System drives (SDs) are the basic logical storage element used by the NAS server. Storage systems use RAID controllers to aggregate multiple physical disks into SDs (also known as Logical Units or LUs). An SD is a logical unit made up of a group of physical disks or flash drives. The size of the SD depends on factors such as the RAID level, the number of drives, and their capacity.
When you create SDs:
- Use the Hitachi storage management application appropriate for your storage system. You cannot create SDs using File Administrator or the NAS server command line.
- When creating SDs, you may need to specify array-specific settings in the storage management application. Also, depending on the firmware version of the array, there may be device-specific configuration settings.
The System Drives pane displays all the SDs in the storage system.The following table describes the settings in this pane:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Licensing Capacity Used | This shows the amount of storage present in the storage subsystem is listed as the Licensing Capacity Used. The current capacity cannot exceed the licensed limit. |
| Licensing Limit | This shows the current amount of storage supported by the installed license is listed as the Licensing Limit. |
| Filters | By default, all system drives are shown. With shared storage systems, it might be necessary to filter the system drives list. You can narrow the list by using the search or filters option. |
| ID | This shows the numeric identifier of the system drive. A numeric identifier of the system drive, which is assigned by the server. It is sometimes useful to know the ID when examining the server event log. |
| Capacity | This shows the size of the system drive. |
| LUN | The LUN of each system drive is assigned by the storage array when the LUN is created. |
| Block Pool ID | This shows information about the system drive's virtualization layer. The options are:
|
| Comment/Array Name | This allows additional descriptive information to be assigned to a system drive to help make it more identifiable when viewed elsewhere in the UI. |
| Storage Pool | This shows the name of the storage pool of which the system drive is a part. |
| Stripesets | When a storage pool is initially created, it has one stripeset, and all the data is striped across the system drives in that stripeset. Each time a storage pool is expanded, a stripeset is added. For example, Stripeset 0, Stripeset 1. |
| Access | This shows whether the server has access to the system drive. To perform actions on the system drive, such as creating a file system, Access must be set to Allowed. Set Access to Allowed for all configurations other than shared storage system configurations. |
| Status | This is an indicator of the health of the system drive. The following describe the possible status of the system drive:
You can get more information about the state of the system drives from the server event log. |
| View | This shows details about the selected system drive, such as the manufacturer, the rack name, storage capacity, FC path, and configuration. |
| More actions menu | This allows you to perform operations like Forget, Allow access, and Deny access on the selected drive. |
| Allow access | This makes the selected system drive available for use. |
| Deny access | In shared storage systems, some system drives may need to be set with Deny access to ensure they are not accessed unintentionally. |
| Forget | This removes the selected system drive from the list. If the system drive has been removed from the RAID rack or if the RAID rack has been removed from the storage system, click Forget to remove it from the list of configured system drives. |
To view additional details about the individual system drives, click View next to each drive. For more information, see System Drive details