| Sun StorageTek RAID Manager Software User’s Guide |    
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| C H A P T E R 1 |
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Introduction |
This chapter describes the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager graphical user interface (GUI) software and its agent, explains the concept of a storage space, and provides a list of getting-started tasks. The chapter contains the following sections:
The following tasks will enable you to get started with the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software:
1. Familiarize yourself with the software and its agent.
For more information, see the remainder of this chapter.
2. Install the software on every system that will be part of your storage space.
3. Start the software, or the agent only, on those systems.
For more information, see Installing the Software.
4. Explore the features of the software.
For more information, see Exploring the Software.
For more information, see Building a Storage Space.
6. Optionally customize the software and the agent.
For more information, see Customizing the Software.
You can use the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager graphical user interface (GUI) or the BIOS Configuration Utility to build your storage space. The Sun StorageTek RAID Manager GUI is a software application that enables you to create and manage your storage space and then monitor the storage from a single location. The BIOS Configuration Utility is a BIOS-based utility that enables you to create and manage controllers, disk drives and other devices, and arrays.
If you use the BIOS Configuration Utility to create arrays, the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager GUI detects those arrays and displays them as logical drives in the GUI. For more information about the BIOS utility, see the Sun StorageTek SAS RAID HBA Installation Guide Eight-Port, Internal HBA or Sun StorageTek SAS RAID HBA Installation Guide Eight-Port, External HBA.
| Note - The Sun StorageTek RAID Manager graphical user interface (GUI) is not supported with the VMware technology. To configure your storage space with the VMware technology, use the command-line interface (CLI) and the BIOS Configuration Utility. The CLI is installed as part of the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software installation. For more information about the CLI, see the Uniform Command-Line Interface User’s Guide at: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/stortek.raid.hba#hic |
The Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software is a graphical user interface (GUI) that helps you build a storage space for online data, using RAID HBAs, disk drives, and enclosures. Your storage space can include direct-attached--or internal RAID--storage.
With the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software, you can group disk drives into logical drives and build in redundancy to protect your data and improve system performance. You can also use the software to monitor and manage all the HBAs, enclosures, and disk drives in your storage space from a single location.
You can use the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software to manage both internal and external RAID storage. This document describes how to install and use the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software to build and manage internal RAID storage - a RAID HBA and disk drives which reside inside, or are directly attached to, the computer accessing them, similar to the basic configurations shown in these figures:
FIGURE 1-1 RAID HBA Configuration
When the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software is installed on a system, the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager Agent is also installed automatically. The Agent is like a service that keeps the storage space running. It’s designed to run in the background, without user intervention, and its job is to monitor and manage system health, event notifications, tasks schedules, and other on-going processes on that system. It sends notices when tasks are completed successfully, and sounds an alarm when errors or failures occur on that system.
The Agent uses less memory than the full application. If your storage space includes systems that won’t be connected to monitors (and therefore won’t require the user interface described in this document), you can choose to run the Agent only on those systems instead of the full application (see About the Agent). You may want to do this if system resources are limited, or if you want more system resources available for other tasks.
You can manage and monitor systems running the Agent only by logging into them as remote systems (see Logging Into Remote Systems).
You can also customize the Agent settings to suit your storage space requirements (see Customizing the Agent).
As your requirements change, the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software grows with your storage space as you add more HBAs, more disk drives, more logical drives, and more data protection.
This example shows a simple storage space that might be appropriate in a home office or for a small business. This storage space includes one RAID HBA and three disk drives installed in a server. For data protection, the disk drives have been used to build a RAID 5 logical drive.
FIGURE 1-2 Simple Storage Space Configuration
This example shows how you can grow storage space to meet the expanding requirements of your business. On the first server, segments of space from each disk drive have been used to build two RAID 5 logical drives. A second server connected to two 12-disk-drive enclosures has been added. The additional storage space has been used to create two RAID 50 logical drives. The Administrator of this storage space can create and modify logical drives and monitor both HBAs, disk drives, and enclosures from a single system, called the local system (see Logging Into Remote Systems).
FIGURE 1-3 Advanced Storage Space Configuration
As your needs change, the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software will help you grow storage space to include multiple HBAs, storage enclosures, and disk drives in multiple locations.
In this example, multiple systems, servers, disk drives, and enclosures have been added to the storage space. The Administrator can create and modify logical drives and monitor all the HBAs, enclosures, and disk drives in the storage space from the local system (see Logging Into Remote Systems).
FIGURE 1-4 Multisystem Storage Space Configuration
To install the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software and create a RAID storage space, each system in your storage space must meet these requirements:
| Note - The Sun StorageTek RAID Manager graphical user interface (GUI) is not supported with the VMware technology. To configure your storage space with the VMware technology, use the command-line interface (CLI) and the BIOS Configuration Utility. The CLI is installed as part of the Sun StorageTek RAID Manager software installation. For more information about the CLI, see the Uniform Command-Line Interface User’s Guide at: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/stortek.raid.hba#hic |
| Note - For up-to-date operating system version support and drivers, visit http://support.intel.com/support/go/sunraid.htm. |
| Sun StorageTek RAID Manager Software User’s Guide | 820-1177-13 |
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Copyright © 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
