Guide Organization
How This Guide is Organized
The guide is divided into clearly structured parts to help you move from setup to ongoing management:
📔Part 1. Introduction
This part introduces Intel® VROC concepts, supported RAID levels, and compatible Linux distributions. It also defines the terminology used throughout the guide, giving readers the foundation they need before diving into configuration tasks.
Introduction📔Part 2: Pre-OS RAID Configuration
This section covers configuring Intel VROC in the system firmware (UEFI HII). It explains how to enable Intel VMD, create and remove RAID volumes, and apply best practices during setup. These steps ensure your environment is ready for OS installation on Intel VROC arrays.
Pre-OS RAID configuration📔Part 3: Linux Driver & Tool Installation
Here you’ll learn how to install Intel VROC Linux drivers and tools. It includes instructions for out-of-box driver packages, integration with popular Linux distributions, and utilities like mdadm and ledmon. Post-installation validation steps are also provided to confirm proper setup.
Linux Driver & Tool Installation📔Part 4: RAID Management in Linux
This part is the core of the guide. It walks you through creating, managing, and monitoring RAID volumes using mdadm. It also explains RAID initialization, hot spare configuration, recovery procedures, and removal of arrays. Each topic includes command examples and verification methods to support practical, hands-on administration.
RAID Management in Linux📔Part 5: RAID Logging & Monitoring
The final part explains how to monitor Intel VROC RAID activities in Linux. It covers retrieving logs from kernel messages, system journals, and syslog. This helps administrators detect issues early, troubleshoot effectively, and maintain system health.
Intel® VROC RAID Logging and Monitoring in Linux📔Part 6: Intel® VROC RAID Advanced Usages in Linux
This part introduces advanced management operations available for Intel® VROC RAID on Linux*. Advanced usages include Online Capacity Expansion (OCE), RAID level migration, chunk size modification, and enabling features such as Partial Parity Log (PPL) for RAID 5 write-hole protection and write-intent bitmaps.
Many of these operations trigger background reshape or resync processes. While the operations are designed to preserve data, administrators are strongly advised to perform full backups before execution.
Intel® VROC RAID Advanced Usages in Linux📔Part 7: Intel® VROC LED Management in Linux
This part covers LED management on Intel-supported backplanes using the ledmon and ledctl utilities.
ledmon runs as a daemon to continuously monitor drives and RAID volumes, adjusting LEDs automatically. It is typically managed by systemd, but if systemd is unavailable, it can be configured via /etc/rc.local.
ledctl allows administrators to manually control LEDs (locate, failure, rebuild, etc.) to help identify and manage drives in physical backplanes.
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