Setting Hot Spare Protection Policy

The Hot Spare Protection Policy is supported only on Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controllers.

The Hot Spare Protection Policy provides you with a higher protection level for the virtual disks by enabling you to specify the number of dedicated/global hot spares to be assigned to the virtual disks/controller. You can also specify the severity levels for the protection policy. Dell OpenManage Storage Management sends alerts when the hot spare protection policy is violated.

Storage Management does not provide a default policy; however, you can determine the hot spare protection policy best suited for your environment.

Dedicated Hot Spare Protection Policy

Property

Definition

RAID Layout

The RAID level(s) for which you want to configure the hot spare protection policy.

Minimum Number of Disks

The minimum number of physical disks to be assigned as dedicated hot spares for the selected RAID level(s).

Severity Level

The severity level you want to assign to the generated alert, if this policy is violated.

NOTE: The status of the virtual disk is determined by the severity level you specify for this policy.

Resetting the Hot Spare Protection Policy

Deselect the RAID Layout to reset the dedicated hot spare protection policy.

Global Hot Spare Protection Policy

Property

Definition

Enable Global Hot Spare

Select this check box to enable the Global Hot Spare Protection Policy

Minimum Number of Disks

The minimum number of physical disks to be assigned as global hot spares for the controller.

Severity Level

The severity level you want to assign to the generated alert, if this policy is violated.

Consider Global Hot Spare Policy when determining Virtual Disk status

Select this check box if you want Storage Management to consider this policy to determine the status of the virtual disk.
The status of the virtual disk is determined by the severity level you specify for this policy.

NOTE: When assigning a global hot spare, consider a physical disk that has higher capacity, which can replace any failed disk in the controller.

Considerations for Hot Spare Protection Policy

The dedicated hot spare protection policy is not applicable to SCSI, SAS/iR, PERC H200, and CERC SATA 6ch/2s controllers.
RAID 0 does not support assigning hot spares. Also, the protection policy is not applicable for RAID 0.
For SAS/iR and PERC H200 family of controllers, you can assign only two global hot spares.
If the status of the virtual disk is displayed as Degraded or Failed because of the hot spare protection policy violation, you must assign the required number of hot spares (as defined in the protection policies) for the status to be displayed as normal.
Hot Spare Protection Policy is not applicable to PERC S100 and S300 controllers.

Considerations for Enclosure Affinity

Enclosure affinity settings for dedicated hot spare are applicable only on PERC 5 and PERC 6 family of controllers.
Enclosure affinity settings for a global/dedicated hot spare are not automatically set when you upgrade to Dell OpenManage version 6.1.
Enclosure affinity settings for a global/dedicated hot spare are not automatically set when you import a foreign virtual disk.