Dell Comprehensive Guide to UCPE and UCPA-901 Features

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Features

PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) 9 series cards support the following features:

•Personality mode management

•T10 Protection Information (PI)

•secure firmware update

•improved RAID 10 configuration

•4KB block size disk drives

PERC 9 personality management

PERC 9 series of cards support two personality modes.

•RAID mode: RAID mode is commonly used and the controllers are mostly shipped from the factory in RAID mode. This mode allows the creation and operation of RAID virtual disks and non-RAID disks.

•HBA mode: In the HBA mode, PERC controller operates as Host Bus Adapter (HBA). This mode does not contain virtual disks or the ability to create them. All physical disks function as non-RAID disks under operating system control. The PERC card acts as a conduit between the host server and the physical disks. Input and output requests originate from the host and are passed through the controller to the physical drives. HBA mode is the approach used for Windows Storage Spaces.

NOTE: HBA mode should be enabled for customers, using Microsoft Storage Spaces or VMware Virtual SAN. HBA mode allows the operating system to control backplane LED functionality on supported systems.

T10 protection information

T10 Protection Information (PI) is an end-to-end data integrity feature of the PERC 9 series. When PI is enabled, the PERC 9 series provides additional protection against silent data corruption, and ensures that incomplete and incorrect data do not overwrite good data.

Only Dell certified PI disks are supported.

NOTE: PI is not supported on SAS disks with 512–byte native and 512–byte emulated block size and SATA disks.

Enabling T10 PI

To enable T10 PI:

1.During host system boot, press <Ctrl> <R> to access the BIOs Configuration Utility.

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