Ibm Disk Array Manager Download
Nora Taulman
The data (storage) array, until last week, had 4 disks total (146GB SAS, total storage of 438GB). There were two additional slots in the backplane, so I added two identical 146GB disks (1 as a dedicated hot spare, 1 to expand the storage capacity).
Using the management software, I was able to expand (according to said software) to 584GB. The disk shows up as online and everything checks out. However, looking at the OS, it still shows 407GB as the total amount of space.
I recall reading that enlarging the disk array can take a long time, but it's been about 5 days now, and still not showing up. There's nothing in the MegaRAID software I can see that tells me that the enlarge process is still underway. Going to diskmgmt.msc, it also shows 407GB of total space.
The array is not the same as Windows, which is also not the same as the Virtual Disks you have in the array. You still need to expand the VDs then you need to expand the partitions in Windows. Only then will your OS see that anything has changed.
A storage array, also called a disk array, is a data storage system for block-based storage, file-based storage, or object storage. Rather than store data on a server, storage arrays use multiple drives in a collection capable of storing a huge amount of data, managed by a central management system.
The performance of storage arrays can be improved by using a high-quality management system to keep track of capacity, errors, and trends. In this guide, I discuss the basics of storage arrays, including what they are, how they work, common setups of data centers, and how monitoring tools can help improve array performance. I also review the key features of several of these top solutions, and explain why Storage Resource Monitor is my best pick due to its unified management system, performance optimization capabilities, and storage capacity forecasting features.
Storage arrays keep storage separate from servers using a collection of hard disk drives (HDDs) or solid-state drives (SSDs). In some cases, they use a combination of both so they can scale much more efficiently than the storage capacity of a collection of servers.
HDD storage arrays, or disk arrays, are commonly used in business environments for storage purposes and have excellent redundancy features to help protect data. For example, redundant arrays of independent disks (RAID) controllers are used to make copies of the same data across multiple hard disks. This protects the data from loss if one of the disks fails, as all the backup copies are still available.
Storage arrays are critical part to storage networks, allowing the storage functions of the network to be completely separated from the LAN or WAN connecting all the devices within an organization. Disk array storage separates the network transmission and connection functions from the data storage functions and allows stored data to be accessed by multiple servers at the same time. This means servers across a business can all access data from the same storage array.
One of the most important tasks of managing storage resources is ensuring you have a good setup for capacity planning. This means keeping track of all your storage resources and forecasting and allocating new storage before you need it to reduce business delays and service downtime. Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) provides insights into each layer, array, pool, and LUN/volume to take stock of storage capacity growth and to check when space will run out. It can also quickly identify any throughput problems or latency hotspots, so overworked resources can be found and fixed before they cause major performance issues.
AppDynamics storage performance monitor is another nice tool for network monitoring and management, including storage and server capacity. It displays real-time information about throughput and performance metrics for all your storage arrays, so you can quickly and easily pinpoint storage capacity or performance issues. It also includes tracking and trending performance data, so it can predict capacity issues ahead of time.
The eG Enterprise tool provides performance baselines alongside historical trends and reports, so you can figure out how much capacity you currently have, then plan for future growth. The performance features allow you to see whether the traffic in any disk group is abnormally high, or whether any disks are slow during read or write operations. You can also see if the disk array has a lot of outstanding requests. These features allow you to pinpoint where in the storage infrastructure any performance problems are coming from.
A disk array controller is a device that manages the physical disk drives and presents them to the computer as logical units. It almost always implements hardware RAID, thus it is sometimes referred to as RAID controller. It also often provides additional disk cache.
In a modern enterprise architecture disk array controllers (sometimes also called storage processors, or SPs[1]) are parts of physically independent enclosures, such as disk arrays placed in a storage area network (SAN) or network-attached storage (NAS) servers.
Those external disk arrays are usually purchased as an integrated subsystem of RAID controllers, disk drives, power supplies, and management software. It is up to controllers to provide advanced functionality (various vendors name these differently):
A simple disk array controller may fit inside a computer, either as a PCI expansion card or just built onto a motherboard. Such a controller usually provides host bus adapter (HBA) functionality itself to save physical space. Hence it is sometimes called a RAID adapter.
Some other operating systems have implemented their own generic frameworks for interfacing with any RAID controller, and provide tools for monitoring RAID volume status, as well as facilitation of drive identification through LED blinking, alarm management, hot spare disk designations and data scrubbing RAID from within the operating system without having to reboot into card BIOS. For example, this was the approach taken by OpenBSD in 2005 with its bio(4) pseudo-device driver and the bioctl utility, which provide volume status, and allow LED/alarm/hotspare control, as well as the sensors (including the drive sensor) for health monitoring;[7] this approach has subsequently been adopted and extended by NetBSD in 2007 as well.[8]
The SRA is an installed "plugin" that provides the libraries for SRM to be able to communicate to a 3rd party array, like the FlashArray. In order for SRM to be able to talk to a given array though, it needs to be authenticated. Authentication to a given array, more specifically an array pair, is achieved through something called an array manager. An array manager is an authenticated instance in SRM that allows source and target arrays to be discovered and controlled.
For Pure Storage FlashArrays, there is no requirement to deploy a management appliance to provide API-based control of the array. Instead, every FlashArray comes built-in with a REST API service. So the process to allow SRM control of a FlashArray is two-fold: installing the SRA and populating the array managers with FlashArray addresses and respective credentials.
When configuring an SRM array manager, you need to supply credentials for the array(s) hosting your VMs and for the array(s) that they are being replicated to. Furthermore, since SRM is a two-site, bidirectional tool, the remote SRM server needs those same credentials as well.
How array managers are configured dictates what type of failover is allowed. Follow through to the appropriate sections for information on configuring the array managers for your specific replication topology.
When Pure Storage FlashArray array managers are configured, one of more FlashArray addresses (along with credentials) are entered to provide the SRA with access to the REST API services on those FlashArrays. Array managers can be considered to be configured in pairs (one pair for a given FlashArray replication topology for each SRM server) but that isn't an entirely accurate view--this runs on the assumption that an array manager always has an equal and opposite array manager for the opposing paired SRM server. This is not always the case (though is the most common configuration). In short, for a FlashArray replication pair, one array manager must be configured to discover the array on one SRM server and another array manager must be configured to see the other FlashArray in that pair. In the case of two FlashArrays on site A that are both replicating to the same target FlashArray located in site B, there could be two array managers (one on each site) or three array managers (two on site A, one for each FlashArray there, and 1 on site B).
The FlashArray array managers require credentials for both the source and target arrays. For all source (local) FlashArrays listed in a given array manager, there can only be one set of credentials so they must be valid for all specified source (local) FlashArrays. For all target (peer) FlashArrays listed in a given array manager, there can only be one set of credentials so they must be valid for all specified target (peer) FlashArrays. These credentials will be used in SRM during later parts of this guide.
The credentials need to have storage admin level authorization for every replication type except ActiveDR which requires array admin level. They cannot be read only or ops admin. It is recommended to either use active directory or LDAP credentials, or create a specific local user on the FlashArray for the SRA for auditing purposes.
The above image is the view of the protection group on the source FlashArray (flasharray-m50-1). The protection group is always created and managed on the source FlashArray. As seen in the image, there is a protection group named srm-groupA (seen near number label 4) created on a FlashArray called flasharray-m50-1 (seen near number label 1). This protection group replicates to a FlashArray called flasharray-m50-2 (seen near number label 2). This particular protection group replicate any volume in it to from flasharray-m50-1 to flasharray-m50-2 every 5 minutes (as seen near number label 3).
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