Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 9 (iDRAC9) Version 3.00.00.00 User's Guide

Managing virtual disks using web interface

1. In the iDRAC web interface, go to Storage > Overview > Virtual Disks > Advanced Filter.
2. From the Virtual Disks, select the controller for which you want to manage the virtual disks.
3. For one or more Virtual Disks, from each Action drop-down menu, select an action.
   You can specify more than one action for a virtual drive. When you select an action, an additional Action drop-down menu is displayed. Select another action from this drop-down menu. The action that is already selected does not appear in the additional Action drop-down menus. Also, the Remove link is displayed next to the selected action. Click this link to remove the selected action.

   • Delete
   • Edit Policy: Read Cache — Change the read cache policy to one of the following options:
     • No Read Ahead — Indicates that for the given volume, no read ahead policy is used.
     • Read Ahead — Indicates that for the given volume, the controller reads sequentially ahead of the requested data and stores the additional data in cache memory, anticipating a data requirement. This speeds up sequential data reads, but there is less improvement when accessing random data.
     • Adaptive Read Ahead — Indicates that for the given volume, the control uses the Read-Ahead cache policy if the two most recent disks accesses occurred in sequential sectors. If the read requests are random, the controller returns to No Read Ahead mode.
   • Edit Policy: Write Cache — Change the write cache policy to one of the following options:
     • Write Through — Indicates that for the given volume, the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host system when the disk subsystem has received all the data in a transaction.
     • Write Back — Indicates that for the given volume, the controller sends a data transfer completion signal to the host system when the controller cache has received all the data in a transaction. The controller then writes the cached data to the storage device in the background.
     • Force Write Back — When using force write-back caching, the write cache is enabled regardless of whether the controller has a battery. If the controller does not have a battery and force write-back caching is used, data loss may occur in the event of a power failure.
   • Edit Policy: Disk Cache — Change the disk cache policy to one of the following options:
     • Default — Indicates that the disk is using its default write cache mode. For SATA disks, this is enabled and for SAS disks this is disabled.
     • Enabled — Indicates that the disk’s write cache is enabled. This increases performance and the probability of data loss if there is power loss.
     • Disabled — Indicates that the disk’s write cache is disabled. This decreases performance and the probability of data loss.
   • Initialize: Fast — Updates the metadata on the physical disks so that all the disk space is available for future write operations. The initialize option can be completed quickly because existing information on the physical disks is not erased, although future write operations overwrites any information that remains on the physical disks.
   • Initialize: Full — All existing data and file systems are erased.
     NOTE The Initialize: Full option is not applicable for PERC H330 controllers.
   • Check Consistency — To check the consistency of a virtual disk, select Check Consistency from the corresponding drop-down menu.
     NOTE Consistency check is not supported on drives set up in RAID0 mode.
   • Encrypt Virtual Disk — Encrypts the virtual disk drive. If the controller is encryption capable, you can create, change or delete the security keys.
     NOTE The Encrypt Virtual Disk option is available only if the virtual disk is created using the Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) drives.
   • Manage Dedicated Hotspares — Assign or unassign a physical disk as a dedicated hot spare. Only the valid dedicated hot spares are displayed. If there are no valid dedicated hot spares, then this section does not appear in the drop-down menu.

   For more information about these options, see the iDRAC Online Help.
4. From the Apply Operation Mode drop-down menu, select when you want to apply the settings.
5. Click Apply.
   Based on the selected operation mode, the settings are applied.
   The other options are:
   RAID Level Migration — Displays the Disk Name, Current RAID Level, and size of the virtual disk. Allows you to select a New RAID Level. User may have to add additional drives to existing Virtual disks to migrate to new raid level. This feature is not applicable on RAID 10, 50 and 60.