Checking data consistency – Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 5i User Manual

Page 68

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RAID Configuration and Management

Enabling the Alarm to Alert in Case of Physical Disk Failures

The PERC 5/E Adapter uses an audible alarm to alert you to key critical and warning events involving the
virtual disks or physical disks. You can use the BIOS Configuration Utility to enable or disable the on-board
alarm tone. See Table 6-8 for the list of critical and warning events, severity levels of the events, and
audible codes.

Perform the following steps to enable the alarm in the BIOS Configuration Utility.

1 Press <Ctrl><N> to access the Ctrl Mgmt menu screen.
2 Press <Tab> in the Settings box to move the cursor to Enable Alarm.
3 Press the spacebar to select Enable Alarm.

An X displays next to Enable Alarm.

4 Press <Tab> to move the cursor to the Apply button, then press <Enter> to apply the selection.

The alarm is enabled. To disable the alarm, use the spacebar to deselect the Enable Alarm control, and
then select Apply.

Checking Data Consistency

Select the Consistency Check option in the configuration utility to verify the redundancy data in virtual
disks that use RAID levels 1, 5, 10, and 50. (RAID 0 does not provide data redundancy.)

NOTE:

Dell recommends that you run data consistency checks on a redundant array at least once a month. This

allows detection and automatic replacement of bad blocks. Finding a bad block during a rebuild of a failed physical
disk is a serious problem, as the system does not have the redundancy to recover the data.

NOTE:

The system will take longer to reboot after you perform a data consistency check.

Perform the following steps to run a Consistency Check.

1 Press <Ctrl><N> to access the VD Mgmt menu screen.
2 Press the down arrow key to highlight Virtual Disk #.
3 Press <F2> to display the menu of available actions.
4 Press the down arrow key to select Consistency Check.
5 Press the right arrow key to display the menu of available actions, Start and Stop.
6 Select Start and press <Enter> to run a Consistency Check.

The Consistency Check runs and checks the redundancy data in the virtual disks.

7 After you start the Consistency Check, press <Esc> to display the previous menu.

Dell_PERC5_UG.book Page 66 Tuesday, February 13, 2007 6:02 PM

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