded the

volume capacity greater 2TB, currently OS can’t support boot

up from a greater 2TB capacity device.

•

Expanded over 2TB used LBA64 mode. Please make sure your

OS supports LBA 64 before expand it.

6.6.3.1 Volume Set Migration

Migrating occurs when a volume set is migrating from one RAID level to another, a volume set strip size changes, or when a disk is added to a raid set. Migration status is displayed in the vol ume status area of the RaidSet Hierarchy screen when one RAID level to another, a volume set strip size changes or when a disk is added to a RAID set.

120


6.6.4 Check Volume Set

To check a volume set from a raid set:

(1). Click on the “Check Volume Set” link.

(2). Click on the volume set from the list that you wish to check.

Tick on “Confirm The Operation” and click on the “Submit” button.

Use this option to verify the correctness of the redundant data in a volume set. For example, in a system with dedicated parity, vol ume set check means computing the parity of the data disk drives and comparing the results to the contents of the dedicated parity disk drive. The checking percentage can also be viewed by click ing on RaidSet Hierarchy in the main menu.

6.6.5 Stop VolumeSet Check

Use this option to stop the “Check Volume Set function”.

6.7 Physical Drive

Choose this option to select a physical disk from the Main Menu and then perform the operations listed below.

121


6.7.1 Create Pass-Through Disk

To create pass-through disk, move the mouse cursor to the main menu and click on the “Create Pass-Through” link. The “rela tive setting function” screen appears. A pass-through disk is not controlled by the SATA RAID controller firmware, it cannot be a part of a volume set. The disk is available to the operating system as an individual disk. It is typically used on a system where the operating system is on a disk not controlled by the RAID firm ware. The user can also select the cache mode, Tagged Command

Queuing, SCSI channel/SCSI_ID/SCSI_LUN for this volume.

122

6.7.2 Modify Pass-Through Disk

Use this option to modify the “Pass-Through Disk Attribute”. The user can modify the cache mode, Tagged Command Queuing, and SCSI channel/ID/LUN on an existing pass through disk.

To modify the pass-through drive attribute from the pass-through drive pool, move the mouse cursor bar and click on the “Modify

Pass-Through” link. The “Select The Pass Through Disk For Modi fication” screen appears mark the checkbox for the Pass-Through

Disk from the pass-through drive pool and click on the “Submit” button to select drive.


When the “Enter Pass-Through Disk Attribute” screen appears, modify the drive attribute values, as you want.

After you complete the selection, mark the checkbox for “Confirm

The Operation” and click on the “Submit” button to complete the selection action.

6.7.3 Delete Pass-Through Disk

To delete a pass-through drive from the pass-through drive pool, move the mouse cursor bar to the main menus and click the “De lete Pass Through” link.

After you complete the selection, mark the checkbox for “Confirm

The Operation” and click the “Submit” button to complete the delete action.

6.7.4 Identify Selected Drive

To prevent removal of the wrong drive, the selected Fault LED will blink so as to physically locate the intended disk when “Identify

Selected Drive” is selected.

To identify the selected drive from the drives pool, click “Identify

Selected Drive”. The “Select The IDE Device For Identification” screen appears mark the checkbox for the IDE device from the drive pool and select the Flash method. After completing the se lection, click on the “Submit” button to identify selected drive.

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6.8 System Controls

6.8.1 System Config

To set the raid system function, move the cursor to the main menu and click the “Raid System Function” link. The “Raid System

Function” menu will show all items, then select the desired func tion.

•

System Beeper Setting

The Alert Beeper function item is used to Disabled or Enable the

SATA RAID controller alarm tone generator.

•

Background Task Priority

The Raid Rebuild Priority is a relative indication of how much time the controller devotes to a rebuild operation. The SATA

RAID controller allows the user to choose the rebuild priority

(ultraLow, Low, Normal, High) to balance volume set access and rebuild tasks appropriately. For high array performance, specify a Low value.

•

JBOD/RAID Configuration

JBOD is an acronym for “

Just a Bunch Of Disks

”. It repre sents a volume set that is created by the concatenation of par titions on the disk. The OS can see all disks when this option is selected. It is necessary to delete a RAID set if the disks in that set are to be convereted to JBOD mode.

•

Maximun SATA Supported

The SATA RAID controller can support up to SATA ll, which runs up to 300MB/s. NCQ is a command protocol in Serial ATA that can only be implemented on native Serial ATA hard drives. It allows multiple commands to be outstanding within a drive at the same time. Drives that support NCQ have an internal queue where outstanding commands can be dynamically rescheduled or re-ordered, along with the necessary tracking mechanisms for outstanding and completed portions of the workload. The

RAID subsystem allows user to choose the SATA Mode (slowest to fastest): SATA150, SATA150+NCQ, SATA300, SATA300+NCQ.

• HDD Read Ahead Cache

124


Allow Read Ahead (Default: Enabled)—When Enabled, the drive’ s read ahead cache algorithm is used, providing maximum performance under most circumstances.

•

Stagger Power on

In a PC system with only one or two drives, the power is able to supply enough power to spin up both drives simultaneously. But in systems with more than two drives, the startup current from spinning up the drives all at once can overload the power supply, causing damage to the power supply, disk drives and other system components. This damage can be avoided by allowing the host to stagger the spin-up of the drives. New SATA drives have support staggered spin-up capabilities to boost reliability.

Staggered spin-up is a very useful feature for managing multiple disk drives in a storage subsystem. It gives the host the ability to spin up the disk drives sequentially or in groups, allowing the drives to come ready at the optimum time without straining the system power supply. Staggering drive spin-up in a multiple drive environment also avoids the extra cost of a power supply designed to meet short-term startup power demand as well as steady state conditions.

Areca has supported the fixed value staggered power up function in its previous version firmware. But from firmware version

1.39 and later, SATA RAID controller has included the option for customer to select the disk drives sequentially stagger power up value. The values can be selected from 0.4ms to 6ms per step which powers up one drive.

125


•

Empty HDD Slot LED

From firmware version 1.39 date: 04/01/2006 and later, the firmware has added the "Empty HDD Slot LED" option to setup the Failed LED light "ON "or "OFF". When each slot has a power

LED for the HDD installed identify, user can set this option to

"OFF". Choose this option "ON", the failed LED light will flash red light; if no HDD installed.

126

•

HDD SMART Status Polling

An external RAID enclosure has the hardware monitor in the dedicated backplane that can report HDD temperature status to the controller. However, PCI type controllers do not use backplanes if the drives are internal to the main server chassis.

The type of enclosure cannot report the HDD temperature to the controller. For this reason, HDD SMART Status Polling was added to enable scanning of the HDD temperature function in the version 1.36 date: 2005-05-19 (and later). It is necessary to enable “HDD SMART Status Polling” function before SMART information is accessible. This function is disabled by default.

The following screen shot shows how to change the BIOS setting to enable the Polling function.


•

Disk Write Cache Mode

A user can set the “Disk Write Cache Mode” to: Auto, Enabled, or Disabled.

•

Disk Capacity Truncation Mode

SATA RAID controllers use drive truncatio from differing vendors that are more likely to be used as spares for each other. Drive truncation slightly decreases the usable capacity of a drive that is used in redundant units.

The controller provides three truncation modes in the system configuration:


,

Multiples Of 1G

, and

No

Truncation

.


If you have 120 GB drives from different vendors; chances are that the capacity varies slightly. For exam -

127


ple, one drive might be 123.5 GB, and the other 120 GB. Areca drive Truncation mode


uses the same capac ity for both of these drives so that one could replace the other.


If you have 123 GB drives from different ven dors; chances are that the capacity varies slightly. For example, one drive might be 123.5 GB, and the other 123.4 GB. Areca drive Truncation mode

Multiples Of 1G

uses the same capacity for both of these drives so that one could replace the other.

No Truncation:

It does not truncate the capacity.

128

6.8.2 Ethernet Configuration (12/16/24-port)

Use this feature to set the controller Ethernet port configuration.

A customer doesn’t need to create a reserved space on the arrays before the Ethernet port and HTTP service are working. The firm ware-embedded Web Browser-based RAID manager can access it from any standard internet browser or from any host computer either directly connected or via a LAN or WAN with no software or patches required.

DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is a protocol that lets network administrators manage centrally and automate the assignment of IP (Internet Protocol) configurations on a computer network. When using the Internet’s set of protocols (TCP/IP), in order for a computer system to communicate to another com puter system, it needs a unique IP address. Without DHCP, the

IP address must be entered manually at each computer system.


DHCP lets a network administrator supervise and distribute IP addresses from a central point. The purpose of DHCP is to provide the automatic (dynamic) allocation of IP client configurations for a specific time period (called a lease period) and to eliminate the work necessary to administer a large IP network.

To configure the raid controller Ethernet port, move the cursor bar to the main menu and click on the System Controls link. The Sys tem Controls menu will show all items. Move the cursor bar to the

EtherNet Config item, then press

Enter

key to select the desired function.

6.8.3 Alert by Mail Configuration (12/16/24port)

To configure the SATA RAID controller e-mail function, move the cursor bar to the main menu and click on the “System Controls” link. The System Controls menu will show all items. Move the cur sor bar to the “Alert By Mail Config” item, then select the desired function. This function can only be set via web-based configura tion.

The firmware contains a SMTP manager monitoring all system events. Single or multiple user notifications to be sent via “Plain

English” e-mails with no software required.

129


6.8.4 SNMP Configuration (12/16/24-port)

To configure the raid controller SNMP function, click on the “Sys tem Controls” link. The System Controls menu will show available items. Select the “SNMP Configuration” item. This function can only set via web-based configuration.

The firmware SNMP Agent Manager monitors all system events and the SNMP function becomes functional with no Agent soft ware required.

130


•

SNMP Trap Configurations

Enter the SNMP Trap IP Address.

• SNMP System Configurations

About community, please refer to Appendix C of SNMP com munity name. The system Contact, Name and Location that will be shown in the outgoing SNMP Trap.

•

SNMP Trap Notification Configurations

Please refer to Appendix D of Event Notification table.

6.8.5 NTP Configuration (12/16/24-port)

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is used to synchronize the time of a computer client or server to another server or reference time source, such as a radio or satellite receiver or modem. It provides accuracies typically within a millisecond on LANs and up to a few tens of milliseconds on WANs relative to Coordinated Universal

Time (UTC) via a Global Positioning Service (GPS) receiver, for example:

•

NTP Sever Address

The most important factor in providing accurate, reliable time is the selection of NTP servers to be used in the configuration file.

Typical NTP configurations utilize multiple redundant servers and diverse network paths in order to achieve high accuracy and re liability. Our NTP configuration supports two existing public NTP synchronization subnets.

131


•

Time Zone

Time Zone conveniently runs in the system tray and allows you to view the date and time in various locations around the world easily. You are also able to add your own personal locations to customize Time Zone the way you want with great ease and less hassle.

•

Automatic Daylight Saving

Automatic Daylight Saving will normally attempt to automati cally adjust the system clock for daylight saving changes based on the computer time zone. This tweak allows you to disable the automatic adjustment.

6.8.6 View Events/Mute Beeper

To view the SATA RAID controller’s information, click on the “Sys tem Information” link. The SATA Raid controller events Informa tion screen appears.

Choose this option to view the system events information: Timer,

Device, Event type, Elapse Time and Errors. The RAID system does not have a built-in real time clock. The Time information is the relative time from the SATA RAID controller power on.

132

6.8.7 Generate Test Event

Use this feature is to generate events for testing purposes.


6.8.8 Clear Events Buffer

Use this feature to clear the entire events buffer information.

6.8.9 Modify Password

To set or change the SATA RAID controller password, select “Raid

System Function” from the menu and click on the “Change Pass word” link. The Modify System Password screen appears.

The manufacture default password is set to 0000.

The pass word option allows user to set or clear the SATA RAID controller’s password protection feature. Once the password has been set, the user can only monitor and configure the SATA RAID controller by providing the correct password.

The password is used to protect the SATA RAID controller from unauthorized entry. The controller will check the password only when entering the Main menu from the initial screen. The SATA

133


RAID controller will automatically go back to the initial screen when it does not receive any command in ten seconds.

To disable the password, leave the fields blank. Once the user confirms the operation and clicks the Submit button, the existing password will be cleared. Afterwhich, no password checking will occur when entering the main menu from the starting screen.

6.8.10 Update Firmware

Please refer to the appendix A firmware utility.

134

6.9 Information

6.9.1 RaidSet Hierarchy

Use this feature to view the SATA RAID controller current raid set, current volume set and physical disk configuration. Please reference the this chapter “

Configuring Raid Sets and Volume

Sets

”


6.9.2 System Information

To view the SATA RAID controller’s information, move the mouse cursor to the main menu and click on the “System Information” link. The “SATA RAID controller Information” screen appears.

Use this feature to view the SATA RAID controller’s information.

The controller name, firmware version, serial number, main pro cessor, CPU data/Instruction cache size and system memory size/ speed appear in this screen.

135


6.9.3 Hardware Monitor

To view the RAID controller’s hardware monitor information, move the mouse cursor to the main menu and click the “Hardware

Monitor” link. The “Hardware Information” screen appears.

The “Hardware Monitor Information” provides the temperature, and fan speed (I/O Processor fan) of the SATA RAID controller.

The ARC-1231/1261/1280/1280ML card interface lists two tem peratures. One for the I/O processor and the other one for the controller. The I/O processor temperature is a new feature which detects by a thermal sensor under the IOP341. The processor safe range is 90 Celsius degree and the controller safe range is

70 Celsius degree. If any sensor detects over the safe ranges on these temperatures, you will get a warning event.

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APPENDIX

Appendix A

Upgrading Flash ROM Update Process

Since the SATA RAID controller features flash firmware, it is not necessary to change the hardware flash chip in order to upgrade the RAID firmware. The user can simply re-program the old firm ware through the In-Band PCI-X/PCIe bus or Out-of-Band Enther net port McRAID Storage manager. New releases of the firmware are available in the form of a DOS file on the shipped CD or Areca’s web site. The files available at the FTP site for each model contain the following files in each version:

ARCXXXNNN.BIN Software Binary Code (where “XXXX” refers to the model name and “NNNN” refers to the software code type)

ARCXXXBIOS.BIN :

→

PCI card BIOS for system board using

ARCXXXBOOT.BIN :

→

RAID controller hardware initialization

ARCXXXFIRM.BIN :

→

RAID kernel program

ARCXXXMBR0.BIN:

→

Master Boot Record for supporting Dual Flash

Image in the SATA ll RAID controller

README.TXT contains the history information of the software code change in the main directory. Read this file first to make sure you are upgrading to the proper binary file. Select the right file for the upgrade. Normally, user upgrades the ARCXXXBIOS.BIN for system

M/B compatibility and ARCXXXFIRM.BIN for RAID function up grades.

Note:

Please update all Binary Code (BIOS, BOOT and FIRM) before you reboot system. Otherwise, a mixed firmware package may hang the controller.

Upgrading Firmware Through McRAID

Storage Manager

Get the new version firmware for your RAID controller. For example, download the bin file from your OEM’s web site onto the C: drive

137

APPENDIX

138

1. To upgrade the RAID controller firmware, move the mouse cursor to “Upgrade Firmware” link. The “Upgrade The RAID System

Firmware” screen appears.

2. Click Browser. Look in the location to which the Firmware upgrade software was downloaded. Select the File name and click

“Open”.

All files (BIOS, BOOT, FIRM and MBR0) can be updated through this function.

3. Click “Confirm The Operation” and press the “Submit” button.

4. The Web Browser begins to download the firmware binary to the controller and start to update the flash ROM.

5. After the firmware upgrade is complete, a bar indicator will show

“Firmware Has Been Updated Successfully”

6. After the new firmware has completed downloading, find a chance to restart the controller/computer for the new firmware to take effect.

The Web Browser-based McRAID Storage Manager can be accessed through the In-Band PCI-X/PCIe bus or Out-of-Band Lan port.

The In-Band method uses the ArcHttp proxy server to launch the

McRAID Storage Manager. The Out-of-Band method allows local or remote to access the McRAID Storage Manager from any standard internet browser via a LAN or WAN with no software or patches required.

Controller with onboard Lan port, you can directly plug an

Ethernet cable to the controller Lan port, then enter the McBIOS management to configure the network setting. After network

APPENDIX

setting configured and saved, you can find the current IP address in the System Information page.

From a remote pc, you can directly open a web browser and enter the IP address. Then enter user name and password to login and start your management. You can find the firmware update feature in the browser console, System Controls.

139

APPENDIX

Appendix B

Battery Backup Module (ARC-6120-BAT)

The SATA RAID controller operates using cache memory. The bat tery Backup Module is an add-on module that provides power to the SATA RAID controller cache memory in the event of a power failure. The Battery Backup Module monitors the write back cache on the SATA RAID controller, and provides power to the cache memory if it contains data not yet written to the hard drives when power failure occurs.

BBM Components

140

Status of BBM

• D13 (Green) : lights when BBM activated

• D14 (Red) : lights when BBM charging

• D15 (Green) : lights when BBM normal

Installation

1. Make sure all power to the system is disconnected.

2. Connector J1 is available for the optional battery backup module. Connect the BBM cable to the 12-pin battery connector on the controller.

APPENDIX

3. Integrators may provide pre-drilled holes in their cabinet for securing the BBM using its three mounting positions.

Battery Backup Capacity

Battery backup capacity is defined as the maximum duration of a power failure for which data in the cache memory can be maintained by the battery. The BBM’s backup capacity varied with the memory chips that installed on the SATA RAID control ler.

Capacity

128MB DDR

Memory Type

Low Power (18mA)

Battery Backup duration (Hours)

56

Operation

1. Battery conditioning is automatic. There are no manual pro cedures for battery conditioning or preconditioning to be per formed by the user.

2. In order to make sure of all the capacity is available for your battery cells, allow the battery cell to be fully charged when installed for the first time. The first time charge of a battery cell takes about 24 hours to complete.

141

APPENDIX

Changing the Battery Backup Module

At some point, the LI-ION battery will no longer accept a charge properly. LI-ION battery life expectancy is anywhere from ap proximately 1 to 5 years.

1. Shutdown the operating system properly. Make sure that cache memory has been flushed.

2. Disconnect the battery backup module cable from J2 on the

SATA RAID controller.

3. Disconnect the battery pack cable from JP2 on the Battery

Backup Module.

4. Install a new battery pack and connect the new battery pack to JP2.

5. Connect the Battery Backup Module to J2 on the SATA RAID controller.

6. Disable the write-back function from the BIOS or Utility.

Note:

Do not remove BBM while system running.

BBM Specifications

Mechanical

• Module Dimension (W x H x D)

37.3 x 13 x 81.6 mm

• BBM Connector

2 * 6 box header

Environmental

• Operating Temperature

Temperature: -25

O

C to +60

O

C

• Humidity: 45-85%, non-condensing

• Storage Temperature

Temperature: -40

O

C to 85

O

C

• Humidity: 45-85%, non-condensing

Electrical

• Input Voltage

+3.6VDC

• On Board Battery Capacity

1100mAH (1*1100mAH)

142

APPENDIX

Appendix C

SNMP Operation & Definition

Overview

The McRAID manager includes a firmware-embedded Simple Net work Management Protocol (SNMP) agent and SNMP Extension

Agent for the SATA RAID controller. An SNMP-based management application (also known as an SNMP manager) can monitor the disk array. An example of An SNMP management application is Hewlett-

Packard’s Open View. The SNMP Extension Agent can be used to augment the SATA RAID controller if you are already running an

SNMP management application at your site.

SNMP Definition

SNMP, an IP-based protocol, has a set of commands for getting the status of target devices. The SNMP management platform is called the SNMP manager, and the managed devices have the SNMP agent loaded. Management data is organized in a hierarchical data structure called the management Information Base (MIB). These

MIBs are defined and sanctioned by various industry associa tions. The objective is for all vendors to create products in compli ance with these MIBs so that inter-vendor interoperability can be achieved. If a vendor wishes to include additional device informa tion that is not specified in a standard MIB, then that is usually done through MIB extensions.

143

APPENDIX

MIB Compilation and Definition File creation

Before the manager application accesses the SATA RAID controller, it is necessary to integrate the MIB into the management applica tion’s database of events and status indicator codes. This process is known as compiling the MIB into the application. This process is highly vendor-specific and should be well-covered in the User’s

Guide of your SNMP application. Ensure the compilation process successfully integrates the contents of the ARECARAID.MIB file into the traps database.

144

SNMP Installation

The installation of the SNMP manager is accomplished in several phases:

• Starting the Firmware-embedded SNMP community configura-

tion.

• Installing the SNMP Extension Agent on the server

• Installing the SNMP Manager software on the client

• Placing a copy of the management information base (MIB) in a

directory which is accessible to the management application

• Compiling the MIB description file with the management appli

cation

Starting the SNMP function setting

APPENDIX

• Community Name

Community name acts as a password to screen accesses to the

SNMP agent of a particular network device. Type in the community names of the SNMP agent. Before access is granted to a request station, this station must incorporate a valid community name into its request; otherwise, the SNMP agent will deny access to the system.

Most network devices use “public” as default of their community names. This value is case-sensitive.

SNMP Extension Agent Installation for Windows

You must have the administrative level permission to install SATA

RAID software. This procedure assumes that the SATA RAID hard ware and Windows are both installed and operational in your sys tem.

To enable the SNMP agent for Windows, configure Windows for

TCP/IP and SNMP services. The ARECA SNMP Extension Agent file

is ARCSNMP.DLL.

Screen captures in this section are taken from a Windows XP instal lation. If you are running another version of Windows, your screens may look different, but the ARECA SNMP Extension Agent installa tion is essentially the same.

1. Insert the SATA RAID controller CD in the CD-ROM drive.

145

APPENDIX

2. Run the setup.exe file that resides at: <CD-ROM>\packages\ windows\http\setup.exe on the CD-ROM. (If SNMP service was not installed, please install SNMP service first.)

3. Click on the Setup file then the Welcome screen appears.

4.

Click the Setup file and then the “install the program” screen appears. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete Areca SNMP

Extension Agent installation.

146

APPENDIX

5.

A Progress bar appears that measures the progress of the

ARECA SNMP Extension Agent setup. When this screen complete, you have completed the ARECA SNMP Extension Agent setup.

6. After a successful installation, the “Setup Complete” dialog box of the installation program is displayed. Click the

Finish

button to complete the installation.

Starting SNMP Trap Notification Configruations

To start SNMP Trap Notification Configruations, There have two methods. First, double-click on the Areca Raid Controller.

Second, you may also use the Taskbar Start/programs/Areca

Technology Corp/ArcSnmpConf menus shown below.

147

APPENDIX

SNMP community Configurations

Please refer to the community name in this appendix.

SNMP Trap Notification Configruations

The Community Name should be the same as firmware- embedded SNMP Community.

The SNMP Trap Notification

Configruations include level 1: serious, level 2: error, level 3:

Warning and level 4: Information. The level 4 covers notification events such as initialization of the controller and initiation of the rebuilding process; Level 3 includes events which require the issuance of warning messages; Level 2 covers notification events which once have happen; Level 1 is the highest level, and covers events the need immediate attention (and action) from the administrator.

148

SNMP Extension Agent Installation for Linux

You must have administrative level permission to install SATA

RAID software. This procedure assumes that the SATA RAID

APPENDIX

hardware and Linux are installed and operational in your system.

For the SNMP Extension Agent Installation for Linux procedure, please refer to

<CD-ROM>\packages\Linux\SNMP\Readme

or download from

http://www.areca.com.tw

SNMP Extension Agent Installation for FreeBSD

You must have administrative level permission to install SATA

RAID software. This procedure assumes that the SATA RAID hardware and FreeBSD are installed and operational in your system. For the SNMP Extension Agent Installation for FreeBSD procedure please refer to

<CD-ROM>\packages\FreeBSD\

SNMP\Readme

or download from

http://www.areca.com.tw

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APPENDIX

Appendix D

Event Notification Configurations

The controller classifies disk array events into four levels depending on their severity. These include level 1: Urgent, level 2: serious, level

3: Warning and level 4: Information. The level 4 covers notificational events such as initialization of the controller and initiation of the rebuilding process; Level 2 covers notification events which once have happen; Level 3 includes events which require the issuance of warning messages; Level 1 is the highest level, and covers events the need immediate attention (and action) from the administrator. The following lists sample events for each level:

A. Device Event

Event

Device Inserted

Action

Device Removed Warning HDD removed

Reading Error Warning HDD reading error Keep Watching HDD status, maybe it is caused by noise or

HDD unstable.

Writing Error

Level Meaning

Warning HDD inserted

ATA Ecc Error

Change ATA

Mode

Time Out Error

Device Failed

PCI Parity Error

Device

Failed(SMART)

Warning

Warning

HDD writing error

HDD ECC error

Keep Watching HDD status, maybe it is caused by noise or

HDD unstable.

Keep Watching HDD status, maybe it is caused by noise or

HDD unstable.

Check HDD connection Warning HDD change ATA mode

Warning HDD Time out Keep Watching HDD status, maybe it is caused by noise or

HDD unstable.

Urgent

Serious

Urgent

HDD failure

PCI Parity error

Replace HDD

If only happen once, it maybe caused by noise. If always happen, please check power supply or contact to us.

HDD SMART failure Replace HDD

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APPENDIX

PassThrough Disk

Created

Inform

PassThrough Disk

Modified

Inform

PassThrough Disk

Deleted

Inform

Pass Through Disk

Created

Pass Through Disk

Modified

Pass Through Disk

Deleted

B. Volume Event

Event

Start Initialize

Level Meaning

Warning Volume initialization has started

Start Rebuilding Warning Volume rebuilding has started

Start Migrating Warning Volume migration has started

Start Checking Warning Volume parity checking has started

Complete Init Warning Volume initialization completed

Complete Rebuild Warning Volume rebuilding completed

Complete Migrate Warning Volume migration completed

Complete Check Warning Volume parity checking completed

Create Volume

Delete Volume

Modify Volume

Warning New Volume Created

Warning Volume deleted

Warning Volume Modified

Volume Degraded Urgent

Volume Failed Urgent

Urgent Failed Volume

Revived

Abort

Initialization

Warning

Volume degraded

Volume failure

Failed Volume revived

Initialization been abort

Abort Rebuilding Warning Rebuilding aborted

Abort Migration Warning Migration aborted

Abort Checking Warning Parity Check aborted

Stop Initialization Warning Initialization stopped

Stop Rebuilding

Stop Migration

Stop Checking

Warning Rebuilding stopped

Warning Migration stopped

Warning Parity Check stopped

Action

Replace HDD

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APPENDIX

C. RAID Set Event

Event

Create RaidSet

Delete RaidSet

Expand RaidSet

Rebuild RaidSet

RaidSet

Degraded

Level Meaning

Warning New Raidset created

Warning Raidset deleted

Warning Raidset expanded

Warning Raidset rebuilding

Urgent Raidset degraded

Action

Replace HDD

D. Hardware Monitor Event

Event Level

DRAM 1-Bit ECC Urgent

DRAM Fatal

Error

Controller Over

Temperature

Hdd Over

Temperature

Fan Failed

Urgent

Urgent

Urgent

Meaning Action

DRAM 1-Bit ECC error Check DRAM

DRAM fatal error encountered

Abnormally high temperaturedetected on Hdd (over 55 degree)

Check the DRAM module and replace with new one if required.

Abnormally high temperature detected on controller (over 60 degree)

Check air flow and cooling fan of theenclosure, and contact us.

Check air flow and cooling fan of theenclosure.

Urgent Cooling Fan # failure or speed below

1700RPM

Serious Controller temperature back tonormal level

Check cooling fan of the enclosure and replace with a new one if required.

Controller

Temp.

Recovered

Hdd Temp.

Recovered

Raid Powered

On

Test Event

Power On With

Battery Backup

Incomplete

RAIDDiscovered

HTTP Log In

Warning

Urgent

Raid Power On

Test Event

Warning Raid Power On with batterybackuped

Serious Some raidset member disksmissing before power on

Serious a HTTP login detected

Check disk information to find outwhich channel missing.

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APPENDIX

Telnet Log Serious a Telnet login detected

InVT100 Log In Serious a VT100 login detected

API Log In

Lost Rebuilding/

MigrationLBA

Serious a API login detected

Urgent Some rebuilding/ migrationraidset member disks missingbefore power on.

Reinserted the missing member diskback, controller will continued theincompleted rebuilding/ migration.

Note:

It depends on models, not every model will encounter all events.

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APPENDIX

Appendix E

RAID Concept

RAID Set

A RAID set is a group of disks connected to a RAID controller. A

RAID set contains one or more volume sets. The RAID set it self does not define the RAID level (0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6, etc); the

RAID level is defined within each volume set. Therefore, volume sets are contained within RAID sets and RAID Level is defined within the volume set. If physical disks of different capacities are grouped together in a RAID set, then the capacity of the smallest disk will become the effective capacity of all the disks in the RAID set.

Volume Set

Each volume set is seen by the host system as a single logical device (in other words, a single large virtual hard disk). A volume set will use a specific RAID level, which will require one or more physical disks (depending on the RAID level used). RAID level refers to the level of performance and data protection of a volume set. The capacity of a volume set can consume all or a portion of the available disk capacity in a RAID set. Multiple volume sets can exist in a RAID set. For the SATA RAID controller, a volume set must be created either on an existing RAID set or on a group of available individual disks (disks that are about to become part of a RAID set). If there are pre-existing RAID sets with available capacity and enough disks for the desired RAID level, then the volume set can be created in the existing RAID set of the user’s choice.

154

APPENDIX

In the illustration, volume 1 can be assigned a RAID level 5 of operation while volume 0 might be assigned a RAID level 1E of operation. Alterantively, the free space can be used to create vol ume 2, which could then be set to use RAID level 5.

Ease of Use Features

•

Foreground Availability/Background Initialization

RAID 0 and RAID 1 volume sets can be used immediately af ter creation because they do not create parity data. However,

RAID 3, 5 and 6 volume sets must be initialized to generate parity information. In Backgorund Initialization, the initializa tion proceeds as a background task, and the volume set is fully accessible for system reads and writes. The operating system can instantly access the newly created arrays without requir ing a reboot and without waiting for initialization to complete.

Furthermore, the volume set is protected against disk failures while initialing. If using Foreground Initialization, the initializa tion process must be completed before the volume set is ready for system accesses.

•

Array Roaming

The SATA RAID controllers store RAID configuration information on the disk drives. The controller therefore protect the configu ration settings in the event of controller failure. Array roaming allows the administrators the ability to move a completele RAID set to another system without losing RAID configuration infor mation or data on that RAID set. Therefore, if a server fails, the

RAID set disk drives can be moved to another server with an

Areca RAID controller and the disks can be inserted in any order.

•

Online Capacity Expansion

Online Capacity Expansion makes it possible to add one or more physical drives to a volume set without interrupting server op eration, eliminating the need to backup and restore after recon figuration of the RAID set. When disks are added to a RAID set, unused capacity is added to the end of the RAID set. Then, data

155

APPENDIX

on the existing volume sets (residing on the newly expanded

RAID set) is redistributed evenly across all the disks. A contigu ous block of unused capacity is made available on the RAID set.

The unused capacity can be used to create additional volume sets.

A disk, to be added to a RAID set, must be in normal mode (not failed), free (not spare, in a RAID set, or passed through to host) and must have at least the same capacity as the smallest disk capacity already in the RAID set.

Capacity expansion is only permitted to proceed if all volumes on the RAID set are in the normal status. During the expansion process, the volume sets being expanded can be accessed by the host system. In addition, the volume sets with RAID level 1,

1E, 3, 5 or 6 are protected against data loss in the event of disk failure(s). In the case of disk failure, the volume set transitions from “migrating” state to “migrating+degraded“ state. When the expansion is completed, the volume set would then transition to

“degraded” mode. If a global hot spare is present, then it further transitions to the “rebuilding” state.

The expansion process is illustrated as following figure.

156

The SAS RAID controller redistributes the original volume set over the original and newly added disks, using the same faulttolerance configuration. The unused capacity on the expand

RAID set can then be used to create an additional volume set, with a different fault tolerance setting (if required by the user.)

APPENDIX

The SAS RAID controller redistributes the original volume set over the original and newly added disks, using the same faulttolerance configuration. The unused capacity on the expand raid set can then be used to create an additional volume sets, with a different fault tolerance setting if user need to change.

•

Online RAID Level and Stripe Size Migration

For those who wish to later upgrade to any RAID capabilities, a system with Areca online RAID level/stripe size migration allows a simplified upgrade to any supported RAID level without having to reinstall the operating system.

The SATA RAID controllers can migrate both the RAID level and stripe size of an existing volume set, while the server is online and the volume set is in use. Online RAID level/stripe size mi gration can prove helpful during performance tuning activities as well as when additional physical disks are added to the SATA

RAID controller. For example, in a system using two drives in

RAID level 1, it is possible to add a single drive and add capac ity and retain fault tolerance. (Normally, expanding a RAID level

1 array would require the addition of two disks). A third disk can be added to the existing RAID logical drive and the volume set can then be migrated from RAID level 1 to 5. The result would be parity fault tolerance and double the available capacity without taking the system down. A forth disk could be added to migrate to RAID level 6. It is only possible to migrate to a higher

RAID level by adding a disk; disks in an existing array can’t be reconfigured for a higher RAID level without adding a disk.

Online migration is only permitted to begin, It all volumes to be migrated are in the normal mode. During the migration process,

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APPENDIX

the volume sets being migrated are accessed by the host sys tem. In addition, the volume sets with RAID level 1, 1E, 3, 5 or

6 are protected against data loss in the event of disk failure(s).

In the case of disk failure, the volume set transitions from mi grating state to (migrating+degraded) state. When the migra tion is completed, the volume set transitions to degraded mode.

If a global hot spare is present, then it further transitions to rebuilding state.

•

Online Volume Expansion

Performing a volume expansion on the controller is the process of growing only the size of the lastest volume. A more flexible option is for the array to concatenate an additional drive into the

RAID set and then expand the volumes on the fly. This happens transparently while the volumes are online, but, at the end of the process, the operating system will detect free space at after the existing volume.

Windows, NetWare and other advanced operating systems sup port volume expansion, which enables you to incorporate the additional free space within the volume into the operating sys tem partition. The operating system partition is extended to incorporate the free space so it can be used by the operating system without creating a new operating system partition.

You can use the Diskpart.exe command line utility, included with

Windows Server 2003 or the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, to ex tend an existing partition into free space in the dynamic disk.

Third-party software vendors have created utilities that can be used to repartition disks without data loss. Most of these utilities work offline. Partition Magic is one such utility.

High availability

•

Global Hot Spares

A Global Hot Spare is an unused online available drive, which is ready for replacing the failure disk. The Global Hot Spare is one

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APPENDIX

of the most important features that SATA RAID controllers provide to deliver a high degree of fault-tolerance. A Global Hot Spare is a spare physical drive that has been marked as a global hot spare and therefore is not a member of any RAID set. If a disk drive used in a volume set fails, then the Global Hot Spare will automatically take its place and he data previously located on the failed drive is reconstructed on the Global Hot Spare.

For this feature to work properly, the global hot spare must have at least the same capacity as the drive it replaces. Global Hot

Spares only work with RAID level 1, 1E, 3, 5, or 6 volume set.

You can configure up to three global hot spares with ARC-11xx/

12xx.

The Create Hot Spare option gives you the ability to define a global hot spare disk drive. To effectively use the global hot spare feature, you must always maintain at least one drive that is marked as a global spare.

•

Hot-Swap Disk Drive Support

The SATA controller chip includes a protection circuit that supports the replacement of SATA hard disk drives without having to shut down or reboot the system. A removable hard drive tray can de liver “hot swappable” fault-tolerant RAID solutions at prices much less than the cost of conventional SCSI hard disk RAID control lers. This feature provides advanced fault tolerant RAID protection and “online” drive replacement.

•

Auto Declare Hot-Spare

If a disk drive is brought online into a system operating in de graded mode, The SATA RAID controllers will automatically de clare the new disk as a spare and begin rebuilding the degraded volume. The Auto Declare Hot-Spare function requires that the smallest drive contained within the volume set in which the failure occurred.

In the normal status, the newly installed drive will be reconfigured an online free disk. But, the newly-installed drive is automatically assigned as a hot spare if any hot spare disk was used to rebuild and without new installed drive replaced it. In this condition, the

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APPENDIX

Auto Declare Hot-Spare status will disappeared if the RAID sub system has since powered off/on.

The Hot-Swap function can be used to rebuild disk drives in ar rays with data redundancy such as RAID level 1, 1E, 3, 5, and 6.

•

Auto Rebuilding

If a hot spare is available, the rebuild starts automatically when a drive fails. The SATA RAID controllers automatically and trans parently rebuild failed drives in the background at user-definable rebuild rates.

If a hot spare is not available, the failed disk drive must be re placed with a new disk drive so that the data on the failed drive can be automatically rebuilt and so that fault tolerance can be maintained.

The SATA RAID controllers will automatically restart the system and the rebuild process if the system is shut down or powered off abnormally during a reconstruction procedure condition.

When a disk is hot swapped, although the system is functionally operational, the system may no longer be fault tolerant. Fault tolerance will be lost until the removed drive is replaced and the rebuild operation is completed.

During the automatic rebuild process, system activity will contin ue as normal, however, the system performance and fault toler ance will be affected.

•

Adjustable Rebuild Priority

Rebuilding a degraded volume incurs a load on the RAID sub system. The SATA RAID controllers allow the user to select the rebuild priority to balance volume access and rebuild tasks ap propriately. The Background Task Priority is a relative indication of how much time the controller devotes to a background operation, such as rebuilding or migrating.

The SAS RAID controller allows user to choose the task priority

(Ultra Low (5%), Low (20%), Medium (50%), High (80%)) to bal -

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APPENDIX

ance volume set access and background tasks appropriately. For high array performance, specify an Ultra Low value. Like volume initialization, after a volume rebuilds, it does not require a system reboot.

Important

:

The hot spare must have at least the same capacity as the drive it replaces.

High Reliability

•

Hard Drive Failure Prediction

In an effort to help users avoid data loss, disk manufacturers are now incorporating logic into their drives that acts as an "early warning system" for pending drive problems. This system is called

S.M.A.R.T. The disk integrated controller works with multiple sensors to monitor various aspects of the drive's performance, determines from this information if the drive is behaving normally or not, and makes available status information to RAID controller firmware that probes the drive and look at it.

The SMART can often predict a problem before failure occurs.

The controllers will recognize a SMART error code and notify the administer of an impending hard drive failure.

•

Auto Reassign Sector

Under normal operation, even initially defect-free drive media can develop defects. This is a common phenomenon. The bit density and rotational speed of disks is increasing every year, and so are the potential of problems. Usually a drive can internally remap bad sectors without external help using cyclic redundancy check

(CRC) checksums stored at the end of each sector.

SATA drives perform automatic defect re-assignment for both read and write errors. Writes are always completed - if a location to be written is found to be defective, the drive will automatically

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APPENDIX

relocate that write command to a new location and map out the defective location. If there is a recoverable read error, the cor rect data will be transferred to the host and that location will be tested by the drive to be certain the location is not defective. If it is found to have a defect, data will be automatically relocated, and the defective location is mapped out to prevent future write attempts.

In the event of an unrecoverable read error, the error will be re ported to the host and the location will be flagged as being po tentially defective. A subsequent write to that location will initiate a sector test and relocation should that location prove to have a defect. Auto Reassign Sector does not affect disk subsystem performance because it runs as a background task. Auto Reassign

Sector discontinues when the operating system makes a request.

•

Consistency Check

A consistency check is a process that verifies the integrity of redundant data. For example, performing a consistency check of a mirrored drive assures that the data on both drives of the mir rored pair is exactly the same. To verify RAID 3, 5 or 6 redundan cy, a consistency check reads all associated data blocks, computes parity, reads parity, and verifies that the computed parity matches the read parity.

Consistency checks are very important because they detect and correct parity errors or bad disk blocks in the drive. A consistency check forces every block on a volume to be read, and any bad blocks are marked; those blocks are not used again. This is critical and important because a bad disk block can prevent a disk rebuild from completing. We strongly recommend that you run consis tency checks on a regular basis—at least once per week. Note that consistency checks degrade performance, so you should run them when the system load can tolerate it.

Data Protection

•

BATTERY BACKUP

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APPENDIX

The SATA RAID controllers are armed with a Battery Backup Mod ule (BBM). While a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) protects most servers from power fluctuations or failures, a BBM provides an additional level of protection. In the event of a power failure, a

BBM supplies power to retain data in the RAID controller’s cache, thereby permitting any potentially dirty data in the cache to be flushed out to secondary storage when power is restored.

T he batteries in the BBM are recharged continuously through a trickle-charging process whenever the system power is on. The batteries protect data in a failed server for up to three or four days, depending on the size of the memory module. Under nor mal operating conditions, the batteries last for three years before replacement is necessary.

•

RECOVERY ROM

The SATA RAID controller firmware is stored on the flash ROM and is executed by the I/O processor. The firmware can also be updat ed through the PCI-X/PCIe bus port or Ethernet port (if equipped) without the need to replace any hardware chips. During the con troller firmware upgrade flash process, it is possible for a problem to occur resulting in corruption of the controller firmware. With our Redundant Flash Image feature, the controller will revert back to the last known version of firmware and continue operating.

This reduces the risk of system failure due to firmware crash.

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Appendix F

Understanding RAID

RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. It is an array of multiple independent hard disk drives that provides high performance and fault tolerance. The SATA RAID control ler implements several levels of the Berkeley RAID technology.

An appropriate RAID level is selected when the volume sets are defined or created. This decision should be based on the desired disk capacity, data availability (fault tolerance or redundancy), and disk performance. The following section discusses the RAID levels supported by the SATA RAID controller.

The SATA RAID controller makes the RAID implementation and the disks’ physical configuration transparent to the host operating system. This means that the host operating system drivers and software utilities are not affected, regardless of the RAID level selected. Correct installation of the disk array and the control ler requires a proper understanding of RAID technology and the concepts.

•

RAID 0

RAID 0, also referred to as striping, writes stripes of data across multiple disk drives instead of just one disk drive. RAID 0 does not provide any data redundancy, but does offer the best highspeed data throughput. RAID 0 breaks up data into smaller blocks and then writes a block to each drive in the array. Disk strip ing enhances performance because multiple drives are accessed simultaneously; the reliability of RAID Level 0 is less because the entire array will fail if any one disk drive fails, due to a lack of re dundancy, the reliability of RAID Level 0 is less because the entire array will fail if any one disk drive fails.

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APPENDIX

•

RAID 1

RAID 1 is also known as “disk mirroring”; data written on one disk drive is simultaneously written to another disk drive. Read per formance will be enhanced if the array controller can, in parallel, access both members of a mirrored pair. During writes, there will be a minor performance penalty when compared to writing to a single disk. If one drive fails, all data (and software applications) are preserved on the other drive. RAID 1 offers extremely high data reliability, but at the cost of doubling the required data stor age capacity. But at the cost of doubling the required data storage capacity.

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APPENDIX

•

RAID 1E

RAID 1E is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1, combing strip ping with disk mirroring. RAID Level 1E combines the fast per formance of Level 0 with the data redundancy of Leve1 1. In this configuration, data is distributed across several disk drives, similar to Level 0, which are then duplicated to another set of drive for data protection. RAID 1E has been traditionally imple mented using an even number of disks, some hybrids can use an odd number of disks as well. Illustration is an example of a hybrid RAID 1E array comprised of five disks; A, B, C, D and E. In this configuration, each strip is mirrored on an adjacent disk with wrap-around. In fact this scheme - or a slightly modified version of it - is often referred to as RAID 1E and was originally proposed by IBM. When the number of disks comprising a RAID 1E is even, the striping pattern is identical to that of a traditional RAID 1E, with each disk being mirrored by exactly one other unique disk.

Therefore, all the characteristics for a traditional RAID 1E apply to a RAID 1E when the latter has an even number of disks. Areca

RAID 1E offers a little more flexibility in choosing the number of disks that can be used to constitute an array. The number can be even or odd.

166

•

RAID 3

RAID 3 provides disk striping and complete data redundancy though a dedicated parity drive. RAID 3 breaks up data into smaller blocks, calculates parity by performing an exclusive-or on the blocks, and then writes the blocks to all but one drive in

APPENDIX

the array. The parity data created during the exclusive-or is then written to the last drive in the array. If a single drive fails, data is still available by computing the exclusive-or of the contents cor responding strips of the surviving member disk. RAID 3 is best for applications that require very fast data- transfer rates or long data blocks.

•

RAID 5

RAID 5 is sometimes called striping with parity at byte level. In

RAID 5, the parity information is written to all of the drives in the controllers rather than being concentrated on a dedicated parity disk. If one drive in the system fails, the parity information can be used to reconstruct the data from that drive. All drives in the array system can be used for seek operations at the same time, greatly increasing the performance of the RAID system. This relieves the write bottleneck that characterizes RAID 4, and is the primary reason that RAID 5 is more often implemented in RAID arrays.

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APPENDIX

•

RAID 6

RAID 6 provides the highest reliability, but is not yet widely used.

It is similar to RAID 5, but it performs two different parity com putations or the same computation on overlapping subsets of the data. RAID 6 can offer fault tolerance greater than RAID 1 or

RAID 5 but only consumes the capacity of 2 disk drives for dis tributed parity data. RAID 6 is an extension of RAID 5 but uses a second, independent distributed parity scheme. Data is striped on a block level across a set of drives, and then a second set of par ity is calculated and written across all of the drives.

Summary of RAID Levels

The SATA RAID controller supports RAID Level 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5 and 6.

The table below provides a summary of RAID levels.

RAID

Level

0

Description

Features and Performance

Min.

Drives

Data

Reli ability

Also known as stripping

Data distributed across multiple drives in the array. There is no data protection.

1 No data

Protec tion

Data

Transfer

Rate

Very

High

I/O Request

Rates

Very High for

Both Reads and Writes

168

1

3

5

1E

Also known as mirroring

All data replicated on N sepa rated disks.

N is almost always 2.

This is a high availability solu tion, but due to the 100% duplication, it is also a costly solution. Half of drive capacity in array devoted to mirroring.

2

Also known Block-Interleaved

Parity.

Data and parity information is subdivided and distributed across all disks. Parity must be the equal to the smallest disk capacity in the array. Parity information normally stored on a dedicated parity disk.

Also known Bit-Interleaved Par ity.

Data and parity information is subdivided and distributed across all disks. Parity data consumes the capacity of 1 disk drive. Parity information normally stored on a dedicated parity disk.

3

3

Also known Block-Interleaved

Distributed Parity.

Data and parity information is subdivided and distributed across all disk. Parity data con sumes the capacity of 2 disk drive.

3

APPENDIX

Lower than

RAID 6;

Higher than

RAID

3, 5

Lower than

RAID 6;

Higher than

RAID

3, 5

Reads are higher than a single disk;

Reads are twice as fast as a single disk;

Writes similar to a single disk

Transfer rates more similar to RAID

1 than

RAID 0

Write are similar to a single disk.

Reads are twice as fast as a single disk;

Writes are similar to a single disk.

Lower than

RAID 1,

1E, 6;

Reads are similar to

RAID

0; Higher than a single drive

Lower than

RAID 1,

1E, 6;

Writes are slower than a single disk


RAID 0;

Higher than a single drive


Reads are close to being twice as fast as a single disk;

Writes are similar to a single disk.


RAID 0;

Writes are slower than a single disk.

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APPENDIX

6 RAID 6 provides the highest reliability. Similar to RAID 5, but does two different parity com putations. RAID 6 offers fault tolerance greater that RAID 1 or

RAID 5. Parity data consumes the capacity of 2 disk drives.

4 highest reliabil ity


RAID 0;



RAID 0;

Writes are slower than a single disk.

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APPENDIX

Appendix G

General Troubleshooting Tips

Most of controller errors are traceable to external factors, such as conflicts with other installed cards, motherboard incompatibility, bad or incorrectly configured drives, loose cables, improper control ler installation, or other installation errors.

To troubleshoot SATA RAID controller problems, try to simplify your hardware configuration by removing some other devices from the system and then adding them back one at a time.

For the latest information on SATA RAID Controllersand new drivers on the Areca website at http://www.areca.com.tw. The following general guidelines are for some specific error conditions:

Q1: The BIOS Message of the SATA RAID controller never

appears on the screen

Answer:

(1). Ensure the controller is inserted correctly into the PCI slot.

(2). Ensure 3.3 volts are being supplied to the PCI slot.

Q2: How many SATA RAID controllers can be installed into a computer system?

Answer:

Up to 4 RAID controllers in a system are supported.

Q3: When I power on system, the controller beeps, What does that means ?

Answer:

That beep while power on means controller received bus reset signal from host. One beep means one bus reset signal, the beep amounts and interval may vary with motherboard BIOS.

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APPENDIX

Q4: The boot device cannot found

Answer:

Enter the system BIOS setup utility Per manufacture directions and configure it so that the RAID card volume set is once again select ed as the primary boot device (or first in the boot device list)

Q5: What PCI slots are supported by the SATA RAID controllers?

Answer:

For all PCI-X SATA RAID controllers, install card in a 64-bit/133MHz

PCI-X for the best performance. It also can be used in 64-bit / 66

MHz slots, 32-bit/66MHz PCI slots as well as 32-bit/33MHz slots.

All PCI-X SATA RAID controllers can not work with 5V PCI slot.

PCI-Express SATA RAID controllers require an x8 or x16 slots. The card can function in x4 or x1 signal slots if those slots are open at the end to accept larger x8 cards, but performance will be reduced in these slower slots.

Check the Areca FAQ website for motherboard a compatibility list.

Q6: What is the difference between RAID 6 and RAID 5?

Answer:

RAID 6 allows two drives to fail simultaneously without downtime or data loss. However, RAID 5 only allows one drive to fail. RAID 6 thus provides a much higher level of fault tolerance than RAID 5. It is a perfect solution when data is mission-critical.

Due to this higher level of protection, users can set up larger RAID volumes, spanning up to 24 physical drives. With the ARECA RAID

6 engine, RAID 6 and RAID 5 have similar performance in the SATA

RAID controller.

Q7: What products support RAID 6?

Answer:

RAID 6 is available on controller models with the RAID 6 engine installed.

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APPENDIX

Q8: What operating systems are supported?

Answer:

The SATA RAID controllers support Microsoft® Windows® Server

2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, and

FreeBSD. For specific OS versions, see

http://www.areca.com.

tw

for more information.

Q9: Will ARECA submit the Linux code to kernel.org?

Answer:

Yes. ARECA Serial ATA ll RAID the lastest driver has been integrated directly into the Linux kernel 2.6.19, allowing future versions of

Linux operating systems to support Areca’s entire fam-ily PCI-X and

PCI-Express series of high performance SATA ll RAID controllers.

Q10: What is the warranty period?

Answer:

Like all ARECA External RAID controllers, the PCI-X or PCI-Express

SATA RAID controller is backed by a 3-year warranty.

Q11: Which O/S (Operating System) will support X86 64-bit processors?

Answer:

The following O/S vendors have announced product support for

AMD64 and Intel EM64T. Contact each vendor for more details. The following is our currently supported OS and version for 64-bit pro cessor. We will support others shortly after other versions release.

Microsoft:

Production support will be available in:

• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

• Windows Server 2003 64-Bit Edition

Red Hat:


• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 update 2

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APPENDIX

SuSE:


• SLES9

FreeBSD:


• FreeBSD 5.3

Q12: Is it possible to write software that will run on Intel’s processors with Intel® EM64T, and AMD’s 64-bit capable processors?

Answer:

Yes, in most cases, even though the hardware microarchitecture for each company’s processor is different, the operating system and software ported to one processor will be likely to run on the other processor due to the close similarity of the instruction set architec tures. However, Intel processors support additional features, like the SSE3 instructions and Hyper-Threading Technology, which are not supported on non-Intel platforms. As such, we believe devel opers will achieve maximum performance and stability by design ing specifically for Intel architectures and by taking advantage of

Intel’s breadth of software tools and enabling services.

Q13: How will Intel® EM64T work and what software is there to take advantage of 64-bit extensions?

Answer:

Platforms with Intel® EM64T/AMD64 can be run in three basic ways (note: a 64-bit capable BIOS is required for all three scenari os):

1. 32-bit O/S and 32-bit applications (Legacy Mode): No software

changes are required, however the user gets no benefit from

Intel® EM64T or AMD64.

2. 64-bit O/S and 32-bit applications (Compatibility Mode): This

usage requires all 64-bit device drivers. In this mode, the O/S

will see the 64-bit extensions, but the 32-bit application will

not. Existing 32-bit applications do not need to be recompiled,

and may or may not benefit from the 64-bit extensions. The

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APPENDIX

application will likely need to be recertified by the vendor to

run on the new 64-bit extended O/S.

3. 64-bit O/S and 64-bit applications (64-bit Mode): This usage

requires 64-bit device drivers. It also requires applications to

be modified for 64-bit operation and then recompiled and vali-

dated.

• For more FAQs, please visit knowledgebase of Areca

website at: http://faq.areca.com.tw/modules/smartfaq/

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APPENDIX

Appendix H

Technical Support

Areca Technical Support provides several options for Areca users to access information and updates. We encourage you to use one of our electric services, for the lastest product information updates and efficient support service. If you have decided to contact us, please have the following information ready. Kindly provide us the product model, serial number, BIOS, driver version, and a detailed description of the problem at

http://www.areca.com.tw/ support/ask_a_question.htm

Our support team will be glad to answer all your techinical enquires.

176

GLOSSARY

Glossary

2TB

The 32-bit file systems have a maximum limitation of 2 TB per volume set. 64-bit versions remove this limitation. so, if you are building large warehouses, you should consider 64-bit versions.

Array

An array is a logical disk comprised of multiple physical hard disks.

The number of hard disks in an array is dictated by the type of the array and the number of spares that may be assigned to it. (Arrays are also sometimes referred to as containers). Furthermore, whether an array can be built using part of the space on a disk (as opposed to being forced to use the whole disk) depends upon the implementation.

Arrays are typically used to provide data redundancy and/or enhanced

I/O performance.

ATA

Acronym for “

AT Bus Attachment

” - a standard interface to IDE hard disks. Western Digital’s IDE disk interface was standardized by ANSI to form the ATA specification using a 16-bit ISA bus.

Auto Reassign Sector

SATA drives perform automatic defect re-assignment for both read and write errors. Writes are always completed - if a location to be writ ten is found to be defective, the drive will automatically relocate that write command to a new location and map out the defective location.

If there is a recoverable read error, the correct data will be transferred to the host and that location will be tested by the drive to be certain the location is not defective - if it is found to have a defect, it will be automatically relocated to a new location and the defective location mapped out. In the event of an unrecoverable read error, the error will be reported to the host and the location flagged as potentially defec tive. A subsequent write to that location will initiate a sector test and relocation should that location have a defect.

177

GLOSSARY

Battery Backup Module

Many modern RAID controllers are armed with a battery backup Mod ule (BBM). While an UPS protects most servers from power fluctua tions or failures, a BBM provides an additional level of protection. In the event of a power failure, a BBM supplies power to retain data in the RAID controller’s cache, thereby permitting any potentially dirty data in the cache to be flushed out to secondary storage when power is restored.

BIOS

(Basic Input/Output System) software is stored on a chip and provides an interface between the operating system and the hardware. Usually the BIOS is built into a ROM chip installed on the motherboard so that the BIOS will always available and not affected by disk failure.

Cache

Controller memory used to speed up data transfer to and from a disk.

Consistency Check

In RAID, check consistency verifies the correctness of redundant data in an array. For example, in a system with dedicated parity, checking consistency means computing the parity of the data drives and com paring the results to the contents of the dedicated parity drive.

Driver

It is a piece of software – that is often executed in kernel mode – that controls a hardware device. Typically drivers provide an interface by which applications can use the device in a uniform and hardware-inde pendent manner.

Hot Spare

An extra physical disk drive in a RAID configuration that controller can use to automatically rebuild a system drive when another drive fails.

The hot spare drive must have at least as mush capacity as the largest disk drive in the array or the rebuild may not start.

178

GLOSSARY

Hot Spare

An extra physical disk drive in a RAID configuration that a controller can use to automatically rebuild a system drive when another drive fails. The hot spare drive must have at least as mush capacity as the largest disk drive in the array or the rebuild will not start.

Hardware RAID versus Software RAID

Beyond the different types of RAID, there are two implementation forms: hardware-based and software-based. Hardware-based RAID is obviously implemented at a physical level, whereas software-based

RAID is done using the operating system. It is always optimal to have

RAID done at a physical (hardware) level.

Hot Swap

To pull out a component from a system and plug in a new one while the power is still on and the unit is still operating.

NVRAM

(Non-Volatile Random Access Memory) A memory unit is equipped with a battery so that the data remain even after the main power had been switched off. Actually an EEPROM used to store configuration informa tion.

Parity

A technique used to protect a system from data loss due to faults.

When parity is implemented (RAID3 and RAID5), data written is logi cally XOR’d together to calculate parity, which is stored on the drives along with the data. In a system with three drives, the data is written to two drives and the calculated parity is stored on a third drive. If one drive fails, data on the failed drive is reconstructed from other data and parity.

PCI Express

An advanced version of the PCI bus introduced in 2002. Rather than the shared, parallel bus structure of PCI, PCI Express provides a high-

179

GLOSSARY

speed, switched architecture. Each PCI Express link is a serial commu nications channel made up of two differential wire pairs that provide

2.5 Gbits/sec in each direction. Up to 32 channels may be combined, creating a parallel interface of independently controlled serial links.

PCI-X

(PCI extended) an enhanced PCI bus technology is backward compat ible with existing PCI cards. PCI and PCI-X slots are physically the same. PCI cards run in PCI-X slots, and PCI-X cards run in PCI slots at the slower PCI rates. First introduced in 1999, PCI-X offered increased speed over PCI and has steadily increased to more than 30 times that of the original PCI bus.

RAID

(Redundant Array of Independent Disks) a disk subsystem that is used to increase performance or provide fault tolerance. RAID can also be set up to provide both functions at the same time. RAID is a set of two or more ordinary hard disks and a specialized disk controller that contains the RAID functionality. RAID has been developed initially for servers and stand-alone disk storage systems. RAID is important espe cially when rebuilding data after a disk failure.

Rebuild

When a RAID array enters into a degraded mode, it is advisable to rebuild the array and return it to its original configuration (in terms of the number and state of working disks) to ensure against operation in degraded mode.

SATA (Serial ATA)

The evolution of the ATA (IDE) interface that changes the physical architecture from parallel to serial and from master-slave to pointto-point. Unlike parallel ATA interfaces that connect two drives; one configured as master, the other as slave, each Serial ATA drive is con nected to its own interface. At initial introduction, Serial ATA (SATA) increases the transfer rate to 150 MB/sec (1.5Gb/s) and SATA2 to 300

MB/sec.

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GLOSSARY

SMART

This technology provides users with advanced warning of Disk Drive failures, thus enabling the Operating System to warn Users of potential failure. S.M.A.R.T. was included in EIDE drives with the ATA-3 and later specification.

SNMP

Since it was developed in 1988, the Simple Network Management

Protocol has become the de facto standard for inter-network manage ment. Because it is a simple solution, requiring little code to imple ment, vendors can easily build SNMP agents into their products. SNMP is extensible, allowing vendors to easily add network management functions to their existing products. SNMP also separates the man agement architecture from the architecture of the hardware devices, which broadens the base of multi-vendor support.

Volume Set

A volume set is a concatenation of storage elements that may be RAID arrays, JBODs, or simply areas of disks that are not part of RAID ar rays.

Write-back

When a cache is operating in write-back mode, data written into the cache is not immediately written out to its destination in second ary storage unless the heuristics governing the flushing of dirty data demands otherwise. This methodology can improve the efficiency of write operations under favorable circumstances. However, its use can potentially lead to incoherences in a system that is not protected from power fluctuations or other failures.

Write-through

When a cache is operating in write-through mode, data written into the cache is also written to the destination secondary storage devices.

Essentially write completion does not occur until the data is written to secondary storage. Thus the contents of the cache and the secondary storage are always consistent. The advantage is that the possibility

181

GLOSSARY

of data corruption is greatly reduced. The disadvantage is that writethrough operations are more time consuming.

XOR-Engine

All RAID arrays (with the exception of RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 1E) require parity to be calculated and written to the array in conjunction with data. Typically the parity is a simple XOR on the bytes compris ing a stripe. This is a computationally intensive operation that many modern RAID controllers perform using a dedicated ASIC (instead of calculating them in firmware on the main embedded processor’s core).

This dedicated ASIC is often referred to as a XOR-engine.

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Version History

Revision

3.4

3.4

Page

p.150-153 p.15-31

HISTORY

Description

Revised the controller events

Moved to Appendix E and F

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