Maintenance page

3DM2™ Online Help

Maintenance page
Show Maintenance Page
The Maintenance page appears when you choose Management >> Maintenance from the menu bar.
The Maintenance page lets you perform maintenance tasks on existing units on the current controller and lets you create new units by configuring available drives.
Information about the Maintenance page is organized under these headings:

| Rescan Controller

| Unit Maintenance

| Maintenance Task Buttons for Existing Units

| Available Drives (to Create Units)

| Maintenance Task Buttons for Available Drives

Rescan Controller
The Rescan Controller button scans the ports on the controller. Rescanning updates the list of available drives shown and updates the status of all attached disks. If error conditions have been fixed, the status is updated to reflect that.
Rescanning is useful in a variety of maintenance tasks. For example, if you physically plug in a drive and want the controller to recognize the newly plugged-in drive, Rescan will find it.

| Note: If you unplug a drive without first removing it through 3DM2, Rescan may not recognize it as gone unless the drive was in use or until it is required by the system. Always use the Remove link to remove a drive before unplugging it.

| Warning: Physically removing or adding drives which are not in hot swap bays can result in a system hang or may even damage the system and the drive.

Rescan checks all ports. It checks empty ports for newly plugged-in drives. If those drives were previously part of a 3ware RAID configuration and they still have valid DCB (Disk Configuration Block) information on them, the controller tries to piece them back together into a working unit. If a working unit can be formed, it will appear in the Unit Maintenance list when the scan is complete, and the operating system will be notified of the unit.

| In Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenSolaris a device node will be associated with each unit created.

| In Windows, you will see additional disk(s) report under Disk Management..

| In Mac OS, the unit shows up under Disk Utility.

| In VMware you need to use vShere client and go to the Configuration page. Under Storage Adapter, select LSI 3ware 9750 and perform a rescan for the disk to be available for use.

This process is known as importing drives.
If new drives do not have any data indicating they were previously part of a 3ware RAID configuration, they will appear in the Available Drives list.
In addition, if there is a unit with the status Inoperable before a rescan (for example, a RAID 5 unit missing 2 or more drives), and a rescan finds drives that complete the unit, the inoperable unit will become a valid unit.
Unit Maintenance
The Unit Maintenance section of the page lists all existing units on the current controller, and displays summary information about them.
The top row shows information about the unit, while subsequent rows show summary information about each drive in the unit.
Unit Information
Unit Number. The unit number assigned to the unit by the firmware. Use the checkbox next to the unit to select a unit before clicking one of the task buttons.
# Drives. Number of drives in the unit.
Type of Unit. Type of unit: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, RAID 50, or Single Disk. If the unit has been given a unique name, it shows beneath the RAID type.
Name of Unit. User-assigned unique name of the unit. The default setting is blank.
Capacity. The usable capacity (size) of the unit.
Status. Operational status of the unit: Ok, Rebuilding, Initializing, Verifying, Migrating, Degraded, or Inoperable (missing drives). When Rebuilding, Initializing, Migrating, or Verifying, the percentage (%) complete is also shown. The percentage complete can be active or paused. To see whether this task is currently active or paused, click on the unit number to display the Unit Details page, which has that information. For an explanation of the statuses, see Unit Statuses.
Drive Information
VPort. The VPort (virtual port) to which the drive is connected.
Model. The model of the drive.
Capacity. The capacity (size) of the drive.
Status. The status of the drive: OK, Not Supported, Not Present, and so forth. If you need help regarding a status displayed here, please contact Technical Support. For more information, see Drive Statuses.
Remove Drive. The Remove Drive link removes a drive from the controller so that you can safely unplug it. In the Unit Maintenance section, this link is only provided for drives that can be safely removed without creating an inoperable unit. (For example, a RAID 5 missing 2 or more drives or a RAID 0 missing 1 or more drives would become inoperable.) If you remove a drive from a redundant unit, the unit will become degraded. Once a unit has become degraded, additional drives cannot be removed without making it inoperable, so no Remove Drive link will display.

| Warning: Physically removing drives which are not in hot swap bays can result in a system hang, data loss, or may even damage the system and the drive.

Maintenance Task Buttons for Existing Units
Below the list of units, a row of task buttons lets you perform maintenance and configuration tasks related to the unit. Before clicking one of these buttons, select the appropriate unit.
Verify Unit
Puts the selected unit in verifying mode. If the Advanced Verify schedule is selected on the Scheduling page, the unit will not start actively verifying until the scheduled time, and the status will indicate “Verify-Paused.” (The Unit Details page will indicate whether a unit is actively verifying.) If the Basic Verify schedule is active, clicking Verify Unit begins the verification process, and verify will begin within approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
If the unit you selected to verify is a redundant unit, the redundancy of the unit will be verified. For example, it will check parity for a RAID 5 or check data consistency for a RAID 1. If the unit you checked is not a redundant unit, verify will do a surface scan of the media. During verification, I/O continues normally. For RAID 0 and single disks, there is only a slight performance loss. For redundant units, you can set the background task rate on the Controller Settings page to specify whether more processing time should be given to verifying or to I/O. For more information, see About Verification and Setting Background Task Rate.
While a unit is verifying, the status changes to Verifying and a Stop Verify link appears in the right-most column of the Unit Maintenance table.

| Note: If the unit has not previously been initialized and you click Verify Unit, the initialization process starts. Initialization cannot be halted, so no Stop Verify link appears. (Initialization can be paused, however, through Scheduling. Initialization follows the Rebuild/Migrate schedule, so turning on scheduling for Rebuild/Migrate will pause initialization, as well.) For more information about initialization, see About Initialization.

Rebuild Unit
Replaces a failed drive in a degraded unit with an available drive and begins rebuilding the RAID. When you select a degraded unit and click Rebuild Unit, a dialog box listing available drives appears, so that you can select the drive you want to use. If the degraded unit has more than one failed drive (for example, a RAID 10 where both mirrored pairs each have a failed drive), you will repeat this process a second time.
If rebuild scheduling is enabled on the Scheduling page, the unit will not start actively rebuilding until the scheduled time, and the status will change to say “Rebuild-Paused.” (The Unit Details page indicates whether a unit is actively rebuilding.) If rebuild scheduling is not enabled, the rebuild process will begin right away.
For more information about rebuilds, see To verify a unit through 3BM.
Migrate Unit
Reconfigures a unit while it is on-line. Migration can be used to change the RAID level, to expand the capacity by adding additional drives, or to change the stripe size.

| Warning: Once migration of a unit is started, it can be paused, but it can not be cancelled.

When you select a unit and click Migrate Unit, a dialog box appears which lists the drives in the unit and any additional available drives. In the dialog box are two drop-down menus, one for choosing the RAID level and one for choosing stripe size.
Show Migrating a unit
You can only migrate a unit to a RAID level that will be equal to or larger than the original unit. For example, you can migrate from a RAID 5 array with 4 drives to a RAID 0 with four drives but you cannot migrate from a RAID 5 with four drives to a RAID 10 with four drives.
After you have specified changes to the unit, the Unit Maintenance screen reflects your changes and shows the percentage of migration completed.
While the unit is migrating, you can still access the unit as normal but the performance will be lower. You can adjust the I/O rate with the radio buttons on the Controller Settings page. (See Setting Background Task Rate.)
Remove Unit
Removes a selected unit and allows you to unplug the drives and move the unit to another controller. The data on the unit remain intact.

| Caution: Before you click Remove Unit, make sure the unit you are removing is unmounted from the operating system and that the system is not accessing it. If a unit is not unmounted and you remove it, it is the equivalent of physically yanking a hard drive out from under the operating system. You could lose data, the system could hang, or the controller could reset. Under certain operating systems, if you try to remove the unit in either CLI or 3DM2 and the unit is still in use, you get an error message telling you the unit can not be removed. Make sure you do not have any utility accessing the unit then follow your system instructions on the procedure to unmount the unit before removing it. For how to unmount a unit under various operating systems, see the discussing under Deleting a Unit through 3DM2.

| Warning: Physically removing drives which are not in hot swap bays can result in a system hang, data loss, or may even damage the system and the drive.

Delete Unit
Deletes the selected unit and allows you to use the drives to create another unit. The drives appear in the list of Available Drives.

| Caution: Before you click Delete Unit, make sure the unit you are removing is unmounted from the operating system and that the system is not accessing it. Devices can be unmounted through the operating system. For details, see the discussion under Remove Unit, above.

| Warning: When a unit is deleted, the data will be permanently deleted: the drives cannot be reassembled into the same unit. If you want to reassemble the drives on another controller and access the existing data, use Remove Unit instead of Delete Unit.

After deletion, the operating system is notified that the unit was deleted.

| In FreeBSD, Linux, and OpenSolaris the device node associated with this unit is removed.

| In Windows the disk is removed from Disk Management.

| In Mac OS the disk is removed from Disk Utility.

| In VMware, the deleted unit won’t be updated by the operating system until you perform a rescan on the RAID controller.

Available Drives (to Create Units)
This section lists the drives on the controller which are not currently configured as part of a unit. The VPort number, model, capacity, type, phy, slot, and status are all displayed, as they are for drives in existing units.
The available drives can be sorted by VPort, model, capacity, type, phy, or slot by clicking on the column headings. (For details about these attributes, see Drive Information page.)
Remove Drive. The Remove Drive button removes a drive from the controller so that you can safely unplug it. Select the box for any drive in the Available Drives list you wish to remove.

| Warning: Physically removing drives which are not in hot swap bays can result in a system hang or may even damage the system and the drive.

Maintenance Task Buttons for Available Drives
Below the list of available drives, a row of task buttons lets you work with available drives to create new units, remove drives, designate drives as spares, and clear the configuration of a spare so that it can be used for another purpose.
Create Unit
Use the Create Unit button to create a unit for use on the current controller. Begin by selecting the drives you want to use in the list of Available Drives, and then click Create Unit. You will be prompted to select the unit Type, Name, Stripe size (if applicable), and unit policy settings.
A window like the one below shows the drives you selected, and lets you specify configuration settings.
Show Configuration Window in 3DM2
For more detailed instructions, see Configuring a New Unit.
Type. The drop-down list lists the possible RAID configurations for the drives selected in the list of Available Drives. Available configurations may include RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, RAID 50, and Single Disk. For information about these configurations, see Available RAID Configurations.
Depending on the size of the unit, a RAID 50 unit will contain 2 or more subunits. For example, when you are configuring a RAID 50 with twelve drives, an additional field appears, in which you select the number of drives per subunit—3, 4, or 6.
Show Configuring a RAID 50 with 12 Drives
Name. You can enter a name for the unit.
Stripe. The drop-down list of stripe sizes lists the possible stripe sizes for the configuration you selected in the RAID level drop-down.
Using the default stripe size of 256 KB usually gives you the best performance for mixed I/Os. If your application has some specific I/O pattern (purely sequential or purely random), you might want to experiment with a different stripe size.
Write Cache, Auto-Verify, and Overwrite ECC. These check boxes let you set the policies for the unit. These policies can also be set and changed on the Controller Settings page. For details about these policies, see Unit Policies.

| Note: If the configuration window disappears while you are selecting drives, 3DM2 may have refreshed. Click Create Unit again. If desired, you can reduce the frequency with which information refreshes in 3DM2, or disable refresh temporarily, on the 3DM2 Settings page.

Read Cache. By default, Read Cache is set to Intelligent. You can change it to Basic, or disable it, if desired. Setting the appropriate type of Read Cache can improve performance for different types of applications. For details, see Working with Read Cache Settings.
StorSave. You can specify the StorSave Profile to be used for the unit. Three profiles are available: Protection, Balanced, and Performance. For more information, see Setting the StorSave Profile for a Unit.
Rapid RAID Recovery. Determines which Rapid RAID Recovery option to use, All, Rebuild or Disable. All will apply the policy to both rebuilds and unclean shutdowns. Rebuild will apply only to rebuilds. You can switch between All and Rebuild settings, but, once Rapid RAID Recovery is disabled for the unit, it cannot be re-enabled. For details, see Rapid RAID Recovery.
Set Spare
Use the Set Spare button to set one or more drives as spares. Select the drives you want to use from the list of Available Drives, then click Set Spare.
Clear Configuration
Use the Clear Configuration button to reset a Spare to be an Available Drive. Select the drives you no longer want to be Spares, then click Clear Configuration.

Related Topics
  Configuring a New Unit
  Creating a Hot Spare
  Deleting a Unit
  Removing a Unit
  Adding a Drive
  Removing a Drive
  Rescanning the Controller
  Changing RAID Level
  Expanding Unit Capacity
  Naming a Unit

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