Sonnet Technologies Fusion RAID Configuration Tool and Utilities Operation Manual - Manual (Page 15)

9
1.2 RAID Group Setup and Management
The ATTO Configuration Tool enables you to configure disk storage
into RAID groups or Hot Spare drives.
Note: Even an individual JBOD disk is considered to be a RAID group.
Use the ATTO Configuration Tool to set up RAID groups on your
Sonnet RAID controller in one of the following RAID levels:
• JBOD
• RAID Level 0
• RAID Level 1
• RAID Level 4
• RAID Level 5
• RAID Level 6
• RAID Level 10
• DVRAID™
DVRAID RAID groups may be set up automatically by the ATTO
Configuration Tool. All other RAID configurations require
customized input;
Sonnet recommends Custom RAID group
setup.
Each RAID group may be divided into one or more partitions;
each partition appears to the your computer as a virtual disk.
You may use the command line interface pane from the RAID
CLI tab in the ATTO Configuration Tool to set up or modify
various parameters (Refer to Appendix A).
However, using the
menu-based procedures listed in this chapter is the preferred
method for setting up RAID configurations for the Fusion
storage system.
Preliminary Configuration Steps
1. Launch the ATTO Configuration Tool application.
2. The Configuration Tool main screen appears. In the Device
Listing pane on the left side of the window, click ExpressSAS
Rxxx under
localhost; a new set of tabs appears in the right
pane. See Figure 10 on page 14 for an overview.
3. Click the RAID tab; the application scans for drives.
Attached drives are displayed in the top pane, while RAID
groups and Hot Spares are displayed in the bottom pane.
Custom RAID Group Setup Steps
1. After completing Preliminary Configuration Steps, select
RAID Management > Create Group > Customized from the
application menu.
2. Select the first set of options to configure the new RAID
group. See Figure 11 on page 14.
• Name: name the RAID group or use the one assigned by the
Configuration Tool. The name must be unique, contain no
spaces, and contain no more than 14 characters.
• Level: select a RAID group level from the drop-down menu.
• Interleave: select an interleave value. The default value
is 64KB or 128KB, depending on the OS used. Sonnet
recommends 1MB interleave size for maximum video
editing performance.
• Mirror Count: select the number of mirror groups when
RAID 1 or RAID 10 RAID groups are created.
Support Note: In the ATTO Configuration Tool’s Device
Listing pane, the Sonnet RAID controller is identified as
an ExpressSAS Rxxx.
Windows Support Note: In order to create RAID
volumes larger than 2TB under Windows, you must do one
of the following: Select the 4KB sector size when creating a
custom RAID group (not DVRAID) and select Simple Volume
as the formatting option in the Disk Management application.
-OR- Use the software configuration tools included with the
Fusion storage to create volumes up to 2TB, span (link together
in a virtual chain) the volumes, and then format as NTFS. - OR-
Use GPT formatting. Note that drives and volumes with GPT
formatting are not visible to the 32-bit version of Windows XP
Professional, nor to the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2003 SP1.
Support Note: DVRAID is a customized, protected
RAID 4 configuration. It is optimized for increased digital
video playback performance when compared to that obtained
from a RAID 5 configuration. DVRAID’s write performance is
decreased in order to accomplish this optimization.
Support Note: Descriptions of RAID levels can be found
on the Wikipedia.org Web site at the following addresses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_RAID_levels.
Support Note: Two RAID groups with the same name
may not be recognized. If you add another RAID group to
your setup, you must make sure it does not have the same name
as the existing one, and change it if it does.
Support Note: The interleave value chosen when
creating a RAID group makes a significant impact on
performance. Fusion RAID storage systems shipped from Sonnet
with pre-installed hard disk drives are now optimized for use
with video editing (larger files) applications, typically with an
interleave value of 512KB or 1MB selected. If you intend to
use your storage system primarily for storage of smaller files
(database, office documents, etc.), choose a smaller interleave
value of 64KB or 128KB.
Support Note: In Fusion RAID storage systems
shipped from Sonnet with hard drives installed, the
drives are formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled),
configured as a single RAID 5 or RAID 6 RAID group, and
ready for use with Mac OS X-based systems. If you need to
change the configuration, delete the existing RAID group (see
RAID Group Deletion on page 13), and use the Configuration
Tool and the operating system software tools to reformat
and reconfigure the drives. See page xiv for Drive Reformat
Instructions for Mac OS and Windows users.