Learning about Express Configuration

Learning about Express Configuration

Express Configuration provides a quick and easy path for you to automatically configure your ServeRAID controller.
This choice creates the most efficient ServeRAID configuration based on the number and capacity of the Ready drives available in your system.
If four or more Ready drives of the same capacity are available, this choice also will define a hot-spare drive  for the ServeRAID adapter or controller.
A hot-spare drive is a physical drive that is defined for automatic use when a similar drive fails.

The Express Configuration choice groups up to 16 Ready drives of the same capacity into one disk array and defines one logical drive for each array.
This choice defines the size of the logical drive, based on the amount of free space available, and it assigns the highest RAID level possible, based on the number of physical drives available.

For example, if your server contains one 1024 MB Ready drive, two 2150 MB Ready drives, and four 4300 MB Ready drives, Express Configuration will create three arrays and one hot-spare drive as follows:

Array A:	The total capacity of this array is 1024 MB
	(1 x 1024 MB) and it contains one 1024 MB RAID level-0 logical drive.
Array B:	The total capacity of this array is 4300 MB
	(2 x 2150 MB) and it contains one 2150 MB RAID level-1 logical drive.
Array C:	The total capacity of this array is 12900 MB
	(3 x 4300 MB) and it contains one 8600 MB RAID level-5 logical drive.
Hot Spare:	Express Configuration defines one of the four 4300 MB
	drives as a hot-spare drive, as follows:
	° When there are four or more Ready drives of the same capacity,
	Express Configuration groups three of the drives into one array (as in Array C)
	and defines one of the drives as a hot spare.
	° A hot-spare drive must be of equal or greater capacity than
	the drive that it is intended to replace.
	In this configuration, the 4300 MB drive can replace any failed
	drives in Array B or Array C.