Spare drives and copy-back mode

Spare drives are mounted separately from the data drives that are used for host read and write operations. If a failure occurs in a data drive, data is copied to a spare drive so that the storage system can continue to be available to hosts.

Copy-back mode determines whether the data on a spare drive is returned to a data drive after recovery. If copy-back mode is enabled, when a failed drive is recovered, data is moved from the spare drive to the recovered drive. If copy-back mode is disabled, when a failed drive is recovered, data is left on the spare drive. You can enable or disable copy-back mode for each parity group.

The following maximum number of spare drives can be specified for each storage system:

• VSP G200: 16
• VSP G400, G600: 32
• VSP G800: 64

Parent Topic

• Configuring custom-sized provisioning

  Configuring custom-sized provisioning involves creating and configuring custom-size volumes (CVs). CVs are created by dividing a fixed-sized volume (FV) into several smaller volumes of arbitrary sizes.

Child Topics

• Assigning spare drives

  Spare drives are used to store data if a data drive fails.

• Releasing spare drives

  You can release spare drives so they can be used as data drives.

• Editing copy-back mode

  Copy-back mode determines whether data on spare drives is restored after a failed drive is recovered.