Introduction, Features, Description – Dell PERC 4/im User Manual
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Integrated Mirroring™ Guide:
Integrated Mirroring (IM) Overview
Introduction
This chapter provides general information about the Integrated Mirroring (IM) feature.
The Integrated Mirroring feature provides simultaneous physical mirroring of two hard drives, to assure fault tolerant,
high availability data. If a hard drive fails, the hot swap capability allows the system to be easily restored by simply
swapping drives. The system then automatically re-mirrors the swapped drive.
The Integrated Mirroring feature uses the same device drivers as the standard Fusion-MPT based controllers,
providing seamless and transparent fault tolerance. This eliminates the need for complex backup software or
expensive RAID hardware. The Integrated Mirroring feature operates independently from the operating system, which
helps to conserve system resources. The configuration utility makes it easy to configure mirrored disk pairs.
Features
Following is a list of some key features of the Integrated Mirroring feature:
Two-drive physical mirroring
Support for drives of different types and capacities
Fusion-MPT architecture
Configuration utility
Hot swap capability
Error notification
OS-specific event log
Errors displayed on CIM browser
SAF-TE drive status LED support for Integrated Mirroring feature drives
Write journaling, which allows automatic synchronization of potentially inconsistent data after unexpected
power-down situations
Automatic background resynchronization while host I/Os continue
Media verification
Description
The Integrated Mirroring (IM) feature provides physical mirroring for the boot volume, as shown in the following figure.
The IM firmware maintains a second drive as a mirror of the first drive, which is the boot drive. The runtime mirroring
of the boot drive is transparent to the BIOS, drivers, and operating system. Host-based status software monitors the
state of the mirrored drives and reports any error conditions.
Figure 1-1. Typical System Implementation