HP Array Technologies
- Advantages of HP Smart Array Controllers
- HP Array Controller Utilities
- Array Controller Technologies and Capabilities
- ATA RAID
- Summary
- Learning Check
Chapter Syllabus
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13.1 Advantages of HP Smart Array Controllers
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13.2 HP Array Controller Utilities
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13.3 Array Controller Technologies and Capabilities
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13.4 ATA RAID
After studying this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
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List and describe the advantages of HP Smart Array controllers
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List and describe the utilities used to configure, optimize, and troubleshoot HP Array controllers.
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Explain the key technological advantages of HP Array controllers
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Describe ATA RAID, and explain how HP ProLiant servers support this drive array configuration
All HP Smart Array products use a standard set of technologies and management and utility software to facilitate storage management.
The array controller utilities discussed in this chapter include the following:
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Array Diagnostics Utility (ADU)
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Array Configuration Utility (ACU)
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Array Configuration Utility XE (ACU XE)
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Option ROM Configuration for Arrays (ORCA)
The array controller technologies discussed in this chapter include the following:
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Online spare drives
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Online drive array expansion
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Logical drive capacity extension
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Online RAID-level migration
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Online stripe-size migration
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HP hard drive failure prediction technology
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Dynamic sector repair (DSR)
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Hot-plug drive support
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Automatic data recovery
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Array accelerator (read/write cache)
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Data protection
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Array performance tuning
In addition, this chapter discusses HP's implementation of ATA RAID.
13.1 Advantages of HP Smart Array Controllers
As data storage requirements increase and computing needs change, flexibility within server configurations and in storage configurations becomes more important. The HP Smart Array controller family includes a standard toolset that you can use to configure array controllers, expand an existing array configuration by adding disk drives, or reconfigure an array by extending volume sizes.
Only select Smart Array controllers offer RAID advanced data guarding (ADG), which offers higher fault tolerance than RAID 5 with lower implementation costs than RAID 1+0 and greater usable capacity per U than RAID 1. Using patented HP technology, you can safely deploy large-capacity disk drives and create large storage volumes.
In a RAID 1+0 configuration, all HP Smart Array controllers can
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Sustain multiple drive failures.
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Sustain an entire bus failure if the drives are equally distributed across buses.
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Service I/O requests to all operational drives in a degraded condition.
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Survive n/2 drive failures, where n is the number of drives in the array, as long as one member of each mirrored pair survives.
RAID 1+0 can support multiple drive failures when multiple drives that fail are not in the same mirrored pair.
For RAID 5, HP recommends that no more than 14 (8 is optimal) physical drives be used per logical drive. Because logical drive failure is much less likely with RAID ADG, however, HP supports the use of up to 56 physical drives per drive array when running this fault-tolerance method.