HP Z1 G2 Technical White Paper page 11

Technical white paper | HP Z1 G2 Workstation
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)
RAID provides a method of combining multiple disks into a single logical volume to increase performance or create data
redundancy. There are two levels of RAID configuration that can be implemented on the Z1 G2 depending on the user's
need for performance or redundancy.
RAID configurations supported are:
RAID0 – Creates a single volume that has data striped across 2 drives. The size of the volume is based on the size
of the smallest capacity drive times 2, (the number of drives in the RAID0 configuration). RAID0 is typically used to
improve performance or create a larger volume from smaller drives. There is no data redundancy or parity in a RAID0
configuration.
RAID1 – Creates a single volume that is a mirror image of two physical drives. The size of the mirror is limited by the
smallest drive used in the RAID1 configuration. This configuration provides data redundancy protection against a single
drive failure, does not use parity, and does not improve performance.
RAID+AHCI
RAID+AHCI provides most of the benefits of AHCI with the added flexibility of RAID for configurations needing
performance or data redundancy. Even if you don't use RAID today, setting the SATA mode to RAID (RAID+AHCI)
makes your system RAID ready for the future. RAID (RAID+AHCI) is the preferred mode and default storage
configuration SATA mode set in HP Workstation BIOS.
Acceleration with Intel® Smart Response Technology
The Z1 G2 contains technology for using a Solid State cache drive (SSD) to accelerate the storage system. Moving
frequently accessed data to the SSD can improve overall system performance, increase read/write access speeds, and
reduce system start-up times. As the system is used, the driver learns which data is frequently used and moves it to the
cache SSD for quick access later.
Requirements for SRT
The Z1 G2 ships with processors, RAID controllers, and RAID-Ready BIOS capable of supporting SRT. The following
configuration specific requirements must also be met. The acceleration options will only be available in the GUI if all of
the requirements are met.
• Acceleration capable device. This must be a single HDD or single volume RAID volume consisting of only HDDs.
Single SSDs or RAID volumes that include one or more SSD cannot be accelerated. Matrix RAID volumes
(more than one RAID volume on the same set of HDDs) cannot be accelerated.
• Cache Device. The cache device must be a Solid State Drive (SSD) with a minimum available capacity of 18.6GB.
The SSD can be a standard 2.5" SSD connected to one of the SATA ports, or an mSATA SSD connected to one of
the mini-PCIe connectors. The maximum cache size is 64GB, so if a 256GB SSD is used as the cache device, the
maximum cache size of 64GB could be set leaving 192GB available as a data volume.
• The OS must be installed on the device being accelerated. The OS cannot be installed on the SSD or RAID
containing SSDs.
• The SATA mode in BIOS must be set to RAID mode. SRT is not supported when SATA mode is set to AHCI or IDE
mode in BIOS.
• At least 10MB of unallocated space needs to be available at the end of the HDD or RAID volume being accelerated.
This space is used to store information and status of the cache configuration. This space only needs to be made
available the first time SRT is setup. During the setup process, SRT consumes the space and hides it from the
operating system. If you used Disk Manager to shrink the last partition on the HDD and create exactly 10MB of
unallocated space, after SRT configuration the complete 10MB of space will no longer be visible in disk manager.
If you already had significantly more than 10MB of unallocated space available at the end of the HDD, you will see
the unallocated space reduced by approximately 5MB to 10MB.
• The system cannot include a recovery volume unless 10MB of unallocated space is reserved at the end of the drive.
Recovery volumes are typically configured such that the remaining unpartitioned space at the end of the OS drive is
consumed, which leaves no space for SRT configuration data.
HP recommends Windows.
(SRT)
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