Ware Disk Manager (3Dm 2); Troubleshooting - Aberdeen AberNAS 120 Manual

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13. 3ware Disk Manager (3DM 2)

13.1. Introduction:
The 3DM disk management utility allows you to view status and version information pertaining to your Escalade
ATA RAID Controller. 3DM alerts you when a disk array needs maintenance, and you can maintain your disk
arrays from 3DM. You can add or remove drives, specify an available drive as a hot spare or launch the rebuild
process. Array status can be viewed or arrays can be maintained remotely via a standard web browser provided you
have access to the network containing the Escalade ATA RAID Controller.
Event notification occurs from 3DM when the ATA RAID controller requires attention, such as when a disk array
becomes degraded and is no longer fault tolerant. Event notification will only occur while 3DM is running, so we
recommend that 3DM be left running as a background utility on the ATA RAID controller's machine. The event
notification e-mail feature can send an e-mail to a specified recipient when 3DM detects a problem within the array.
The e-mail received will include most of the information provided in the Logs on the Alarms page.
13.2. Documentation:
The online manual and user guide is available to download on the Aberdeen Website.
http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/Aberdeen-AberNAS-3ware.pdf
13.3.

Troubleshooting:

Common usage concerns with the 3DM Utility and the 3Ware Escalade controller.
• Soft Reset - A "Soft Reset" message window will appear on the desktop upon each restart of the system.
This is normal for the 3DM software as it treats each restart of the system as a reported incident.
• Power Status Lights – Each unit includes hard disk drive power status LEDs.
• Hot Swap - With 3Ware, "activity" is the key word. Soft Reset will notify that the system is being shut
down and re-starting.
• Error Reporting – There is no error reported when a drive is removed while the system is powered up and
inactive. 3Ware management software will immediately report a drive missing or defective when there is
read or write activity addressed to that drive. The constant polling of the drives was deemed by 3Ware to be
a performance degrading overhead activity and unnecessary.
• RAID Control - The mirroring of the operating system drives is controlled by the Microsoft software and
not by the 3Ware controller.
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