Intel® Server Board Set SE8500HW4

I/O Subsystems

3.3Intel® RAID On Motherboard (ROMB)

The Intel® IOP332 Storage I/O Processor, in conjunction with the LSI Logic 53C1030, provides an optional RAID On Motherboard (ROMB) solution which supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 10, and

50.A 2MB flash component and a non-volatile SRAM store the code and hardware configuration information.

To activate the ROMB solution, a physical Intel® RAID Activation Key (RAK) and DDR2 400MHz RAID DIMM must be installed on the Intel® Server Board Set SE8500HW4 Mainboard. The RAK contains a registration code required to unlock the LSI Mega RAID* solution. The DDR2 400MHz RAID DIMM serves as memory for the Intel® IOP332 Storage I/O Processor and a disk cache to store write data for the drives. In addition to these components an Intel® RAID Smart Battery (RSB) may also be installed to refresh the RAID DIMM when system power drops below specifications.

After installing a RAK and DDR2 400MHz RAID DIMM, and optional RSB, the system BIOS setup allows the user to enable the ROMB solution. During option ROM scan, an option to configure the RAID is displayed. The following three chapters provide an overview of the Intel ROMB solution, however, for more information refer to the Intel® RAID Smart Battery Technical Product Specification.

3.3.1Intel® RAID Activation Key (RAK)

The RAK is a round one-wire serial EEPROM device programmed by Intel. This key has a registration code required to enable the LSI Mega RAID* solution.

3.3.2DDR2 RAID DIMM

The ROMB solution only supports 400MHz registered ECC, with a CAS latency of four clock cycles. Please refer to the Intel® Server Board SE8500HW4 Memory Qualification List for supported memory.

3.3.3Intel® RAID Smart Battery (RSB)

The RSB keeps the contents of the DDR2 400MHz RAID DIMM preserved if power drops below specifications. When the Intel® IOP332 Storage I/O Processor senses power has dropped below specifications, it initiates a power fail sequence that safely puts the RAID DIMM into self-refresh state. The power subsystem generates enough of a delay to allow the Intel® IOP332 Storage I/O Processor to complete its power fail sequence, even in the event of total system power loss.

After the power fail sequence is completed, additional logic keeps the RAID DIMM in self- refresh mode. When power is restored, data from the RAID DIMM is safely written to the disk array.

Revision 1.0

17

 

Intel order number D22893-001