How do I contact support?
If you suspect an equipment malfunction or failure, call Proactive Technologies immediately. You do not require a Service Contract or Maintenance Agreement. Simply dial:
(972) 416-6298 during normal business hours - ask for Support; or
(800) 673-3039 after hours, on weekends & holidays
We are available 24 hours a day - 7 days a week - 52 weeks a year. Your call will be directed immediately to a Proactive Technologies Support Engineer who is (a) experienced in the graphics business and (b) authorized in your best interests. He will help you identify the problem and replace the defective part. If necessary, he will expedite the shipment of a replacement part or a replacement server for next business day delivery.
No Purchase Orders are required; no Credit Cards or Service Contracts. If you know how to contact us, you get served. Period - no questions asked.
The updated Proactive Drivers and Utilities CD image can be found at:
Proactive Drivers and Utilities CD Image
Additional resources (up to the minute driver updates):
Adaptec Support
Intel Support
Broadcom Support
LSI Logic Support
Silicon Image Support
AMCC 3Ware Support
Maxtronic Support
QLogic Support
Tyan Support
Make sure there is no floppy in the disk drive.
If this is not the case then this may be a hardware problem or the operating system volume is damaged.
Please contact support.
Install Ghost 2003 on any convenient windows xp/2000/2003 system and run the Symantec updater.
Launch Ghost then under "Ghost utilities" click on create "Ghost boot disk" then choose the "basic Ghost boot disk" option.
Boot from the Ghost Boot Floppy.
Select Local
Select Disk
Select To Image
Put a blank CD-R or DVD+/-R into the burner.
Set the image output path to (as the current boot disk is configured) drive Z which is the CD-R or DVD+/-R.
Select “High” compression
Select “Yes, make this CD bootable.”
Select “Yes, the floppy is ready.” Since that’s what they booted to.
Ghost will read-in the data from the Ghost Boot Floppy and prompt for blank media in the CD-R drive.
Ghost writes the boot information to the first disc and then begins the image process, prompting for additional media as needed.
Label the CD’s and store them somewhere safe.
It is likely that the system just crashed or experienced an unexpected power failure. All you have to do is go into the system BIOS (press F2 during post) and toggle the reset or retest processor option almost universally found under the Processor Settings menu. After you have done this press F10, save and restart.
If the error returns after it has been cleared please contact Support.
If you just installed the OS you will need to install the Intel INF to let the OS know about the onboard devices.
Go to http://www.intel.com/design/software/drivers/platform/inf.htm
and get the most recent INF update. you will need to launch the INF utility and
let it auto install. you cannot manually load these drivers.
Contact our support department at click here and we'll be happy to assist you in getting a replacement drive as soon as possible. Please do not make any changes to the system unless you are absolutely certain of the procedures needed as data loss can result.
Output Director will display a single device (Sabre VX9600 CTP) while running in Demo Mode. A security dongle is required to extend the application beyond the limitations of Demo Mode. When you attach the application dongle to the Output Director server, you will see the complete list of Fuji output devices supported by the application.
The application locking up and the 'apparent' loss of a processor are generally symptoms of a PIFF
card failure. Call your Enovation Technical Support representative
for assistance.
To reset the processor just follow this procedure here.
Of course, you can always call Proactive Technologies for Cooperative Support (972-416-6298 during business hours or 800-673-3039 after hours).
However, Output Director has been engineered to be very easy to install/uninstall. You may simply delete the application folder and reinstall the Output Director application. This is quick and simple; if it fails to resolve the issue, and you believe this problem is with Output Director then please call Enovation Technical support at 1-800-359-3854 or you can call Proactive and the numbers listed above.
High-Voltage Differential (HVD) SCSI is an interface that can be damaged or destroyed by connecting to an external device with power applied. Both the system and external device must be powered down completely before connecting the interface cable between them. If the interface cable should become disconnected accidentally during operation the above procedure must be followed.
Under no circumstances connect the HVD SCSI interface to any Low-Voltage Differential (LVD) or Single-Ended (SE) SCSI device as permanent damage to the LVD or SE device will be immediate and damage to the HVD SCSI adapter may result.
If using external terminating resistors for an HVD SCSI interface do not attempt to substitute LVD or SE terminators as their lower voltage requirements will result in excessive current draw and fire may result.
To add Macintosh support to a Windows Server system, follow these steps:
1. Go to Start | Control Panel.
2. Open Add Or Remove Programs, and select Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. In the Components list, select Other Network File And Print Services, and click Details.
4. Select File Services For Macintosh and Print Services For Macintosh (print services are optional), and click OK.
After installing these services, you can create shares in Computer Management that are accessible directly via AppleTalk and share printers with your Macintosh users.
If you are using Windows 2003 There are two additional changes you should make.
In Computer Management right click on "Shared folders" and choose "Configure file server for
Macintosh" then in the section titled "Enable authentication" choose "Apple clear text or Microsoft"
You will also need to go to the properties for each Macintosh share and uncheck the read only option.
We recommend having cables installed and maintained by a professional who is equipped with a cable analyzer to verify cable integrity and that it conforms to the
Ethernet specifications.
However if you must make you own go to this site it has some great documentation on cable specs.
Boot off of OS installation CD under the installation menu choose "Open Terminal" once launched type....
diskutil enableRAID mirror disk0 (disk0 is the drive you want to turn into a mirror set) then reboot normally and use utilities - Disk Utility GUI to add second disk to mirror set.
Tested under 10.3.3
Important: This procedure will destroy any data on the drive to be reloaded. Record the system to be reloaded IP settings , workgroup name and system name prior to starting this procedure.
Step 1. Boot off of the Microsoft Windows installation CD. If system fails to boot from CD make sure that the CD device is listed before the hard disk in the boot order under system bios.
Step 2. If system is booting from a SCSI disk or Hardware RAID controller then press F6 and load the device driver appropriate for the controller used. If you are booting from a standard ATA (IDE) then you do not need to load any additional drivers.
Step 3. Welcome to setup screen. Press enter to continue.
Step 4. Windows Licensing Agreement. Press F8 after reading the agreement.
Step 5. Windows Server 2003 Setup screen. This is the screen where you will choose where to install the OS. Usually the first disk in the list is what you want to choose. We recommend erasing the disk (note you will loose all data on the disk to be erased) Fist hi light the first disk listed and choose "D" to delete then "L" to confirm. Select the now un partitioned space and hit enter. (note this will use all available space for the OS)
Step 6. Choose the format the partition using the NTFS file system (quick) and hit enter.
Step 7. kick back it will take a bit to load all the files.
Step 8. Regional and language options. Hit next unless you want to change the language.
STep 9. Type in your name and organization then hit next.
Step 10. Enter your key code then hit next. Your code is on the side of the system.
Step 11. Licensing Modes. usually default is ok unless you have purchased additional client access licenses. Hit next.
Step 12. Enter a name for this system. (Note must be unique) Entering a password for the administrator account is advised. Next.
Step 13. Date, Time, and Time zone. Next.
Step 14. Network settings. If you have a DHCP server on your network then typical is usually ok for now if not you will need to manually enter you IP address. Next.
Step 15. Enter the workgroup name or domain name here. Next
Kick Back and wait
Step 16. Load INF driver. In most cases Intel's INF drivers is called for and it doesn't hurt to try and load it even if its not. This file is self extracting and self installing you do not need to use device manager to load just double click the INF executable and let it run.
Now you should be done and can proceed to load any needed drivers or applications.
Please let us know if you see any mistakes with this FAQ
Yes, any system with multiple AC (mains) connections must have all of them plugged in. Generally this configuration is designed so that the system can have its power split across two or more UPS's to prevent a faulty UPS from bringing the system down
This answer is a bit complicated as there are many variables that can change the way you shut down or start up a system. Here are the general guidelines:
Servers are actually very easy to properly shut down and start up properly. The main system unit should always be the first item powered off and the last item powered on.
External RAID shelves are only slightly more complicated. If a RAID shelf has a controller built into it and has additional storage shelves (known as JBOD or "Just a Bunch Of Disks") connected to it then the shelf with the controller *MUST* be powered off before the JBOD shelves it controls are powered off. The reverse applies to
power up as the JBOD shelves must be powered on before the RAID shelf tries to initialize its controller and the drives it hosts.
A Storage Area Network (SAN) is simply an extension of the above procedures. A SAN engine can be considered as a RAID controller in the above example. It must be powered down before its storage is shut down, and its storage must be up and running before the SAN engine itself is started.
Macintosh clients running OS X 10.x will see a small pause when populating a Finder window that points to a Windows server running Services for Macintosh while Finder queries the server for icon information for every file in the folder being browsed.
This problem only effects OS X clients as icon caching is functional on OS9 and below.
ExtremeZ-IP dramatically improves the listing of the folder contents.
Please contact our sales department for ExtremeZ-IP pricing. Sales at proactivetechnologies.com
"Start Unit Request Failed" indicates that a SCSI adapter was unable to complete a startup request to the device indicated. This is a serious error that indicates a failed drive. Contact our support department at (972) 416-6298 for further assistance.
The error "Hardware Malfunction - Contact your system vendor." indicates that Windows was notified of a hardware fault. Memory is typically the culprit here, although a failing PCI device or an older BIOS revision can also cause it. Contact our support department at (972) 416-6298 for further assistance.
'NVRAM Mismatch' indicates that the configuration data in the Non-Volatile RAM of the controller does not match what it found on the disks. The first step is to hit CTRL-M to go into the controller's configuration utility. Once the configuration untility comes up, select 'Configuration' and then 'View/Add Configuration'. Once the controller scans the drive you should get a selection box that asks if you want to view the NVRAM configuration or the Disk configuration. Select the Disk configuration and you should then see a screen that shows the drives on the controller and their array assignments. Hit Escape and the controller will ask you if you want to save the configuration. Answer yes. Once you are back to the Configuration menu, exit out of the controller configuration utility and restart the system. If the error persists on the next reboot the procedure for resolving it becomes quite a bit more involved. It is as follows, but we recommend contacting us via phone if you are the least bit uncomfortable with it. Improper execution of this procedure can cause data loss. Power down the system. Unplug SCSI cables from the effected controller. Power up the system with SCSI cables disconnected from the LSI controller. When prompted, hit CTRL-M to enter the LSI BIOS configuration utility. Go to the Configuration menu and select Clear Configuration. Confirm the Clear Configuration operation. Exit the LSI BIOS configuration utility. Power down the system. Reconnect the SCSI cables to the LSI controller. Power up the system. When prompted, hit CTRL-M to enter the LSI BIOS configuration utility. Go to the Configuration menu and select 'View/Add Configuration'. At this point, if the controller does not prompt you to select NVRAM or Disk and goes right to the configuration display you can exit (saving if prompted to) and let the system start up as normal. The error should now be resolved.
The BMC (Baseboard Management Controller. It is basically a small microprocessor that monitors system status prior to the main CPU(s) coming online during both startup and normal operation.) generates beep codes upon detection of the failure conditions listed in the following table.
Each digit in the code is represented by a sequence of beeps whose count is equal to the digit.
1-5-1-1 FRB failure (processor failure) This is the most common error we see.
1-5-2-1 No processors installed or processor socket 1 is empty.
1-5-2-3 Processor configuration error (e.g., mismatched VIDs, Processor slot 1 is empty)
1-5-2-4 Front-side bus select configuration error (e.g., mismatched BSELs)
1-5-4-2 Power fault: DC power unexpectedly lost (e.g. power good from the power supply was deasserted)
1-5-4-3 Chipset control failure
1-5-4-4 Power control failure (e.g., power good from the power supply did not respond to power request)
All of these errors indicate a serious problem. Please contact our support department at click here for assistance with a system that is generating any of these codes.
With the system powered off press and hold the reset button for 5 sec.
After 5 seconds press the power on button while holding the reset button.
Once you have pressed the power button you can release both.
you should now see the Intel splash screen and a message saying BMC reset.
This behavior can be caused by having NetBIOS over TCP/IP enabled on multiple network adapters where one adapter connects to your main network and the secondary adapter is directly connected to another system or output device.
NetBIOS over TCP/IP should only be enabled on the network interface that is connected to your main network.
To check this setting on any adapter:
Right-click on My Network Places and choose Properties.
Right-click on a network interface and choose Properties.
Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click on the Properties button.
Click on the Advanced button.
Go to the WINS tab of the Advanced TCP/IP Settings.
Set the NetBIOS setting as appropriate for the role of the network adapter you are viewing.
The first thing to check is that the CD you are installing from is not scratched or dirty.
If the installation media you are using is clean then it is likely that the optical drive in your system is out of alignment or failing. Contact our support department at click here
for a replacement.
By default Windows Server 2003 expects encrypted login information from all clients. The default setting is to accept Microsoft encrypted logins via UAM (add-in package for Macintosh clients) only.
In order to change this behavior do the following:
Right-click on My Computer on the desktop and choose Manage.
Right-click on Shared Folders and choose Configure File Server for Macintosh.
In the Security section, set "Enable authentication" to "Apple Clear Text or Microsoft"
Hit OK.
You should now be able to authenticate from your Macintosh clients
The first thing to verify is to make sure that AppleTalk Protocol on the Windows server is only bound to one network interface.
AppleTalk should only be selected on the network interface that connects the server to the network where your Macintosh clients reside. All other interfaces should have it de-selected.
To check the status of the AppleTalk Protocol, do the following:
Right-click on My Network Places on the desktop and select Properties.
Right-click on a network adapter in the list and select Properties.
Scroll the "This connection uses the following items:" listbox down until you see "AppleTalk Protocol" and make note of the check in the checkbox (or lack of).
Verify that only one network adapter has a check next to AppleTalk Protocol.
The .FBCLock folders are created by OS 10 clients during folder synchronization. A recent update to OS 10 has caused the folders to start being left behind instead of removed upon completion.
The folders should contain very little (if any) data and should not be deleted unless you are certain that no Macintosh client is currently using the folder where the .FBCLock folder resides.
The folders should cause no operational difficulties and can be ignored
If your platform is based on the Intel SE7210TP1-E server motherboard this problem can occur if an Adaptec 1210SA Serial-ATA (SATA) controller is used on the system.
The add-in controllers were only needed on the earlier version of the platform to alleviate compatibility issues with drives greater than 128GB. It is not needed and should not be used on a system based on the Intel SE7210TP1-E server motherboard.
The SE7210TP1-E is easily differentiated from earlier platforms as it has no parallel (LPT) port. Also, if you're looking at the motherboard with the left-hand side panel off of the system it is the only current P4 board with 3 64-bit PCI slots and one 32-bit PCI slot.
If your system is using the SE7210TP1-E and has an Adaptec 1210SA you will need to remove the Adaptec 1210SA and plug the SATA cable into the lower (towards the bottom of the chassis) onboard SATA port. The OS and application will both need to be reinstalled
The only special consideration with the Adaptec Fire
Connect 4300 adapters is if the PCB (the circuit board on which the components are mounted) is red.
The red colored board is the second revision of the card (green is first, blue is third) and should *not* be installed in any system utilizing 3.3v PCI as it may cause damage to the
main board.
If you are adding a red PCB based Fire Connect 4300, please contact us at click here
before you install it into your system to verify that it will work correctly.
If removing the dongle causes the system to boot normally again then you must go into the system BIOS (typically F2) and disable USB Legacy Support and (if present) USB Mass Storage BIOS Support.
The newer hardware keys shipped with Cromapro present part of themselves as a
storage device and the system tries to boot from them causing this error.
Both of these memory related issues can be caused by a mis-seated memory module and dust.
With the system powered down and unplugged from AC power remove the memory modules (spread the tabs at the ends of the sockets away from the module to release it and make note of the orientation of the module in the socket) and blow out any dust with compressed air.
Re-install the memory modules making sure that the key notches line up with the appropriate place(s) in the socket (with the release tabs spread, seating the module correctly should result in both of the release tabs snapping into their closed position).
Once the memory modules are reinstalled, power up the system and see if the error has been cleared. If the error remains please contact our support department at $PTPhone
for further assistance.
Make sure that the AppleTalk protocol is only bound to one Ethernet interface on systems that have two or more network connections.
Another possible cause is if the system has Symantec Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition 9 installed with the E-Mail scanning
plug-in in conjunction with certain models of network interfaces.
The resolution is to uninstall Norton AV CE 9 and reinstall it without the POP3 E-Mail Scan
plug-in. Doing a "Modify Installation" will *not* fix the problem, only uninstalling and reinstalling resolves it
We have Rack / Pedestal conversion kits for our enclosures that are convertible. For enclosures that are not convertible an entire chassis swap will be required. Chassis and main boards must be compatible for this to work.
Convertible chassis will look similar to
this.
Non-convertible chassis look similar to
this.
Please call our sales office to discuss what we can do.
972-416-6298
The ESG_SHV device is the enclosure processor built into the Intel SCSI Hot-Swap cages. It monitors enclosure voltages, temperatures and drive status.The necessary files to install the device can be found at: Intel ESG-SHV Driver Download
Refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article linked below:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;842264
The CD labeled "Proactive Technologies - Product Recovery CD Rom" also serves as the Windows Server 2003 installation media for the purposes of installing optional server components
The leading cause of connectivity issues with Macintosh clients communicating to a Windows XP SP2 based system is the Windows Firewall.
The default behavior with Windows XP SP2 is to enable the Windows Firewall for all new accounts created. If a new user is added to the system and subsequently logs in, the firewall will be enabled and will cause Macintosh connectivity issues.
To check the status of (and disable if needed) the Windows Firewall, select Start->Settings->Control Panel->Windows Firewall. Turn it off if it is enabled and connectivity should return to normal
On x86 platforms (PC's) there is a region of memory that is used for peripheral devices (onboard features, controllers, add-in adapters) called the PCI Memory Address Space.
On most Server (Xeon, 7501, 7505, 7520 and 7525 chipsets) platforms the PCI Memory Address Space resides at 3.5GB (from the bottom of memory, or address 0) and goes to just below 4GB.
On modern desktop (Pentium 4, 915 or 925 chipset) platforms the PCI Memory Address Space starts at 3GB and goes to just below 4GB.
The PCI Memory Address Space essentially prevents any memory that resides in its range from being usable by the system.
On some Server platforms there is an option for re-mapping the memory out of the PCI
Memory Address Space so that the operating system can make use of it, but this
requires an operating system like Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition or
Windows 2000 Advanced Server to make use of as the standard versions of both and
all 32bit versions of Windows XP are limited to a maximum of 4GB system memory.
There's a partial workaround, and only effects SMB shares but it may not work 100% of the time: You can change how long Windows 2000 waits before it considers a connection idle and disconnects it, which may allow more clients to access the system so long as they don't all attempt to do so at once.
To do this, In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters, create or edit the DWORD AutoDisconnect and set it to the value in minutes to use. If you set it to 0, again, the disconnect will take place in a few seconds.
Using a value of -1 for either of these will cause client connections to
persist indefinitely.
This message appears after multiple reboots, due to the limited SEL storage space of the On-Board Platform Instrumentation. The SEL storage space of the mBMC allows for the storage of 92 SEL entries. A typical reboot adds several informational event messages to the SEL as part of the normal boot process.
The warning message displayed by the BIOS is not an error. It is a warning message that the SEL is full and that no more system event messages can be logged until the SEL is cleared.
The System Event Log (SEL) of the On-Board Platform Instrumentation should be cleared regularly. There are several methods of clearing the SEL, including:
- going to BIOS Setup (F2) and clearing the SEL
- using the SEL Viewer (included on the Intel® Server Deployment Toolkit and the Software Update Package and available as a download)
- via Intel® Server Management 8.x (ISM) software
Alternatively, some Intel servers (Intel® Server Board SE7520AF2, Intel® Server Board SE7520BD2 and Intel® Server Board SE7520JR2) have a connector to allow upgrade to the Intel Management Module (IMM) Professional or Advanced editions. The Intel Management Modules include an increased SEL capacity up to 3,276 SEL entries.
Under construction but here is what we have so far....
If you are booting from an ATA drive then you are good to go and normally only the windows install CD is required.
If you are booting using a ATA-RAID or SCSI device than in most cases you will need a floppy disk with the correct driver for your boot device.
You will need to know what the device is that you are booting from first. If you dont know this please call us first.
Click on the boot device bellow to download a zip file containg neccecery drivers. extract this zip to a floppy.
SE7520AF2 - SE7520BD2 Onboard SCSI : Windows Server 2003 - Windows XP - Widows 2000
SE7501BR2 - SE7501HG2 - Adaptec 29320 family - SE7210TP1E with SCSI : Windows Server 2003 - Windows XP - Widows 2000
LSI MegaRAID family : Windows Server 2003 - Windows XP - Widows 2000
Mylex Acceleraid family : Windows Server 2003 - Windows XP - Widows 2000 - NT4
Adaptec 29160 : Windows Server 2003 - Windows XP - Widows 2000 - NT4
Adaptec 2930 : Widows 2000 - NT4
External USB 2.0/FireWire hard drives, in capacities of 200 GB or more, are becoming quite popular.
Many of these drives come preformatted from the factory for quick use. This spares the user the trouble of having to go through the Disk Management console, mount the volume, format it and assign it a drive letter.
Unfortunately, many of these drives are preformatted as FAT32 volumes. This is quite deliberate, as there are still a few computers out there running earlier versions of Windows that cannot see or deal with NT file system partitions.
Sometimes this problem doesn't manifest itself immediately. For instance, if you connect the drive and use a backup product (such as Windows's own NTBACKUP) that writes the backup as one contiguous file, the backup may inexplicably fail after the backup program writes 4 GB. The reason is simple: The FAT32 file system cannot support single files larger than 4 GB. It can support large volume sizes, but no one file can be larger than 4 GB.
The solution is simple enough. The first time you connect such a drive, determine what file system it is through the drive's Properties page. If it's FAT32, reformat it as NTFS. The only exception to this would be if you're connecting to a non-NTFS-compatible system, of course.
Most likely you are using a USB keyboard/mouse and have nothing
attached to the PS/2 ports.Easy fix is if you have the USB to PS/2 adapters use them and attach the mouse and keyboard to PS/2.Otherwise you will need to disable the onboard PS/2 option in the system BIOS.
Note this procedure will require a reboot if the source wasn't already set to dynamic and it is in use.
Using Windows 2003 you will need to first make both the source and target disks dynamic.
To do this go to /start/administrative tools/computer management
Then select Disk management
Then you will right click the source disk and choose Add Mirror.
Then select an unused or erased disk to be the target for the mirror.
It may take some time to synchronize but that's all there is to it.
First establish a mirror set see this article for how.
How do I set up a software mirror using the Windows 2000 or 2003 Server Operating System
After the mirror set is established and synchronize power down the system pull the disk that you mirrored out of the system or disable it so that the system will not be able to see or write to it.
Note: on some systems its important to fill in the socket of the now removed disk please call Proactive to discuss.
To test your mirror copy replace the original disk with the mirror and power up if all looks good then power down and return original to system.
Place you mirror in a secure area and you ready.
Don't forget if you make changes to the system you will have to re-sync your target.
RAID used to stand for "redundant array of inexpensive disks". Today the term has been updated to "redundant array of independent disks". RAID is a way of grouping individual physical drives together to form one bigger drive called a "RAID set". RAID can make many smaller disks appear as one large disk to a server. The RAID set represents all the smaller physical drives as one logical disk to your server. The logical disk is called a LUN, or "logical unit number". Using RAID has two main advantages. Better performance and higher availability, which means it goes faster and breaks down less often.
RAID benefits
Performance is increased because the server has more "spindles" to read from or write to when data is accessed from a drive.
Availability is increased because the RAID controller can recreate lost data from parity information. Parity is basically a checksum of the data that was written to the disks, which gets written along with the original data. RAID can be done in software on a host, such as Windows "FTDISK" volumes, or in hardware on the storage controllers. The server accessing the data on a hardware-based RAID set never knows that one of the drives in the RAID set went bad. The controller recreates the data that was lost when the drive went bad, by using the parity information stored on the surviving disks in the RAID set.
There are a number of different ways drives can be grouped together to form RAID sets. The different methods used to group drives are called "RAID types". RAID types are numbered from 0 to 5. The numbers represent the "level" of RAID being used. RAID levels 0, 1 and 5 are the most common. Combinations of RAID types may be used together. For example, you can create 2 RAID-0 sets, and then combine the RAID-0 sets into a RAID-1 set. This will essentially give you the performance benefits of RAID-0, with the availability benefits of RAID-1.
In order to survive multiple drive failures in a "RAID-10" setup, you should create multiple RAID-1 mirrors, and then stripe across the mirrors using RAID-0. As long as multiple drive failures occur in separate mirror sets, the RAID set is still available. If you create 2 RAID-0 stripe sets and mirror those together, losing a single disk within the stripe forces all access to occur from the mirrored stripe set.
The RAID type you should use depends on the type of application you are running on your server. RAID-0 is the fastest. RAID-1 is the most reliable and RAID-5 is a good combination of both.
RAID types
Below is a description of the different types of RAID that most commonly used in SAN storage arrays. Not all storage array vendors support all the various RAID types. Check with your vendor for the type of RAID that is available with their storage.
RAID-0: RAID-0 is called disk "striping". All the data is spread out in chunks across all the disks in the RAID set. RAID-0 has great performance, because you spread out the load of storing data onto more physical drives. There is no parity generated for RAID-0. Therefore there is no overhead to write data to RAID-0 disks. RAID-0 is only good for better performance, and not for high availability, since parity is not generated for RAID-0 disks. RAID-0 requires at least two physical disks.
RAID-1: RAID-1 is called disk mirroring. All the data is written to at least two separate physical disks. The disks are essentially mirror images of each other. If one of the disks fails, the other can be used to retrieve data. Disk mirroring is good for very fast read operations. It's slower when writing to the disks, since the data needs to be written twice. RAID-1 requires at least two physical disks.
RAID 1+0: RAID 1+0, which is also called RAID-10, uses a combination of disk mirroring and disk striping. The data is normally mirrored first and then striped. Mirroring striped sets accomplishes the same task, but is less fault tolerant than striping mirror sets. If you lose a drive in a stripe set, all access to data must be from the other stripe set, because stripe sets have no parity. RAID 0+1 requires a minimum of four physical disks.
RAID-2: RAID-2 is no longer used.
RAID-3: RAID-3 uses something called a "parity disk" to store the parity information generated by the RAID controller on a separate disk from the actual data disks, instead of striping it with the data as in RAID-5. This RAID type is not currently used very often, because it performs poorly when there are a lot of little requests for data, as in a database. This type performs well under applications that just want one long sequential data transfer. Applications like video servers work well with this RAID type. RAID-3 requires a minimum of three physical disks.
RAID-4: RAID-4 is good for sequential data access, but is not used much.
RAID-5: RAID-5 uses disk striping with parity. The data is striped across all the disks in the RAID set, along with the parity information needed to reconstruct the data in case of disk failure. RAID-5 is the most common method used, since it achieves a good balance between performance and availability. RAID-5 requires at least three physical disks.
Adaptive RAID: Adaptive RAID lets the RAID controller figure out how to store the parity on the disks. It will choose between RAID-3 and RAID-5, depending on which RAID set type will perform better with the type of data being written to the disks.
RAID-6: RAID-6 increases reliability by utilizing 2 parity stripes, which allows for 2 disk failures within the RAID set before data is lost. RAID-6 is seen in SATA environments, and solutions that require long data retention periods, such as data archiving, or disk-based backup.
Regarding your question about the benefit of using more disks in a RAID set than the minimum, the answer is you get more available storage and more "actuators" or "spindles" for the OS to use. Most RAID arrays use a maximum of 16 drives within a RAID set due to higher overhead and diminishing returns in performance when exceeding that many drives. Up to 8 seems to be a good rule of thumb for RAID-5 and RAID-10. If you need more space, you can just create another RAID set with the other disks. As another rule of thumb, try to keep different workload data types on separate RAID sets. You can use RAID-10 for best performance everywhere, but most budgets dictate the use of RAID-5 for database data volumes, with RAID-1 or RAID-10 used on database log volumes. (the database volumes can be highly random I/O, and the logs tend to be sequential in nature).
Rebuild times depend on the kind of RAID. If you are using software-based RAID, then more spindles within the group means longer rebuild times. If it's hardware-based RAID, then rebuild times are usually dictated by the size of the drives themselves, since the hardware usually does the sparing in and out of the set. A 146 GB drive takes longer to rebuild than a 73 GB drive.
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