Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) RAID Volume Rebuild Capabilities for Windows*

The following information outlines the RAID volume rebuild 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:

• Key Features of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) VMD NVMe* RAID for Windows*
• Key Features of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) SATA RAID for Windows*
• Key Features of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Non-VMD NVMe* RAID for Windows*

The Intel® VROC family of products supports RAID rebuild when a RAID volume is degraded. Intel® VROC supports two types of RAID volume rebuilds: Automatic and Manual.

Rebuild Components

The components of the Intel® VROC family of products that are directly involved in the rebuild process includes the UEFI driver and the operating system driver.

UEFI Rebuild

As part of the RAID volume rebuild process, the Intel® VROC UEFI driver only manages the Intel® VROC metadata and displays the information to the user accordingly. While the system is booting, if the Intel® VROC UEFI driver determines that the RAID volume is either in (or needs to be placed into) a rebuild state, it will make the necessary modifications and displayed that information to the user. The Intel® VROC UEFI driver does not, however, perform the rebuild process.

Operating System (OS) Rebuild

The Intel® VROC OS driver will update the metadata when necessary, and will perform the actual rebuild process (comparing, computing, and performing the data and metadata updates).

Automatic Rebuild

The Intel® VROC family of products provides support for the ability to automatically rebuild a failed or degraded RAID volume. This feature will begin when a member disk of the array has failed and a suitable replacement disk with enough capacity is available. As soon as the failure occurs the rebuild process will begin automatically, using the marked hot-spare disk, without user intervention.

If a marked hot-spare disk is not present, the automatic rebuild process will begin under the following conditions:

• Another free disk is plugged into the same directly attached physical location as the failed drive.
• The newly inserted disk size is at least as large as the amount of space used per disk in the current array.
• The newly inserted disk must be the same type (SATA or NVMe*) as the disk being replaced or the rebuild process will not start.
• If the newly inserted disk contains Intel® VROC metadata with current status of the member drive being offline or contains no Intel® VROC metadata.
• The newly inserted disk has not reported a SMART event.
• Automatic rebuild support will default to off for Intel® VROC and can be enabled through the Intel® VROC Graphical User Interface (GUI) application.

The following table summarizes the functionality:

Automatic Rebuild to a Re-Inserted RAID Member Disk

The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to automatically initiate a RAID rebuild when a RAID volume member drive is removed and reinserted (into the same slot it was removed from) after the RAID volume becomes degraded. If the RAID member drive is reinserted after a few seconds and that drive is seen as still intact with the rest of the RAID volume, after the reinserted RAID member drive is processed (discovered, enumerated, updated, and so on) the volume may go directly back to normal. This feature is independent of the rebuild on hot-insert feature. As a result, this functionality is independent of how rebuild on hot-insert is configured.

Automatic Rebuild on Disk Missing/Fail Event

When an array has a hot-spare configured and a RAID member disk is removed (or fails) from a redundant RAID volume, Intel® VROC will claim the spare drive for that RAID volume and automatically begin to rebuild the RAID volume.

Automatic Rebuild on Hot-Insert

The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to initiate an automatic RAID rebuild when a new physical disk (of the appropriate size) is hot-inserted into the same slot the failed RAID member drive was removed from. A RAID volume member drive that has failed (or may soon fail) can be hot-removed. When the system is configured appropriately, that failed member drive can be hot-removed and if the new drive (of appropriate size) is hot-inserted into the same slot, the rebuild process will begin automatically. The rebuild process will begin only when:

• The new disk inserted meets the minimum size requirements of the:
  • Drive removed, and
  • Array containing the degraded RAID volume.
• The remaining healthy member disks are of the same type of drive.
• The newly inserted disk is healthy (no recorded SMART event).

The Intel® VROC Graphical User Interface (GUI) application shall give the user the ability to enable and disable this feature by following these steps:

1. Start the Intel® VROC GUI application (run as administrator).
2. In the Devices pane, select the controller that contains the RAID member disks (or the drives that will be used to create the RAID volume).
3. In the Controller Properties pane, look for Rebuild on Hot-Insert and enable or disable the setting. This feature is disabled by default.

Rebuild on hot-insert is only applicable for a redundant RAID volume that is in a degraded state.

This feature is only applicable to a single operational OS session. If the OS is rebooted, once the drive is inserted, the RAID rebuild process will need to be restarted manually.

Rebuild on Hot-Insert is disabled by default.

Error Threshold Monitoring/Handling

The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to initiate an automatic RAID rebuild to a marked hot-spare drive when a drive SMART event alert has occurred that indicates a failure (Windows* only).

Manually Invoked Rebuild

The Intel® VROC family of products supports a manual method to initiate a RAID volume rebuild if a hot-spare has not been configured or is not available or Automatic Rebuild has been disabled. For the rebuild process to begin, the new drive being added to the array/volume must: 

• Meet the minimum size requirements of the:
  • Drive being replaced, and
  • Array containing the degraded RAID volume.
• The remaining healthy member disks are of the same type of drive.
• The new disk is healthy (no recorded SMART event).
• The new disk is a pass-thru disk (not a member of a different RAID volume).

Rebuild Resumption

The Intel® VROC family of products supports continuing a RAID volume rebuild after a system shutdown, sleep state or hibernation state.

Auto RAID 0 Rebuild

The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to perform an automatic rebuild on a RAID 0 volume when a SMART event is encountered, and a global hot-spare drive has been defined. This feature is automatically enabled when a global hot-spare has been defined for a RAID array that contains a RAID 0 volume(s).

Global hot-spare rules apply (drive size and controller/domain).

With an appropriate disk defined as a global hot-spare, a RAID 0 volume will automatically begin a RAID volume rebuild when one of the RIAD 0 member drives encounters a SMART event. The spare drive will be brought into the RAID volume to replace the drive with the SMART event and the content will be copied to the new drive.