Dell Perc 5i User Guide

							
Glossary59
Glossary
This section defines or identifies technical terms, 
abbreviations, and acronyms used in this document.
A
Adapter
An adapter enables the computer system to access 
peripheral devices by converting the protocol of one 
bus or interface to another. An adapter may also 
provide specialized function. Adapters may reside 
on the system board or be an add-in card. Other 
examples of adapters include network and 
SCSI adapters.
B
BIOS
(Basic Input/Output System) The part of the 
operating system in a system that provides the lowest 
level interface to peripheral devices. BIOS also refers 
to the Basic Input/Input Output System of other 
“intelligent” devices, such as RAID controllers.
BIOS Configuration Utility
The BIOS Configuration Utility configures and 
maintains user configurable controller parameters. 
The utility resides in the controller BIOS and its 
operation is independent of the operating systems on 
your system. The BIOS Configuration Utility, also 
known as Ctrl-C, is built  on elements called controls. 
Each control performs a function.
C
Controller
A chip that controls the transfer of data between 
the microprocessor and memory or between the 
microprocessor and a peripheral device such as a 
physical disk or the keyboard. In Storage 
Management, the hardware or logic that interacts 
with storage devices to write and retrieve data and 
perform storage management. RAID controllers 
perform RAID functions such as striping and 
mirroring to provide data protection.
D
Disk
A non-volatile, randomly addressable, rewriteable 
mass storage device, including both rotating magnetic 
and optical storage devices and solid-state storage 
devices, or non-volatile electronic storage elements.
DKMS
DKMS stands for Dynamic Kernel Module Support. 
It is designed to create a framework where kernel 
dependent module source can re side so that it is very 
easy to rebuild modules as you upgrade kernels. This 
will allow Linux vendors to provide driver drops 
without having to wait for new kernel releases while 
also taking out the gu esswork for customers 
attempting to recompile modules for new kernels.
YD912bk1.book  Page  59  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM 
						

							
60Glossary
Driver
A device driver, often called a driver for short, is a 
program that allows the operating system or some other 
program to interface correctly with a peripheral device 
such as a printer or network PC card. Some device 
drivers, such as network drivers must be loaded from 
the config.sys file (with a device= statement) or as 
memory-resident programs (usually, from the 
autoexec.bat file). Others such as video drivers must 
load when you start the program for which they were 
designed.
DUD (Driver Update Diskette)
Acronym for driver update dis kette. A DUD is an image 
of a diskette stored as a regula r file. To use it, you have to 
create a real diskette from this file. The steps used to 
create the diskette depend on how the image is supplied.
F
Firmware
Software stored in read-only memory (ROM) or 
Programmable ROM (PROM). Firmware is often 
responsible for the behavior of a system when it is first 
turned on. A typical example would be a monitor 
program in a system that loads the full operating 
system from disk or from a network and then passes 
control to the operating system.
Flash Memory
Sometimes referred as simply flash, is a compact, 
solid-state, rewriteable, non-volatile memory device that 
retains its data when the power is turned off. It offers fast 
access time, low power consumption, and relative 
immunity to severe shock or vi bration. It is a special type 
of EEPROM that can be erased and reprogrammed in 
blocks instead of one byte at  a time. Many modern PCs 
have their BIOS stored on a flash memory chip so that it 
can easily be updated if necessary. Such a BIOS is 
sometimes called a flash BIOS.
H
Hardware
The mechanical, magnetic, electronic, and electrical 
components making up a computer system 
constitutes its hardware.
Hot Add/Remove
It is the addition/removal  of a component while the 
system is running and operating normally.
L
Link
A connection between any two PCI Express devices is 
known as a link.
M
MHz
Megahertz or one million cycles per second is a unit 
of frequency commonly used to measure the 
operating speed of a computer processor or any other 
electronic component.
Mirroring
The process of providing  complete redundancy using 
two physical disks, by maintaining an exact copy of 
one physical disk’s data on the second physical disk. 
If one physical disk fails, the contents of the other 
physical disk can be used to maintain the integrity of 
the system and to rebuild the failed physical disk.
YD912bk1.book  Page  60  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM 
						

							
Glossary61
O
Operating System
The software that runs a computer, including 
scheduling tasks, managing storage, and handling 
communication with peripherals and performs basic 
input/output functions, such as recognizing input 
from the keyboard, sending output to the display 
screen, etc. is called an operating system.
P
PCI Express (PCI-E)
PCI Express (PCI-E) is an evolutionary upgrade to 
the existing Peripheral Component Interconnect 
(PCI) bus. PCI-E is a serial connection that operates 
more like a network than a bus. Instead of one bus 
that handles data from multiple sources, PCI-E has a 
switch that controls several point-to-point serial 
connections. These connections fan out from the 
switch, leading directly to the devices where the data 
needs to go. Every device has its own dedicated 
connection, so devices no longer share bandwidth like 
they do on a normal bus.
PHY
The interface required to transmit and receive data 
packets transferred across the serial bus. Each PHY 
can form one side of the physical link in a connection 
with a PHY on a different Dell-qualified SATA 
device. The physical link contains four wires that form 
two differential signal pairs. One differential pair 
transmits signals, while the other differential pair 
receives signals. Both differential pairs operate 
simultaneously and allow concurrent data transmission 
in both the receive and the transmit directions.
Physical Disk
A physical disk (also known as hard disk drive) 
consists of one or more rig id magnetic discs rotating 
about a central axle, with associated read/write heads 
and electronics. A physical  disk is used to store 
information, (data), in a non-volatile and randomly 
accessible memory space.
POST 
POST, short for Power-On Self-Test is a process 
performed before the operating system loads when 
the computer is turned on. The POST tests various 
system components, such as RAM, the physical disks, 
and the keyboard.
R
RAID
Acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks 
(originally Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). It 
is an array of multiple independent physical disks 
managed together to yield  higher reliability and/or 
performance exceeding that of a single physical disk. 
The virtual disk appears to  the operating system as a 
single storage unit. I/O is expedited because several 
disks can be accessed simultaneously. Redundant 
RAID levels provide data protection.
ROM
Read-only memory (ROM), also known as firmware, 
is an integrated circuit programmed with specific data 
when it is manufactured. ROM chips are used not 
only in computers, but in most other electronic items 
as well. Data stored in these chips is nonvolatile i.e., it 
is not lost when the power is turned off. Data stored 
in these chips is either unchangeable or requires a 
special operation such as flashing to change.
YD912bk1.book  Page  61  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM 
						

							
62Glossary
RPM
RPM, short for Red Hat Package Manager is a 
package management system primarily intended for 
Linux. RPM installs, updates, uninstalls, verifies and 
queries software. RPM is the baseline package format 
of the Linux Standard Base. Originally developed by 
Red Hat for Red Hat Linux, RPM is now used by many 
Linux distributions. It has also been ported to some 
other operating systems such as NetWare by Novell.
S
SAS
Serial-Attached SCSI, SAS, is a serial, point-to-point, 
enterprise-level device interface that leverages the 
proven SCSI protocol set. The SAS interface provides 
improved performance, si mplified cabling, smaller 
connectors, lower pin count, and lower power 
requirements when compared to parallel SCSI.
SATA
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, a physical 
storage interface standard, is a serial link that provides 
point-to-point connections between devices. The 
thinner serial cables allow  for better airflow within the 
system and permit smaller chassis designs.
SCSI
SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface, 
a processor-independent standard interface for 
system-level interfacing between a computer and 
intelligent devices including hard-drives, floppy disks, 
CD-ROM, printer, scanners and many more.
SCSIport
SCSIport driver is a Microsoft® driver for Windows® 
storage architecture, delivering SCSI commands to 
the storage targets. The SCSIport driver works well 
with storage using parallel SCSI.
Serial Architecture
Serial architectures have emerged to deliver higher 
performance by allowing mo re bandwidth per device 
pathway than their parallel counterparts. Serial 
architecture connections consist of a single pair of 
transmission signals that contain an embedded clock 
for self-clocking, enabling clock speed to be easily 
scaled. Serial bus architectu res also support a network 
of dedicated point-to-point device connections, 
versus the multi-drop architec tures of parallel buses, 
to deliver full bandwidth to each device, eliminate the 
need for bus arbitration, reduce latency, and greatly 
simplify hot-plug and hot-swap system 
implementations.
Serial Technology
Serial storage technology, specifically Serial ATA, 
Serial-Attached SCSI and PCI Express, address the 
architectural limitations of  their parallel counterparts 
to deliver highly scalable performance. The 
technology draws its name from the way it transmits 
signals - in a single stream , or serially, compared to 
multiple streams for parallel. The main advantage of 
serial technology is that while it moves data in a single 
stream, it wraps data bits into individual packets that 
are transferred up to 30 times faster than parallel 
technology data.
YD912bk1.book  Page  62  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM 
						

							
Glossary63
SMART
Acronym for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting 
Technology. The self-monitoring analysis and 
reporting technology (SMART) feature monitors the 
internal performance of all motors, heads, and drive 
electronics to detect predictable drive failures. This 
feature helps monitor drive performance and 
reliability, and protects the data on the drive. When 
problems are detected on a drive, you can replace 
or repair the drive without losing any data. 
SMART-compliant disks have attributes for which 
data (values) can be monitored to identify changes in 
values and determine whether the values are within 
threshold limits. Many mechanical failures and some 
electrical failures display some degradation in 
performance before failure.
Storport
The Storport driver has been designed to replace 
SCSIport and work with Windows 2003 and beyond. 
In addition, it offers better performance for storage 
controllers, providing high er I/O throughput rates, 
improved manageability, and an upgraded miniport 
interface.
Stripe Element
A stripe element is the portion of a stripe that resides 
on a single physical disk.
Striping
Disk striping writes data across all physical disks in a 
virtual disk. Each stripe consists of consecutive virtual 
disk data addresses that are mapped in fixed-size 
units to each physical disk in the virtual disk using a 
sequential pattern. For example, if the virtual disk 
includes five physical disks, the stripe writes data to
physical disks one through  five without repeating any 
of the physical disks. The amount of space consumed 
by a stripe is the same on each physical disk. The 
portion of a stripe that resi des on a physical disk is a 
stripe element. Striping by itself does not provide 
data redundancy. Striping in combination with parity 
does provide data redundancy.
W
Windows
Microsoft Windows is a range of commercial 
operating environments for computers. It provides a 
graphical user interface (GUI) to access programs and 
data on the computer.
X
XP
XP is a Microsoft Windows operating system. 
Released in 2001, it is built on the Windows 2000 
kernel, making it more stable and reliable than 
previous versions of Windows. It includes an 
improved user interface and more mobility features, 
such as plug and play feat ures used to connect to 
wireless networks.
YD912bk1.book  Page  63  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM 
						

							
64Glossary
YD912bk1.book  Page 64  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM 
						

							
Index65
Index
B
BIOS, 27Configuration Utility, 28
fault code messages, 2 7
POST messages, 2 7
C
Configuration Utilityfunctions performed, 28
navigating, 2 8
overview, 2 8
starting, 28
D
driverscreating diskette, 19
installation, 19
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 22
SUSE Linux Enterprise  Server, 2 4
E
electrostatic discharge. 
See ESD
ESD, 8
F
firmware update utility, 41
updating, 41
I
installationdriver, 19
SAS 5/iR Adapter, 15
Windows driver, 2 0
Integrated RAID configuration, 29, 31
create new virtual disk, 2 9
creating IM, 3 2
creating IS, 3 1
Integrated Mirroring, 1 1
Integrated Striping, 1 0
manage virtual disk, 3 0
new virtual disk, 2 9
rebuilding virtual disk, 34
replacing virtual disk, 3 4
view virtual disk, 30
virtual disk activation, 34
virtual disk deletion, 34
virtual disk properties, 33
virtual disk  synchronization, 3 3
P
PCI-E connector, 9
R
RAID, 9-10
RAID 0, 10
RAID 1, 10
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 19 creating a driver diskette, 2 2
installing the driver, 2 3
S
safety instructions
for preventing ESD, 8
SAS 5 HBA getting help, 43
SAS 5/iR BIOS, 2 7
features, 1 3
overview, 9
SAS 5/iR Adapter, 9
SAS 5/iR Adapter  installation, 1 5
SAS 5/iR Integrated, 9
specifications, 13
troubleshooting, 35
SCSI controller, 9
YD912bk1.book  Page  65  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM 
						

							
66Index
66Index
T
troubleshooting, 35
BIOS boot order, 35
BIOS error messages, 3 8
Configuration Utility error  messages, 3 7
physical disk issues, 3 6
W
Windows, 19 drivers, 1 9
updating drivers, 21
YD912bk1.book  Page  66  Monday, April 2, 2007  4:39 PM