Gen8 HDD LEDs and configuration

[Iruka]

Hi,

Gen8 HDD carriers have LEDs, namely Locate (Blue), Activity ring (Green), Do not remove (White), Drive status (could be green/ amber).

If I have the following HDDs installed in a Gen8 server:

1. 1x 72GB HDD

2. 1x 300GB HDD

3. 1x 600GB

4. 1x 900GB

Upon booting up, it will show that there is 1 logical drive located. I will see the 'Drive status' and 'do not remove LED' of the 72GB being lighted up. The LEDs of the remaining 3 HDDs do not light up at all. Is this normal?

When I access the ACU, it seems to show that the system has automatically created a logical drive using the smallest capacity HDD (i.e. 72GB).

Thanks all.

[Matti_Kurkela]

> The LEDs of the remaining 3 HDDs do not light up at all. Is this normal?

As far as I understand, this is perfectly normal for disks that have not been configured into logical drives yet.

When the system is started,the SmartArray RAID controller will display a prompt to press a key to configure logical drives. In some situations, it will automatically define a RAID set if the user does not respond to the prompt and there are no logical drives configured:

• if the controller has 4 or more disks of equal size, the autoconfiguration will produce a RAID 5 set
• if there are 2 disks of equal size, the autoconfiguration will produce a RAID 1 set (actually RAID 1+0 i.e. expandable by adding more pairs of disks later)
• if all the disks are of different size, it apparently picks the first/smallest disk and makes it a simple non-RAID logical disk.

This is probably designed to allow automated server deployment by PXE netboot: the person assembling the hardware needs only install at least one HDD and plug in a network cable to the first integrated NIC, and if a DHCP + PXE boot server is available, the server can proceed to automated OS installation without anyone touching a keyboard.

However, if you have multiple HDDs of different size, you'll probably want to either press F8 at boot time to define logical drives exactly as you want them, or install the OS to the auto-configured first logical drive and then use the Array Configuration Utility software (either GUI or CLI) to assign the rest of the disks into logical drives.

[Iruka]

---

@matti_Kurkela wrote:

> The LEDs of the remaining 3 HDDs do not light up at all. Is this normal?

As far as I understand, this is perfectly normal for disks that have not been configured into logical drives yet.

When the system is started,the SmartArray RAID controller will display a prompt to press a key to configure logical drives. In some situations, it will automatically define a RAID set if the user does not respond to the prompt and there are no logical drives configured:

• if the controller has 4 or more disks of equal size, the autoconfiguration will produce a RAID 5 set
• if there are 2 disks of equal size, the autoconfiguration will produce a RAID 1 set (actually RAID 1+0 i.e. expandable by adding more pairs of disks later)
• if all the disks are of different size, it apparently picks the first/smallest disk and makes it a simple non-RAID logical disk.

This is probably designed to allow automated server deployment by PXE netboot: the person assembling the hardware needs only install at least one HDD and plug in a network cable to the first integrated NIC, and if a DHCP + PXE boot server is available, the server can proceed to automated OS installation without anyone touching a keyboard.

However, if you have multiple HDDs of different size, you'll probably want to either press F8 at boot time to define logical drives exactly as you want them, or install the OS to the auto-configured first logical drive and then use the Array Configuration Utility software (either GUI or CLI) to assign the rest of the disks into logical drives.

---

Hi MK,

Thanks for the explaination.

What if I have this scenerio: 4HDD of the same capacity and 1 HDD of a smaller capacity?

Will the system also automatically define a RAID set by setting the 1 HDD of a smaller capacity as the logical drive ?

Thanks