MegaRAID Storage Manager Online Help System

Configuration > Creating a New Configuration > Creating a Virtual Drive Using Advanced Configuration

Creating a Virtual Drive Using Advanced Configuration

The advanced configuration procedure provides an easy way to create a new storage configuration. Advanced configuration gives you greater flexibility than simple configuration because you can select the drives and the virtual drive parameters when you create a virtual drive. In addition, you can use the advanced configuration procedure to create spanned drive groups.

Follow these steps to create a new storage configuration in the advanced configuration mode. This example shows the configuration of a spanned drive group.

  1. Perform either of the following steps:
    • Right-click on the controller node in the device tree in the left frame of the MegaRAID Storage Manager window and select Create Virtual Drive.
    • Select the controller node and select Operations->Create Virtual Drive in the menu bar, as shown in Figure 5.
    • Figure 5 Virtual Drive Creation Menu



      The dialog box shown in Figure 6 appears.
      Figure 6 Virtual Drive Creation Mode



  2. Click Advanced, and then press Next.
  3. The Create Drive Group Settings screen appears, as shown in Figure 7.
    Figure 7 Create Drive Group Settings Screen



  4. Select the following items on the Create Drive Group Settings screen:
    1. Select the RAID level desired for the drive group from the drop-down menu. To make a spanned drive, select RAID 10, RAID 50, or RAID 60 in the RAID level field.
    2. Drive Group 0 and Span 0 appear in the Drive groups field when you select RAID 10, 50, or 60.
      The RAID controller supports RAID levels 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60. In addition, it supports independent drives (configured as RAID 0 and RAID 00). The screen text gives a brief description of the RAID level you select. RAID levels you can choose depend on the number of drives available.
    3. Scroll down the menu for the Drive security method field if you want to set a drive security method.
    4. The FDE feature provides the ability to encrypt data and use disk-based key management for your data security solution. This solution provides protection to the data in the event of theft or loss of drives.
    5. Select unconfigured drives from the list of drives and click Add > to add them to the drive group.
    6. The selected drives appear under Span 0 below Drive Group 0, as shown in Figure 8.
      Figure 8 Span 0 of Drive Group 0



    7. Click Create Span to create a second span in the drive group.
    8. Select unconfigured drives from the list of drives and click Add> to add them to the drive group.
    9. The selected drives appear under Span 1 below Drive Group 0, as shown in Figure 9.
    10. Figure 9 Span 0 and Span 1 of Drive Group 0



    11. Click Create Drive Group to make a drive group with the spans.
    12. Click Next to complete this step.
    13. The Virtual drive settings window appears, as shown in Figure 10. The drive group and the default virtual drive settings appear.
      Figure 10 Virtual Drive Settings Window



  5. Change any virtual drive settings, if desired.
  6. See Creating a Virtual Drive Using Simple Configuration for more information about the virtual drive settings.
  7. Click Create Virtual Drive.
  8. The new virtual drive appears under the drive group, as shown in Figure 11. The options Update Virtual Drive and Remove Virtual Drive are now available. Update Virtual Drive allows you to change the virtual drive settings and Remove Virtual Drive allows you to delete the virtual drive.
    Figure 11 New Virtual Drive 0



  9. Click Next.
  10. The Create Virtual Drive - Summary window appears, as shown in Figure 12. This window shows the selections you made for advanced configuration.
    Figure 12 Create Virtual Drive Summary Window



  11. Click Back to return to the previous screen to change any selections or click Finish to accept and complete the configuration.
  12. The new storage configuration will be created and initialized.

    If you create a large configuration using drives that are in Powersave mode, it could take several minutes to spin up the drives. A progress bar appears as the drives spin up. If any of the selected unconfigured drives fail to spin up, a box appears that identifies the drive or drives.

    After the configuration is completed, a dialog box notifies you that the virtual drives were created successfully.

DB09-000202-02 37857-00 Rev. C  August 2009
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