3DM 2 Online Help

Controller Settings page
Show Controller Settings Page
The Controller Settings page appears when you choose Management > Controller Settings from the menu bar.
This page lets you view and change settings that affect the units on the controller specified in the drop-down list on the menu bar.
There are four main sections on this page:

| Background Task Rate

| Unit Policies

| Unit Names

| Other Controller Settings

Background Task Rate
The Background Task Rate fields let you change the balance of background tasks and I/O (reading and writing to disk) performed by the controller.
There are separate settings for Rebuild/Migrate Rate and Verify Rate, the figure above. The Rebuild/Migrate Rate also applies to initialization. Although the same rate is used for rebuilding, migrating, and initializing, migrating has the highest priority.
The five radio buttons let you set the ratio at which background tasks are performed in comparison to I/O. For additional information, see Setting Background Task Rate.
Unit Policies
You can enable or disable these policies: Write Cache, Auto-verify, Continue on Source Error During Rebuild, Queuing, and you can select a StorSave Profile. 3DM lists each unit on the current controller, and shows you whether the policies are currently enabled or disabled for each unit.
Write Cache. When write cache is enabled, data is stored locally in memory on the drive before it is written to the disk drive media, allowing the computer to continue with its next task. This improves performance. However, in the event of a power failure, the data in the write cache will be lost if you do not have a battery backup unit (BBU) or an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).
For additional information, see Enabling and Disabling the Unit Write Cache.
Auto Verify. When the Auto Verify policy is enabled, a verify task is performed automatically once every 24 hours. This feature is designed to make regular verification of units easier.
If a verify scheduling window has been set up and enabled, then Auto Verify will wait until the scheduled time window to start the automatic verify process.
When Auto Verify is not enabled, verify tasks are only run if you manually request one on the 3DM Management page. If a verify scheduling window is set and enabled, then manual verifies will wait until the scheduled time to start.
Continue on Source Error During Rebuild. This policy applies only to units which are redundant. (For units which are not redundant, a check box is not available.) When this policy is set, ECC errors are ignored when they are encountered during a rebuild. When this policy is not set, a rebuild will abort upon encountering an ECC error and the unit will be set back to Degraded.
Since this option could result in the loss of some source data in the event of source errors, select this option only if you want to ensure that a rebuild will complete successfully without manual intervention. If the rebuild fails and Continue on Source Error During Rebuild is not selected, then you have the option to start a rebuild manually. It is recommended that you execute a file system check when the rebuild completes. Under Windows, you can do this by right-clicking on the Drive and choosing Properties; then on the Tools tab, click Check Now.

| Note: The policy Continue on Source Error During Rebuild is equivalent to the “Force continue on source errors” option in 3DM v 1.x and the “ignoreEcc” option in the CLI.

Queuing. This policy enables or disables Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for drives in the unit. By default, queuing is disabled. You can enable it, if desired.
NCQ only operates when the feature is enabled at both the drive and the controller. If a drive does not support NCQ, the policy setting for the controller is ignored.
Enabling NCQ can improve performance in many applications; it causes command reordering to be done on the drive itself.
StorSave Profile. The StorSave feature includes an option that lets you change the StorSave Profile used for a unit. Three profiles are available: Protection, Balanced, and Performance. These profiles automatically adjust several different factors that affect protection and performance, including whether FUA (Forced Unit Access) is honored, whether Write Journaling is enabled, and whether Disable Cache on Degrade is enabled. For additional information, see Setting the StorSave Profile for a Unit.

| Note: If the write cache setting is disabled for a unit, the StorSave Profile capability does not apply and is automatically disabled.

Unit Names
Units can be assigned names. A name can be assigned when the unit is created and can be changed from this screen. For additional information, see Naming a Unit.
Other Controller Settings
The Other Controller settings displays information about additional settings, some of which can only be changed in the BIOS (3BM).
Auto Rebuild. The Auto Rebuild policy determines how the controller firmware will attempt to rebuild degraded units.
When Auto Rebuild is disabled, only spares will be used to automatically rebuild degraded units. When Auto Rebuild is enabled, the firmware will automatically select drives to use for rebuilding a degraded unit using the following priority order.

| Smallest usable spare.

| Smallest usable unconfigured (available) drive.

| Smallest usable failed drive.

For additional information, see Setting the Auto Rebuild Policy.
Auto-Carving. Auto-carving can be enabled or disabled by selecting the appropriate radio button.
When this feature is enabled, any unit that is over a specified size (known as the carve size) will be broken down into multiple volumes of that size, plus a remainder volume. The default carve size is 2048 GB (2 TB). For example, using the default carve size, if the unit is 2.5 TB then it will contain two volumes, with the first volume containing 2 TB and the second volume containing 0.5 TB. If the unit is 5.0 TB then it will contain 3 volumes, with the first two volumes containing 2 TB each and the last volume containing 1 TB. If a specific Boot Volume was also specified in 3BM, the first volume will be the size specified for the Boot Volume, and then the carve size will be applied to the remainder of the unit.
Carve Size. Sets a size for dividing up units into volumes when Auto-Carving is enabled. This setting can be between 1024 and 2048 GB.
Number of Drives Per Spin-up. Number of drives that will spin up at the same time when the controller is powered up. (This setting only applies when the feature is supported by the disk drives.)
Delay between Spin-ups. The delay time (in seconds) between drive groups that spin up at one time on this particular controller.
Export JBOD (Unconfigured) Disks. Indicates whether unconfigured disks (JBODs) should be exported to the operating system. By default, this setting is disabled and JBOD drives are not exported to the operating system. For more information about this feature, see Setting the Auto Rebuild Policy.
For additional information, see Setting the Auto Rebuild Policy.

Related Topics
  Setting Background Task Rate
  Naming a Unit
  Setting Unit Policies
  Enabling and Disabling the Unit Write Cache
  Setting the StorSave Profile for a Unit
  Viewing Controller Policies
  Setting the Auto Rebuild Policy
  Using Auto-Carving for Multi LUN Support

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