Ssd Guard; Dimmer Switch Features; Uefi 2.0 Support; Configuration Scenarios - Lenovo ThinkServer RD650 User Manual

12Gb/s MegaRAID SAS Software User Guide
March 2014
you can choose whether to mix SAS and SATA HDD drives with SAS and SATA CacheCade software devices in various
combinations.
1.4.1

SSD Guard

SSD Guard, a feature that is unique to MegaRAID, increases the reliability of SSDs by automatically copying data from a
drive with potential to fail to a designated hot spare or newly inserted drive. Because SSDs are more reliable than hard
disk drives (HDDs), non-redundant RAID 0 configurations are much more common than in the past. SSD Guard offers
added data protection for RAID 0 configurations.
SSD Guard works by looking for a predictive failure while monitoring the SSD Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting
Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) error log. If errors indicate that a SSD failure is imminent, the MegaRAID software starts a
rebuild to preserve the data on the SSD and sends appropriate warning event notifications.
1.5

Dimmer Switch Features

Powering drives and cooling drives represent a major cost for data centers. The MegaRAID Dimmer Switch feature set
reduces the power consumption of the devices connected to a MegaRAID controller. This helps to share resources
more efficiently and lowers the cost.
Dimmer Switch I – Spin down unconfigured disks. This feature is configurable and can be disabled.
Dimmer Switch II – Spin down Hot Spares. This feature is configurable and can be disabled.
1.6

UEFI 2.0 Support

UEFI 2.0 provides MegaRAID customers with expanded platform support. The MegaRAID UEFI 2.0 driver, a boot
service device driver, handles block IO requests and SCSI pass-through (SPT) commands, and offers the ability to
launch pre-boot MegaRAID management applications through a driver configuration protocol (DCP). The UEFI driver
also supports driver diagnostic protocol, which allows administrators to access pre-boot diagnostics.
1.7

Configuration Scenarios

You can use the SAS RAID controllers in three scenarios:
Low-end, Internal SATA II Configurations

In these configurations, use the RAID controller as a high-end SATA II-compatible controller that connects up to 8
disks either directly or through a port expander. These configurations are mostly for low-end or entry servers.
Enclosure management is provided through out-of-band Inter-IC (I
SAS connectors support the SFF-8485 (SGPIO) interface.
Midrange Internal SAS Configurations

These configurations are like the internal SATA II configurations, but with high-end disks. These configurations are
more suitable for low-range to midrange servers.
High-end External SAS/SATA II Configurations

NOTE Support for SATA SSD drives applies only to those drives that support
ATA-8 ACS compliance.
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LSI Corporation
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C) bus. Side bands of both types of internal
Chapter 1: Overview
Dimmer Switch Features