The following information outlines the hot-spare disk features and functionality supported by Intel® VROC, including the Intel® VROC sub-products: Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID), Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) and Intel® VROC (Non-VMD NVMe* RAID). To learn about specific features supported by each Intel® VROC sub-product, refer to the following resources:
Intel® VROC Features | Hot-spare disk is one of the features of the Intel® VROC family of products. To learn about other features of Intel® VROC, refer to the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Technical Product Specification for Windows*. |
The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to set a drive as a hot-spare that would automatically be used to rebuild a failed or degraded RAID volume without any user interaction. This support is provided in the Intel® VROC Graphical User Interface (GUI) application as well as in the Pre-OS UEFI HII utilities.
The Intel® VROC family of products supports the hot-spare disks definitions as global hot-spares. This means that the hot-spare can be applied to any RAID array under the following conditions:
Marking a disk as a spare allows the user to designate an available disk as the default destination for automatic volume rebuilds in the event of a failed, missing or at risk (SMART event) array disk.
The action is only available for non-system disks in a normal state. The spare disk must be connected to the same controller as the disk that it is supporting. The maximum number of spare disks is determined by the maximum number of disks supported by the controller.
Since all hot-spare drives are considered global (and not dedicated to a specific RAID array), the size of the disk being designated as a hot-spare is not checked. As a result, make sure the size of the drive is commensurate to the RAID array it is targeted for.
Setting a disk as a spare disk can be accomplished in the following ways:
The Intel® VROC family of products provides an option in the Intel® VROC GUI application to mark a disk as a hot-spare.
The assumption is made that the appropriate additional drive(s) have been physically installed in the system. The installed drive(s) are also assumed to meet the size requirements to be identified as spare drives for the RAID array they will be associated to. To identify a drive as a hot-spare in the Intel® VROC GUI application, use the following steps:
The Intel® VROC family of products provides an option to mark a disk as spare in the UEFI HII user interface.
The assumption is made that the appropriate additional drive(s) have been physically installed on the system. The installed drive(s) are also assumed to meet the size requirements to be identified as spare drives for the RAID array they will be associated to. To identify a drive as a hot-spare in the UEFI HII interface, use the following steps:
The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to return a drive marked as a hot-spare back to available. When a drive is reset back to available, it can be used as a normal drive.
To return a drive marked as a hot-spare back to available in the Intel® VROC GUI application, use the following steps:
To return a drive marked as a hot-spare back to available in the UEFI HII user interface, use the following steps: