Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) RAID Volume Initialization

Intel® VROC supports a newly created RAID volume to be used immediately (no reboot required), protecting newly written data, and creating parity data concurrently. This is known as Instant Initialization.

For a RAID 5 configuration that consists of three or four drives, the RAID volume will be shown as normal as soon as the volume is created. Parity will be computed and written with every RAID 5 write activity. For a RAID 5 configuration that consists of five or more drives, the parity initialization will begin as soon as the volume is created. This is done to improve the operational performance of RAID 5 volumes.

Intel® VROC will initialize the following RAID volumes upon resuming from a dirty shutdown:

• RAID 1 volumes that have not previously been initialized.
• RAID 5 volumes that have not previously been initialized with the Array Cache feature enabled.

For best overall RAID 5 performance, Intel recommends that RAID 5 volumes are initialized prior running any performance testing.

Automatic Initialization

The following table outlines the scenarios that will result in the RAID volume initialization to start automatically as a result of a platform dirty shutdown.

Manual Initialization

The RAID volume initialization process ensures that the entire RAID volume has all its RAID metadata writing. Under most conditions the initialization occurs in the background while data is being written to the volume. To ensure that the entire RAID volume is properly setup, we recommend that the volume initialization is manually initiated. This is done through the Intel® VROC Graphical User Interface (GUI) application in Windows* as follows:

1. Start the Intel® VROC GUI application (run as administrator).
2. From the Volumes pane, click the array or volume to which the user wants to modify.
3. The volume properties now displays on the right. Select the option Volume Initialization, and select Yes to start the process.

The initialization details are shown in the Information pane as well as in the Volume Properties dialog.