Creating Logical Devices and Hot Spares

To create a logical device and assign hot spares:

  1. In the Physical Devices View, click the drives you want the logical device to include. To view available segments on each disk drive, switch to the full-size capacity view or relative-size capacity view. (See Revealing More Information for more about views.)

Notes! 1) A segment shaded in light blue is not part of any logical device. 2) If you choose a combination of both SAS and SATA disk drives, Adaptec Storage Manager reports a warning in the event viewer. Mixing drive types is supported but not recommended.

  1. To select a hot spare for the logical device, click the hot spare button ; then, select a Ready drive.

Tip! To select or deselect a hot spare with the keyboard, control-click the drive.

  1. In the Name field, enter a name for the logical device.

  2. If you do not want to use the maximum logical device size, click Advanced settings, enter the size in the Size field, then select the capacity units from the drop-down list.

  3. To configure the logical device for optimal performance, adjust other advanced settings, as needed.

    Note! Not all advanced settings are available for all RAID levels.

    • Second-level devices—For RAID level-x0, the number of sub-logical devices in the logical device. This number determines the number of physical drives you need to create the logical device. For example, for a RAID-50 with three second-level devices, you need at least nine drives.  

    • Stripe size—Determines the amount of data, in kilobytes (KB), written to one segment of a logical device before the next segment is used to store data. Depending on the controller, you can choose a stripe size from 16 KB to 1024 KB.

    Note! The default stripe size usually provides the best performance for typical applications. To change a logical device's stripe size, you must expand or migrate the logical device.

    • Write cache—Determines how data is stored in the controller's cache memory. You can choose from two available settings: write-through and write-back.  

    • Read cache—Enables and disables read caching. When read-caching is enabled, the controller monitors read access to the pool. If it detects a pattern, it pre-loads the cache with the data that seems most likely to be read next. The default is Enabled.

    • Initialize Method—Determines how a logical device is prepared for reading and writing, and how long initialization will take. Adaptec Storage Manager provides three initialization methods:

      • Build (slowest)

        Build is the default setting for most logical devices. For RAID 1 logical devices, data is copied from the primary drive to the mirror drive; for RAID 5 logical devices, parity is computed and written.

        Adaptec Storage Manager performs build initializations in the background; you can use the logical device immediately.

      • Clear

        Every block in the logical device is overwritten, removing all existing data. You can not use the logical device until the initialization is complete.

      • Quick (fastest)

        The logical device is made available immediately. Quick is the default setting for RAID 1, RAID 1E, and RAID 10 logical devices.

    • Initialize Priority—Determines the priority for the initialization of the logical device. The default setting is High, which means that the logical device is initialized as quickly as possible.

Note! The default settings usually are adequate for most applications.

  1. If your drives have free space available and you want to create additional logical devices, click Add logical device; then, select the RAID level, and repeat Steps 1-5. To remove a logical device, click its tab at the top of the wizard, then click Remove logical device.

  2. When you are ready to continue, click Next.

The Configuration summary window opens.

 

Navigation Tip! To return to the Define RAID level window, click Back. To exit the Configuration wizard, click Cancel.