Install and Use RAID Administration and Monitoring Utilities
The RAID administration utility alerts the user via the speaker and display if a drive becomes
DDD or if a Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA) alert occurs. PFA support on disk drives
recognizes potentially bad drives and alerts systems administrators allowing them to replace the
unit before a catastrophic drive failure. The PFA alert prompts you to replace the drive before
actual failure, so that a HSP is always present.
The RAID administration utility monitors RAID operations, displaying results on the RAID
Administration screen. A separate utility, called IPSMON.EXE, can log RAID events to a file.
You can specify whether you want the utility to save the file to a diskette drive, local hard drive,
or network hard drive, however, the recommended policy is to use the diskette drive or a network
drive. This practice makes it easier to recover from situations where the operating system is not
accessible due to the failure. The logs themselves are required to recover data from systems when
multiple DDD drives occur. The logs also provide essential RAID history for that server when
troubleshooting and isolating a defective part in cases where it is not the drive that is defective.
Another monitor checks the status of the adapter in a remote system in a client/server
environment supported with TCP/IP. The server part of the client/server environment runs on the
system containing the adapter and is supported with the following operating systems:
Ensure Current Backup of RAID Configuration is Available
You should always have a current backup of the RAID configuration, anytime the array changes,
you should make another backup. To create this backup, select Backup Config. to Diskette
under Advanced Functions on the Main Menu of the RAID Configuration Diskette. You are
prompted to enter a filename, the default is CONFIG. IBM recommends that you provide a
unique name and backup to a different diskette each time. A unique name ensures that a good
backup is not inadvertently overwritten, and a different diskette allows you to write-protect the
diskette and keep it in a safe place. NetFinity Manager 5.0 or above also allows you to backup the
configuration under the RAID manager.
Have a RAID Configuration Utility Diskette Available
Having a copy of the RAID Configuration Utility Diskette is crucial when working on a RAID
system. Ensure that you always have a RAID Configuration Utility Diskette available in close
proximity to all RAID systems. Due to possible changes of drive states, the backup RAID
configuration stored on the diskette may differ from the current working RAID configuration.
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