Physical Disk Mark Hot Spare
In QuantaStor, the "Mark Universal Storage Pool Hot-Spare" feature is used to designate a storage device as a hot spare within a Universal Storage Pool (USP). A hot spare is a standby device that remains unused until an active device within the pool fails or becomes unavailable. When a failure occurs, the hot spare is automatically brought into operation, replacing the failed device and helping to maintain the availability and performance of the storage pool.
This marks the specified disk for use as a Universal hot-spare by ZFS based storage pools. Universal spares can be used by any storage pool in the appliance and when you have multiple appliances connected to shared SAS storage then universal spares can be shared across pools across appliances.
The purpose of marking a storage device as a hot spare in a Universal Storage Pool is to enhance the fault tolerance and resiliency of the storage infrastructure. Some key points to consider are:
- Automatic failover: When a device failure occurs within the Universal Storage Pool, the hot spare is automatically activated as a replacement. This helps to minimize downtime and ensures that data access and storage operations can continue without interruption.
- Faster recovery: By having a hot spare readily available, the recovery process is accelerated as there is no need for manual intervention to assign a replacement device. The system detects the failed device and automatically utilizes the hot spare, reducing the time required to restore the pool's redundancy and ensuring data integrity.
- Improved reliability: The presence of a hot spare increases the fault tolerance and reliability of the storage pool. In the event of a device failure, the hot spare acts as a backup, allowing the pool to maintain its desired level of redundancy and protecting against data loss.
By designating a storage device as a hot spare within a Universal Storage Pool, you proactively prepare for device failures and strengthen the resilience of your storage infrastructure. It's important to ensure that the hot spare device is of the same type and meets the necessary specifications to effectively replace the failed device within the pool.
Navigation: Storage Management --> Physical Disks --> [Disk intended as hot spare] --> Mark as Hot-Spare... (rightclick)
