Definition Of Terms; Operating With Spare Drives - Acer Altos RAIDWatch Manual

Management program

Table of Contents

Altos RAIDWatch User Guide

5.1.1 Definition of Terms

This section describes some of the disk array terms used in this documentation.

• Physical drives. These are the actual drives installed in the enclosures.These drives are displayed

• Spare drives. These are physical drives that serve as backups. When a drive fails, the spare is

• Replacement drives. These are physical drives that are manually configured into the array to

• Failed drives. These are physical drives that fail due to some type of error. Failed drives appear

• Logical drives. These drives are created using physical drives. Combining physical drives into

• Logical volumes. These volumes are created using logical drives. Combining logical drives into

You can assign spare drives to a particular logical drive to serve as backup drives. When a drive fails

within the logical drive, one of the spares will be automatically configured into the logical drive,

and data reconstruction onto it will immediately commence.

The following are guidelines for disk failure recovery when a spare drive is available:

• If a spare drive exists in the same logical drive, the controller will automatically mount the

• Depending on the design of the system external to the controller, it may be possible to remove

• The replacement drive must then be assigned as a new spare drive.

in Physical View under the RAID View window.

automatically configured into the array, and data reconstruction will commence immediately.

Spare drives appear in darker (shaded) colors than normal drives and have a red cross

superimposed on them. Large red crosses indicate Global spares, smaller ones represent Local

spares.

replace failed drives. In the absence of spare drives, you will need to use replacement drives to

replace defective drives before rebuilding. If a spare drive has been used to rebuild the array,

you will also need to replace the failed drive manually to create another spare with the

precaution that another drive might fail.

with large red X marks on their respective icons.

logical drives gives you a disk array with a certain RAID level. To view logical drives, use Logical

View under the RAID View window.

logical volumes gives you a single logical unit with even larger capacity. Logical volumes or

their partitions are mapped to various host LUNs. To view logical volumes, use Logical View

under the RAID View window.

spare drive and start data rebuilding in the background.

a defective drive and replace it with a new drive without shutting down the system (hot-

swapping). Alternatively, the system can be shut down at a convenient time and the failed

drive replaced.

Table of Contents