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3-1
Chapter 3
RAID Modes, Firmware and Drivers
To change RAID modes from the AOC-USAS-L8i Add-on Card’s default IT Mode, you
need to flash your system’s BIOS with a Firmware download and install drivers for the
RAID mode to your operating system.
3-1 RAID Modes
There are three RAID modes that are supported by the AOC-USAS-L8i Add-on Card:
• IT Mode (Initiator and Target Mode): This is the default mode for the
AOC-USAS-L8i Add-on Card. The maximum support for this mode is up to 122 hard
disk drives under expander topology. This mode does not support RAID.
This mode requires an IT mode firmware flash to the BIOS and an IT mode driver
installation to the OS.
• IR Mode (Integrated RAID Mode): In Integrated Raid™ mode the integrated ARM
chip on the AOC-USAS-L8i Add-on Card creates Integrated Mirroring™ (IM, RAID
1), Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (IME, RAID 1E) and Integrated Striping (IS, RAID
0) through the chipset’s BIOS and the system’s OS. The maximum support for this
IR mode is up to 63 hard disk drives under an expander topology.
See Chapter 7: "Integrated Mirroring and Integrated Mirroring Enhanced" on
page 7-1 and Chapter 8: "Integrated Striping" on page 8-1 for details on Integrated
Mirroring Enhanced or Integrated Striping.
This RAID mode requires an IR mode firmware flash to the BIOS and an IT mode
driver installation to the OS.
• SR (Software RAID): In this mode you must buy the I-Button feature from
SuperMicro to enable RAID level 5 use. First you must create RAID level 0, 1, 5 or
10 from the MegaRAID BIOS Configuration Utility in order for the OS to see the hard
disk drives (this can be done via MSM too, so necessary need to be done in
MegaRAID Configuration Utility). The maximum support for this RAID mode is up to
eight (8) hard disk drives under expander topology.
This RAID mode requires an SR mode firmware flash to the BIOS and an SR mode
driver installation to the OS. This mode also requires that the SWR5 jumper on the
AOC-USAS-L8i Add-on Card is enabled (see Section 2-2: "Front Jumper Locations
and Pin Definitions" on page 2-3 for details).
NOTE: MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) software version 2.60 or later
supports both SR and IR Mode in both Windows and Linux. MSM does not
support IT Mode since IT is only an initiator and target mode, and therefore it
does not required storage management utility.