• Advanced SATA/SAS hardware RAID conguration using the WebBIOS Conguration Utility
program; and RAID management using the MegaRAID Storage Manager program and the MegaCLI
Conguration Utility program (requires a RAID card)
Some server models come with a required RAID card to provide advanced SATA/SAS hardware RAID
functions to the server. You can also purchase the RAID card from Lenovo and install it into server models
that support the RAID card to get advanced SATA/SAS hardware RAID functions. See “RAID card” on
page 33
and “Installing or removing the RAID card” on page 98 for more information.
Note: For server models with more than four hard disk drives or models that use SAS hard disk drives,
there must be a RAID card installed.
The RAID card provides the WebBIOS Conguration Utility program to help you congure RAID
independently of the operating system. You can also install the MegaRAID Storage Manager program and
the MegaCLI Conguration Utility program to help you manage the RAID array and RAID controller in
an operating system environment. The supported RAID levels are RAID 0, 1, and 10. To activate RAID
5 and 50 levels, you need to install a RAID 5 key on the RAID card. See “Installing or removing the
ThinkServer 9240-8i RAID 5 Upgrade Key” on page 100
.
For detailed information, see “Conguring the advanced SATA or SAS hardware RAID” on page 80.
Note: The ThinkServer EasyStartup program simplies the process of conguring supported RAID and
installing supported operating systems and device drivers.
Before conguring RAID for your server, observe the following precautions:
1. Use hard disk drives that have the same capacity within a single RAID array.
2. Use hard disk drives that are of the same type (SATA or SAS) within a single RAID array.
3. Depending on the operating system, the primary RAID might be limited to 2 TB total drive capacity.
Conguring RAID using the ThinkServer EasyStartup program
The ThinkServer EasyStartup program simplies the process of conguring supported RAID and installing
supported Windows and Linux operating systems and device drivers on your server. The user guide for the
program can be accessed directly from the program interface.
The ThinkServer EasyStartup program has the following features for RAID conguration:
• For use with all supported RAID controllers
• Automatically detects hardware and lists all supported RAID congurations
• Congures one or more disk arrays per controller depending on the number of drives attached to the
controller and the RAID level selected
• Supports hot-spare drives
• Creates a RAID response le that can be used to congure RAID controllers on similarly congured
Lenovo servers
See “Using the ThinkServer EasyStartup program” on page 69
and view the user guide from the main
interface of the program.
Some RAID management software is also provided on the ThinkServer EasyStartup DVD to help you manage
RAID arrays and RAID controllers in an operating system environment. After you enter the operating system,
insert the ThinkServer EasyStartup DVD into the optical drive. The installation packages for the programs are
located in the Utilities and Others folder in the root directory of the DVD. The ThinkServer EasyStartup DVD is
designed for different types of servers and the Utilities and Others folder might contain additional installation
packages that are not required to be installed into your server. For more information, see “Installing and
using the MegaRAID Storage Manager program” on page 80
and “Conguring the advanced SATA or SAS
hardware RAID” on page 80
.
74 ThinkServer User Guide