(Note: This article applies to ServeRAID MR RAID controller MR-10i/ 10K/ 10M)
A Starting WebBIOS CU
1. Servers with ServeRAID MR RAID controller MR-10i/ 10K/ 10M will be prompted with <CTRL>+<H> when booting up and self-testing (similar to):
Copyright? LSI Logic Corporation
Press <CTRL>+<H> for WebBIOS
At this point, press the key combination <CTRL>+<H>. The interface to select the RAID card will appear.
2. If the server is equipped with multiple ServeRAID-MR controllers, select the RAID card that needs to be configured.
3. Select the <Start> option to continue and the WebBIOS CU screen will appear.
II WebBIOS CU Main Interface Options
1. Default View
After entering the WebBIOS CU, the main interface will be displayed as follows:
The default interface is the Logical View interface (the left option Logical View), and on the right side, the upper window displays the physical drives connected to this controller ( On the right, the upper window displays status information about the physical drives connected to the controller, and the lower window displays status information about the virtual drives that have been configured on the controller.
You can toggle the Logical View or Physical View of the storage devices attached to the controller displayed in the right window by clicking on the Logical View or Physical View option on the left. When you are in the Physical View interface, the information displayed in the lower window of the right interface is information about the arrays that have been configured on that controller.
2. Description of the main options on the left side of the view
Adapter Properties: Displays information about the properties of this adapter.
Scan Devices: This option is used to rescan the configuration and physical information of the Physical drivers and Vitrual dirvers connected to the controller. The results are updated and displayed in the Physical disks and Virtual disks windows.
Virtual Disks: Select this option to view the Virtual Disks page where you can change and view the properties of virtual drives, delete virtual drives, initialize drives, and several other tasks.
Physical Drivers: This option is used to view the Physical Drives page. You can view physical drive properties, create hot spare disks and some other tasks.
Configration Wizard: This option is used to run the configuration wizard. It can be used to create a new storage configuration, clear a configuration or add a configuration.
Adapter Selection: This option is used to view the adapter selection screen. A different ServeRAID-MR controller can be selected, and you can view information about this controller and the devices attached to it, or you can choose to create new configuration information on this controller.
Physical View/ Logical View: used to select the appropriate view interface as described earlier.
Events: View system event information.
Exit: Select to exit the WebBIOS CU interface.
Three Creating Configuration Information
1. Configuration Using the Configuration Wizard
a. Click on the Configuration Wizard option on the left side of the main interface, which will take you to the Configuration Wizard screen:
b. Select the configuration option.
-- Clear Configuration: Clears existing configuration information.
-- New Configuration: Clears the existing configuration and creates a new one.
-- Add Configuration: Keeps the existing configuration information and adds new disks to the existing configuration. (This configuration usually does not cause data loss, but it is a risky operation and it is recommended to back up your data first!)
Note: If the first two options (Clear Configuration and New Configuration) are selected, all data will be lost! Please backup all data first!
c. Click the Next button to continue to the next step. If you select the Clear Configuration and New Configuration options, you will be prompted that all data will be lost and you will need to reconfirm.
d. Enter the Configuration Mode Selection screen, there are three ways to choose:
-- Custom Configuration: Allows the user to customize all the attribute parameters of the storage configuration.
-- Auto Configuration with Redundancy: automatically creates RAID1 or RAID5 to provide data redundancy. This option is recommended.
-- Auto Configuration without Redundancy: Automatically creates a RAID 0 configuration without redundancy.
e. Click the Next button to continue with the configuration wizard.
2. Using Auto Configuration
a. Once the WebBIOS interface displays the proposed new configuration, review the configuration information displayed on the screen. b. Click Accept to accept the configuration. c. Click Accept to accept the configuration. d. Click Accept to accept the configuration. e. Click Accept to accept the configuration. Click Accept to accept the configuration, or click Back to return to the previous screen and modify the configuration.
-- RAID0: If you select Auto Configuration without Redundancy, WebBIOS will configure RAID0 .
-- RAID1: If you select the Auto Configuration with Redundancy option, RAID1 is automatically configured if there are only two hard disks available.
-- RAID5: RAID5 is automatically configured if the Auto Configuration with Redundancy option is selected and there are three or more hard disks available.
b. When prompted to save the configuration, select Yes to continue.
c. When prompted whether to initialize a new Virtual Disk, select Yes to initialize.
(The WebBIOS CU begins a background initialization operation on the Virtual Disk.)
3. Using Custom Configuration
When Custom Configuration is selected and the Next button is clicked, you will be taken to the Disk Group definition screen. This configuration screen allows you to create a disk group, or array, by selecting physical drives.
The configuration screen is shown below:
Note: The following steps are suitable for configuring RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID6
a. The left window displays a list of Physical Drivers, which can be used to create a Disk Group by pressing <CTRL> and simultaneously selecting two or more Physical Drives that are in the Ready state. You can press the <CTRL> key to select two or more physical drives that are in the Ready state at the same time to create a Disk Group.
b. Click the Accept DG option in the right window to move the selected physical drives to the right Disk Groups. If you need to undo this, you can click the Reclaim button.
c. Once the physical drives in the Disk Groups are selected, click the Next button. You will be taken to the Virtual Disk configuration screen.
In the above screen, you can adjust the RAID level, Strip Size, Read Policy, and other options.
d. The default properties of the Virtual Disk can be adjusted accordingly. The main properties are as follows:
-- RAID Level : Select an optional RAID level from the drop-down list. For example, RAID0, RAID5, and so on.
-- Strip Size : Striping size defines the size of the data blocks for each disk in a RAID configuration. It is recommended to select the default size.
-- Access Policy ：Select the type of data access, which mainly includes:
1) RW, Allow read and write operations. This is the default value.
2) Read Only, which allows read-only operations.
3) Blocked: access is not allowed.
-- Read Policy : Specifies the read mechanism for the virtual drive, which consists of:
1) Normal : This option disables the read-ahead mechanism. This is the default value.
2) Ahead : This option enables the read-ahead mechanism. It allows the controller to read the required data sequentially in advance and store it in the cache along with other data. This will improve the speed of reading sequential data, but will not significantly improve the performance of reading as-you-go data.
3) Adaptive: This option enables the optional read-ahead mechanism. Ahead is activated when two or more hard disk data read operations occur in sequential sectors. If the read operations are random, the controller enters the (Normal) default mode.
--write Policy : Specifies the mechanism for write operations on the virtual drive, which consists of:
1) WBack: i.e. Write Back mode.
2) WThru: Write Through mode. This is the default setting.
3) Bad BBU: This option is used if the controller does not have a battery (BBU) or has a faulty battery (BBU), but still wants to use Write Back mode (WBack). If this option is not selected, the controller will automatically switch to Write-Thru mode (WThru) when it detects that there is no battery (BBU) or the battery (BBU) is bad.
-- IO Policy : This option allows reading a specific virtual disk. It does not affect the read ahead cache.
1) Direct : In this mode the read data is not buffered in the cache. It is transferred directly from the cache to the host. If the same data is read again, it is read directly from the cache. This is the default value.
2) Cached : In this mode all read data is buffered in the cache.
-- Disk Cache Policy : Specifies the mechanism for drive caching.
1) Enable : Enables hard disk drive caching.
2) Disable : Disables hard disk drive caching. This is the default.
3) Unchanged : Leave the existing drive caching mechanism unchanged.
-- Disable BGI : Specifies the background initialization state:
1) No : Keeps background initialization enabled. This means that new configuration settings are initialized in the background and other settings can be made using WebBIOS at this time. This is the default value.
2) Yes: This disables background initialization.
-- Select Size : Specifies the size of the virtual disk in MB. Typically, this value is the maximum capacity for the RAID level of the disk group.
e. Click the Accept button to accept the configuration changes to the virtual disk. Or click the Reclaim button to return to the previous settings.
f. Click the Next button to finish configuring the Virtual disk. Information about the virtual drive Virtual disk is displayed.
g. Check to confirm the configuration information in this view.
h. If the configuration information of the virtual drive (Virtual disk) is correct, click the Accept button to save the configuration information. Otherwise, you can click the Cancel button to end the operation and return to the main interface of WebBIOS. Alternatively, click the Back button to return to the previous screen and change the configuration information.
i. If the configuration accepts the previous configuration information, click the Yes button to save the configuration when the popup prompt confirms saving. After saving the configuration information, you will be returned to the main interface of WebBIOS.
Note: The following steps are suitable for configuring RAID10, RAID50, RAID60
a. The left window displays a list of Physical Drivers, which can be used to create the first Disk Group by pressing <CTRL> and selecting two or more physical drives in the Ready state at the same time. Disk Group.)
b. Click the Accept DG option in the right window to move the selected physical drives to the first Disk Group in the Disk Groups section on the right. If you need to undo the above, you can click the Reclaim button.
c. The left window displays a list of Physical Drivers, and you can create a second Disk Group by pressing <CTRL> and selecting two or more physical drives in the Ready state at the same time.
(Note: Both Disk Groups must be configured the same)
d. Click the Accept DG option in the right window to move the selected physical drive(s) to the second Disk Group in the Disk Groups section on the right. If you need to undo the above, you can click the Reclaim button.
e. Once you have completed the Select Hard Disks step, click Next. which will take you to the Setup Expansion Array screen. This is shown in the following image: