Introduction to BOSS-S1
The BOSS-S1 card is a simple RAID solution card that supports up to two 6 Gbps M.2 SATA devices. The card also offers support for enterprise-level storage, non-RAID disk support with one or two devices, and scalable capacity.
High-level specifications:
- Provides simple RAID 1 solution
- Supports non-RAID disks
- System Management features enabled with A01 release
Supported Platforms:
- PowerEdge R740/R740xd
- PowerEdge R640
- PowerEdge R940
- PowerEdge C6400
- PowerEdge C6420
- PowerEdge R440
- PowerEdge T440
- PowerEdge T640
- PowerEdge R540
- PowerEdge M640
PowerEdge FC640 Form Factors:
- The BOSS card is available only in the half-length and half-height form factor.
You can configure the RAID system, create and manage disk group by using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) RAID Configuration Utility.
BOSS-S1 card features
The BOSS-S1 card offers the following high level features:
Foreign Import
A virtual disk is considered foreign if it is not native to the adapter.
- A virtual disk is considered native to the adapter if:
The virtual disk was created or imported on the adapter.
A physical disk is considered native to the adapter if:
There is no previous virtual disk metadata on the adapter and the physical disk(s) are unconfigured.
All configured virtual disk(s) on the physical disk(s) are deleted
SMART Info
SMART monitors certain physical aspects of all motors, heads, and physical disk electronics to help detect predictable physical disk failures. Data on SMART-compliant physical disks can be monitored to identify changes in values and determine whether the values are within threshold limits. Many SSD (M.2 form factor) or electrical failure displays some degradation in performance before failure.
Auto-Rebuild
A virtual disk rebuild will begin on system boot automatically if the native virtual disk is degraded and a valid rebuild target is present. A valid rebuild target is any functional drive attached to the BOSS-S1 device which is not part of the native virtual disk and is of equal or greater storage capacity. An auto-rebuild occurs without prompting the user, and any data on the rebuild target is overwritten.
Non-RAID disks support
By default, all disks are in un-configured state.
NOTE: For BOSS-S1, un-configured drives are automatically non-RAID drives. To convert RAID drives to non-RAID drives, delete the virtual disk
NOTE: BOSS only supports 1 configured (RAID) and 2 un-configured states. BOSS does not support break mirror for RAID1.
NOTE: Mixing of drives configured with RAID1 and non-RAID disks is not supported.
Physical disk erase
The BOSS-S1 card supports erasing a physical disk using the UEFI configuration utility. For more information about erasing the physical disk, see the BOSS-S1 User’s Guide at Dell.com/storagecontrollermanuals.
Documentation
BOSS-S1 User's Guide
Reference Links