Spare Management Guidelines - Adaptec DuraStor 7220SS User Manual

Adaptec Storage Manager Pro for DuraStor User's Guide
To check disk drives assigned to a spare pool or assigned as
dedicated spares:
1 In the System Browser window, select the disk drive whose
spare status and assignment you want to check.
2 In the Details pane, click the Spares For tab.
The Spares For tab shows whether this disk drive is assigned to
an array as a spare, to an array as a dedicated spare, or to a
controller as part of the spare pool.
To check spares assigned to an array by array:
1 In the System Browser window, select an array for which you
want to check spares.
2 In the Details pane, click the Spares tab.
The Spares tab shows which drives are assigned as spares for
this array.

Spare Management Guidelines

How you manage your spares is a trade-off between the level of
security your applications require and the cost of spare disk drives.
Disk drives do not fail very often, but when they do, the result may
be catastrophic for your business. You must determine your needs
and manage your spares accordingly.
Consider the following as you manage your spares:
General
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– Using spares does not replace the need for regular backups of
your data.
– You cannot assign spares to nonredundant arrays (stripe set
[RAID 0] and volume set). Consider using these array types
only for noncritical data that does not change often and that
can be easily restored from backups.
Assigning spares to an array
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– Try to select spare disk drives that are on different channels
from the current disk drives in the array.
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