Dell 3 Computer Hardware User Manual


 
96 Configuring PERC 3
www.dell.com | support.dell.com
Configuring Logical Drives
After you have installed the PERC 3 controller in the server and have
attached all physical disk drives, perform the following steps to prepare a
RAID disk array:
1 Optimize the PERC 3 controller options for your system.
2 Press <Ctrl> <M> to run the BIOS Configuration Utility.
3 Define and configure one or more logical drives.
4 Select Easy Configuration in the PERC 3 BIOS Configuration Utility
or select New Configuration to customize the RAID array.
5 Create and configure one or more system drives (logical drives).
6 Select the RAID level, cache policy, read policy, and write policy.
7 Save the configuration.
8 Initialize the system drives.
After initialization, you can install the operating system.
Optimizing Data Storage
Data Access Requirements
Each type of data stored in the disk subsystem has a different frequency of
read and write activity. If you know the data access requirements, you can
more successfully determine a strategy for optimizing the disk subsystem
capacity, availability, and performance.
53 32
10 4 16
50 6 256
(PERC has a limit of 60, using
PERC 4/QC with 15 drives on each
of the 4 channels.)
Table 7-10. Physical Drives Required for Each RAID Level
RAID
Level
Minimum Number of
Physical Drives
Maximum Number of Physical
Drives