0 configuring the diamond-vt, Raid level 10, Raid level 5 – ATTO Technology Diamond Storage Array VT-Class User Manual

Page 58: Virtual tape volumes, Hot spare sleds, Zones

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47

ATTO Technology Inc. Diamond Storage Array Installation and Operation Manual

7.0 Configuring the Diamond-VT

The Diamond-VT can be configured as RAID Level 10 or RAID Level 5 with zones and/or Hot Spare
sleds. Partitions are created automatically during configuration of Virtual Tape emulation. The default
is a single zone which includes all LUNs (devices), all ports and all hosts. RAID is a storage
configuration which uses multiple disk drives to increase capacity, performance and/or reliability.

You may configure your Diamond-VT in several
different ways depending on your needs although
the Diamond-VT makes some choices for you.
The following elements must be considered when
you are configuring your Diamond-VT:

• RAID

level

• Interleave

• Number of tape volumes

• Number of tape drives

• Hot Spare sled option

• Zoning

Using the ExpressNAV browser-based interface is
the easiest way to set up your Diamond-VT. You
may also use the Command Line Interface
commands.

CAUTION

CAUTION

Changing these parameters causes all
previous drive data on the Diamond-VT to
be erased. Make sure you back up all
information before setting up a different
configuration.

RAID Level 10
RAID Level 10 (mirroring with striping)
increases data transfer rates while ensuring
security by writing the exact same data
simultaneously to two or more different drives.
RAID Level 10 is used in applications requiring
high performance and redundancy.

RAID Level 5
RAID Level 5 increases reliability while using
fewer disks than mirroring by using parity
redundancy. Distributed parity on multiple drives
provides the redundancy to rebuild a failed drive
from the remaining good drives. Parity data is
added to the transmitted data at one end of the
transaction, then the parity data is checked at the

other end to make sure the transmission has not
had any errors.

In the Diamond-VT, transmitted data with the
added parity data is striped across disk drives. A
hardware XOR engine computes parity, thus
alleviating software processing during reads and
writes.

The Diamond-VT will operate in degraded mode
if a drive fails unless you have Hot Spare sleds
enabled (see below).

Virtual Tape Volumes
When the Diamond-VT is configured as a Virtual
Tape, it is divided into several tape volumes and
tape drives based on your choice and the RAID
level you choose. See

Virtual Tape

on page 49.

Hot Spare sleds
In most configurations, if a member of a virtual
device becomes degraded, you must swap out the
faulted sled as defined in

Hot Swap Operating

Instructions

on page 69. If you have not enabled

AutoRebuild

, you must also start a manual

rebuild.

However, you may designate Hot Spare sleds as
replacements for faulted sleds without
intervention by you or a host. These sleds, once
designated as Hot Spares, are not available for
other use.

See

Optional Hot Spare Sled

on page 50 for more

information.

Zones
Zoning is a collection of related Diamond
capabilities supporting flexible Diamond-VT
configuration management configurable via CLI
commands in the Command Line Interface or the

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