Dell PowerVault MD 34XX/38XX Series Storage Arrays Administrator's Guide Notes, cautions, and warnings NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your computer. CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid the problem. WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death. © 2016 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. Dell and the Dell logo are trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. 2016 - 07 Rev. A03 Contents 1 Introduction.........................................................................................................14 Dell PowerVault Modular Disk Storage Manager .............................................................................. 14 User Interface...................................................................................................................................... 14 Enterprise Management Window........................................................................................................15 Inheriting The System Settings......................................................................................................16 Array Management Window................................................................................................................16 Dell PowerVault Modular Disk Configuration Utility.......................................................................... 17 Related Documentation...................................................................................................................... 17 2 About Your MD Series Storage Array.............................................................. 19 Physical Disks, Virtual Disks, And Disk Groups................................................................................... 19 Physical Disks.................................................................................................................................19 Physical Disk States........................................................................................................................19 Virtual Disks And Disk Groups...................................................................................................... 20 Virtual Disk States..........................................................................................................................20 Disk Pools.............................................................................................................................................21 Thin Virtual Disks................................................................................................................................. 21 RAID Levels.......................................................................................................................................... 21 Maximum Physical Disk Support Limitations............................................................................... 22 RAID Level Usage...........................................................................................................................22 RAID 0............................................................................................................................................ 22 RAID 1.............................................................................................................................................22 RAID 5............................................................................................................................................ 22 RAID 6............................................................................................................................................ 22 RAID 10.......................................................................................................................................... 23 Segment Size.......................................................................................................................................23 Virtual Disk Operations....................................................................................................................... 23 Virtual Disk Initialization................................................................................................................ 23 Consistency Check....................................................................................................................... 24 Media Verification..........................................................................................................................24 Cycle Time.....................................................................................................................................24 Virtual Disk Operations Limit........................................................................................................ 24 Disk Group Operations....................................................................................................................... 25 RAID Level Migration..................................................................................................................... 25 Segment Size Migration................................................................................................................ 25 Virtual Disk Capacity Expansion....................................................................................................25 Disk Group Expansion................................................................................................................... 25 Disk Group Defragmentation........................................................................................................25 3 Disk Group Operations Limit........................................................................................................ 26 RAID Background Operations Priority................................................................................................26 Virtual Disk Migration And Disk Roaming...........................................................................................26 Disk Migration................................................................................................................................26 Disk Roaming.................................................................................................................................28 Host Server-To-Virtual Disk Mapping.......................................................................................... 28 Host Types.....................................................................................................................................28 Advanced Features..............................................................................................................................28 Types Of Snapshot Functionality Supported............................................................................... 28 Snapshot Virtual Disks (Legacy).................................................................................................... 29 Snapshot Repository Virtual Disk (Legacy) ..................................................................................29 Virtual Disk Copy...........................................................................................................................30 Virtual Disk Recovery.................................................................................................................... 30 Using Snapshot And Virtual Disk Copy Together........................................................................ 30 Multi-Path Software.............................................................................................................................31 Preferred And Alternate Controllers And Paths............................................................................31 Virtual Disk Ownership.................................................................................................................. 31 Load Balancing....................................................................................................................................32 Monitoring System Performance........................................................................................................32 Interpreting Performance Monitor Data.......................................................................................33 Viewing Real-time Graphical Performance Monitor Data...........................................................36 Customizing the Performance Monitor Dashboard.................................................................... 37 Specifying Performance Metrics...................................................................................................37 Viewing Real-time Textual Performance Monitor....................................................................... 38 Saving Real-time Textual Performance Data............................................................................... 39 Starting and Stopping Background Performance Monitor..........................................................40 Viewing Information about the Current Background Performance Monitor Session............... 40 Viewing Current Background Performance Monitor Data.........................................................