Hot Spare Operation; Hot Spare Drive Protection - Dell PowerVault MD3220 Owner's Manual

Hot Spare Operation

When a physical disk fails, the virtual disk automatically rebuilds using an
available hot spare. When a replacement physical disk is installed, data from
the hot spare is copied back to the replacement physical disk. This function is
called copy back. By default, the RAID controller module automatically
configures the number and type of hot spares based on the number and
capacity of physical disks in your system.
A hot spare may have the following states:
• A standby hot spare is a physical disk that has been assigned as a hot spare
and is available to take over for any failed physical disk.
• An in-use hot spare is a physical disk that has been assigned as a hot spare
and is currently replacing a failed physical disk.

Hot Spare Drive Protection

You can use a hot spare physical disk for additional data protection from
physical disk failures that occur in a RAID Level 1, or RAID Level 5 disk
group. If the hot spare physical disk is available when a physical disk fails, the
RAID controller module uses redundancy data to reconstruct the data from
the failed physical disk to the hot spare physical disk. When you have
physically replaced the failed physical disk, a copyback operation occurs from
the hot spare physical disk to the replaced physical disk.
If there are secure disk groups and security capable disk groups in the storage
array, the hot spare physical disk must match the security capability of the
disk group. For example, a non-security capable physical disk cannot be used
as a hot spare for a secure disk group.
NOTE:
For a security capable disk group, security capable hot spare physical disks
are preferred. If security capable physical disks are not available, non-security
capable physical disks may be used as hot spare physical disks. To ensure that the
disk group is retained as security capable, the non-security capable hot spare
physical disk must be replaced with a security capable physical disk.
If you select a security capable physical disk as hot spare for a non-secure disk
group, a dialog box appears indicating that a security capable physical disk is
being used as a hot spare for a non-secure disk group.
The availability of enclosure loss protection for a disk group depends on the
location of the physical disks that comprise the disk group. The enclosure loss
protection might be lost because of a failed physical disk and location of the
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Configuration: Disk Groups and Virtual Disks