Physical Drives

Command Center provides extensive cloud physical drive management functionality. Using Command Center, a Zadara Cloud administrator can easily perform activities such as :

  • Drive inventory management

  • Drive validation and failure management

  • Assignment of Drives to specific Quality of Service groups

Viewing Physical Drive Inventory

Command Center displays the overall Drive inventory in the Drives view.

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The Drive inventory is primarily grouped by Drive model, and displays detailed utilization per group.

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Status

Description

Total

Number of Drives from the specific model available in this cloud

Disabled

Drives that the cloud admin set as disabled

Absent

Drives that are physically unavailable (taken out of their bay)

Used

Drives that are actively assigned to a VPSA instance

Free

Drives that are not assigned to any VPSA instance

Note

Drives that are assigned to a specific VPSA, deployed on a specific Protection Zone or installed on a specific Storage Node can also be viewed from the corresponding VPSA, Protection Zone and Storage Node.

Viewing Drive Properties

In the Command Center’s Drives view, select the Drive Group to which the required Drive belongs. After the list of group members appears, select the required Drive.

Drive Properties

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Property

Description

Device Name

Device file identifier for the Drive

Drive Type

Drive model

Capacity

Physical capacity (GiB) of the Drive

Note: SSD Cache Drives also present the capacity of allocated partitions

License

Indicates whether the Drive is licensed on the cloud level

Status

Indicates the current status of the Drive. Possible values:

  • Available: The drive is ready for use and can be allocated

  • Disabled: An unassigned available drive has been removed from availability

  • Allocated: The drive is assigned to a VPSA

  • Allocated (Disabled): The drive is assigned to a VPSA, but disabled

  • Normal: The drive is functioning correctly

  • Failed: The drive is not responding

  • Replaced: The drive data has been moved to another drive

Address

Storage Node SCSI address for the specified Drive

PCI Address

Storage Node PCI address for the specified Drive

Address

Storage Node SCSI address for the specified Drive

PCI Address

Storage Node PCI address for the specified Drive

Product ID

Product ID for the Drive

Firmware Version

Firmware Version of the Drive

Serial Number

Serial Number of the Drive

UUID

Linux UUID for the Storage Node Device

Cache

Whether the Drive is being used as SSD Cache

Location

Storage Node and MegaRaid location identifier for the Drive (Adapter ID/Enclosure ID/Slot)

Adapter Cache Policy

MegaRaid Adapter Cache Policy:

  • Write Back: Adapter write buffering

  • Read Ahead: Adapter read prefetching

Volume Properties

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property

Description

ID

Volume Identifier

VPSA

VPSA/Object Storage to which this volume is allocated

Drive

Device file name for the Storage Node Physical Drive

Size

Volume Capacity

Cache

Whether this volume is used as a GEN2 SSD Cache device

Storage Node

Storage Node in which this volume is defined

Replace Volume

Toggle Drive replacement for this volume

Performing Operations On Physical Drives

To view all operations that can be performed on a specific Drive:

  1. From the Drives view, select the appropriate Drive Group and go to the Drives tab.

  2. Click the required Physical Drive.

  3. In the Drive’s Details panel on its Dashboard tab, click Actions to display the dropdown listing the possible operations for the Drive.

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Disabling a Drive

  1. From the Drive’s Actions dropdown, select Disable.

  2. In the Disable Drive dialog, click Disable to confirm disabling the Drive.

    After the operation is complete, the Drive’s Status change to Disabled.

Enabling a Drive

  1. Select a disabled Physical Drive.

  2. In the Enable Drive dialog, click Enable to confirm enabling the Drive.

    After the operation is complete, the Drive’s Status change to Enabled.

Managing Drive LED

A Physical Drive LED can be turned on or off in Command Center.

To manage a Physical Drive LED:

  1. From the Drive’s Actions dropdown, select LED On or LED Off.

  2. In the Enable Drive LED or Disable Drive LED dialog, click Confirm to confirm enabling or disabling the Drive LED.

Viewing Drive SMART Attributes

Note

Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) attributes are parameters that provide information about the health and status of a disk drive. These attributes are monitored by the disk drive itself.

SMART attributes can differ betwwen disk brands and models.

To view a Drive’s SMART attributes:

  1. From the Drives view, select the appropriate Drive Group and go to its Drives tab.

  2. Click the required Physical Drive.

  3. In the Drive’s Dashboard tab, in the Details panel, click Actions and from the dropdown select SMART Attributes.

    The SMART Attributes dialog displays the Drive’s SMART attributes.

Designating SSD Drive as Cache

SSD Drives installed in the cloud can be designated as Cache Drives for use in hybrid VPSA configurations.

Note

The available capacity of an SSD Drive designated as Cache cannot be allocated as user data to VPSA images.

  1. From the Drive’s Actions dropdown, select Designate as Cache.

  2. The Confirm Drive Change dialog displays warning information that the Drive will no longer be available for user storage.

    Click Confirm to confirm designating the Drive as Cache.

    After the operation is complete, the Drive Type will change to SSD CACHE DRIVES.

Undesignating SSD Drive as Cache

An SSD Drive that is designated as a Cache Drive can be undesignated, to serve as regular drive for user storage.

  1. From the Drive’s Actions dropdown, select Undesignate as Cache.

  2. In the Confirm Drive Change dialog click Confirm to confirm undesignating the Drive as Cache.

    After the operation is complete, the Drive Type will change to its native SSD Drive Type.

Removing Drives

The cloud administrator can initiate an orderly removal of Physical Drives from the cloud via Command Center.

To start the removal process, select Offline and Remove from the Drive’s Actions dropdown.

Unlicensing a Drive

Note

Drives that are in use and have the Allocated status cannot be unlicensed.

Only licensed Drives that have the Available status can be unlicensed.

  1. From the Drive’s Actions dropdown, select Unlicense.

  2. In the Unlicense Drive dialog, click Confirm to confirm unlicensing the Drive.

    After the operation is complete, the Drive Type will change to Unlicensed.

Monitoring Drive Performance

To view performance statistics for a specific Drive:

  1. From the Drives view, select the appropriate Drive Group and go to the Drives tab.

  2. Click the required Physical Drive.

  3. Go to the Performance tab that displays the Drive’s performance statistics:

    • Average IO rate displayed as read vs. write IOs

    • Average IO time displayed as read vs. write IOs

    • Average Bandwidth displayed as read vs. write activity

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    The monitoring interval can be changed. Supported monitoring intervals:

    • 1 seconds

    • 10 seconds

    • 1 minute

    • 1 hour

    • 1 day

    Click the Auto-Refresh toggle to activate or disable the automatic display of updated monitoring data on reaching the monitoring interval.