Consistency Check; Online Drive Firmware Update; Discarding Pinned Cache; Dynamic Sector Repair - HPE Smart Array P824i-p MR Gen10 User Manual

Consistency check

A consistency check operation verifies the correctness of the data in logical drives that use RAID levels 1,
5, 6, 10, 50, and 60. For example, in a system with parity, checking consistency means calculating the
data on one drive and comparing the results to the contents of the parity drive.
Periodically run a consistency check on fault-tolerant logical drives. Because RAID 0 does not provide
data redundancy, you cannot run a consistency check on RAID 0 logical drives.
To run a consistency check, you must first set the consistency check properties, and then you can either:
• Schedule a consistency check to be run at an interval that you define.
• Start the consistency check operation immediately.
The consistency check priority value ranges from 1 to 100.
You can use the following modes for the consistency check:
• Concurrent - Run consistency check concurrently on all logical drives.
• Sequential - Run consistency check on one logical drive at a time.
• Disable - Disables consistency check.
Access the consistency check rate by selecting Set Adjustable Task Rate under the More Actions menu
then locating it under the Priority Percentage column. Enter a number from 1 to 100. The higher the
number, the faster the consistency check is performed (and the system I/O rate might be slower as a
result).

Online drive firmware update

The latest generation HPE Smart Array controllers support online drive flashing, which saves time when
updating disk drive firmware. Instead of taking the hard disk drive (HDD) offline before loading a new
firmware image, you can download an updated HDD firmware image to the HPE Smart Array controller
and update all of the HDDs the next time you reboot the server.

Discarding pinned cache

If the controller loses access to one or more logical drives, the controller preserves the data from the
logical drive. This preserved cache is called Pinned Cache. This cache is preserved until you import the
logical drive or discard the cache.
As long as there is pinned cache, you cannot perform certain operations on the logical drive.
IMPORTANT: If there are any foreign configurations, import the foreign configuration before you
discard the pinned cache. Otherwise, you might lose data that belongs to the foreign configuration.

Dynamic sector repair

Disk drive media can develop defects caused by variances in the drive mechanisms under normal
operating conditions. To protect data from media defects, HPE built a dynamic sector repair feature into
HPE Smart Array controllers.
Patrol read:
• scans drives and repairs media defects
• detects and repairs media defects when accessing a bad sector during busy periods
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