The
system supports a range of enterprise-class, nearline-class or flash
drives. A drive object represents the physical drive. The system creates
this object automatically when a supported drive is detected and a
drive ID is assigned.
Drives are installed in the drive slots in the
front of the enclosure, and internal RAID software is used to provide
redundancy. In addition, each drive has two ports that connect the
drive to each canister.
The system supports the
following types of drives:
- Tier 0 flash
- Tier 0 flash drives are high-performance
flash drives that process read and write operations and provide faster
access to data than enterprise or nearline drives. For most Tier 0
flash drives, as they are used the system monitors their wear level
and issues warnings when the drive is nearing replacement.
- Tier 1 flash
- Tier 1 flash drives are lower-cost
flash drives, typically with larger capacities, but slightly lower
performance and write endurance characteristics. As these drives are
used, the system monitors their wear level and issues warnings when
the drive is nearing replacement.
- Enterprise disks
- Enterprise disks are disk drives
that are optimized for performance.
- Nearline disks
- Nearline disks are disk drives
that are optimized for capacity.
When a drive is moved
between drive slots, the drive ID is maintained unless its Use property
is Unused.
The Use attribute, which
is specified on the chdrive command, determines
if the drive can be formed into an array.
Note: Do not replace a drive unless
the drive fault LED is on or you are instructed to do so by a fix
procedure.