DEC RAID Utilities User's Guide

This document is the DEC RAID Utilities User's Guide, Version 1.0, published by Digital Equipment Corporation in November 1992.

It serves as a comprehensive manual for users to install, configure, manage, monitor, and repair their DEC RAID Subsystem across three supported operating system environments: MS-DOS Version 5.0, NetWare Version 3.11, and SCO UNIX Version 3.2.4.

The guide covers:

1. Introduction: Hardware and software requirements for the DEC RAID Utilities, and details of the specific utility kits provided for each operating system.
2. RAID Manager Utility: A description of the main interface for managing disk arrays, including how to start the utilities, navigate menus, and interpret logical unit and drive status displays and device names.
3. Array Configuration Editor (ACE): Detailed instructions on using ACE to configure logical units, modify parameters (such as RAID level, logical block size, segment size), and manage individual drives (adding, deleting, failing, and reconstructing drives).
4. Configuring Logical Units: Step-by-step procedures for initial setup, reconfiguring existing units, creating new units from spare drives or existing groups, and deleting logical units.
5. Restoring a Logical Unit: Recovery procedures for various RAID levels (0, 1, and 5) after single or multiple drive failures, including details on reconstruction rates.
6. NetWare and SCO UNIX Specific Utilities: Installation and usage instructions for specialized utilities like the Array Monitor Daemon (AMD) for error notifications, the Parity Check/Repair utility for maintaining data integrity, and the RAID Status Utility for displaying current system status.
7. Appendices: Provide technical information such as SCSI-2 status codes, SCSI sense keys, DPT Host Adapter error codes, and a glossary of terms.

The guide emphasizes the importance of data backup before making configuration changes, as most modifications to logical unit parameters result in data loss.