Configuring Logical Drives; Optimizing Data Storage; Data Access Requirements - Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller 3 User Manual

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Confi gur ing PERC 3
Ta b l e 7 - 1 0 . P h y s i c a l D r i v e s R e q u i r e d f o r E a c h R A I D L e v e l
RAID Minimum Number of
Level Physical Drives
5 3
10 4
50 6

Configuring Logical Drives

After you have installed the PERC 3 controller in the server and have
attached all physical disk drives, perform the following steps to prepare a
RAID disk array:
Optimize the PERC 3 controller options for your system.
1
Press <Ctrl> <M> to run the BIOS Configuration Utility.
2
Define and configure one or more logical drives.
3
Select Easy Configuration in the PERC 3 BIOS Configuration Utility
4
or select New Configuration to customize the RAID array.
Create and configure one or more system drives (logical drives).
5
Select the RAID level, cache policy, read policy, and write policy.
6
Save the configuration.
7
Initialize the system drives.
8
After initialization, you can install the operating system.

Optimizing Data Storage

Data Access Requirements

Each type of data stored in the disk subsystem has a different frequency of
read and write activity. If you know the data access requirements, you can
more successfully determine a strategy for optimizing the disk subsystem
capacity, availability, and performance.
Maximum Number of Physical
Drives
32
16
256
(PERC has a limit of 60, using
PERC 4/QC with 15 drives on each
of the 4 channels.)