The Array Manager console provides a graphical way to see all the objects in your system. The Array Manager console display shows a tree view on the left and an expanded view of a selected tree view item on the right.
Array Manager allows you to customize your console layout and make a custom product that is more convenient to use. You can add or remove display categories, customize headers, resize columns, and change colors of the graphical layout.
The Array Manager console display has the following features:
A tree view displaying the storage objects in the left pane of the window.
Tabbed views in the right pane that contain additional information on storage objects.
If you are viewing Array Manager running on an NT 4.0 computer, you will see two tabbed views in the right pane, General and Events, as shown in the screen below.
On the other hand, on a Windows 2000 Array Manager console screen, four tabbed views appear: General, Events, Disk View, and DM View, as shown in the screen that follows.
For more detail on the tabbed views, see the topic The Right Pane later in this chapter.
Note: For NetWare® users, the Array Manager console provides a
graphical way to see other NetWare servers and storage objects.
Because Array Manager does not support creating dynamic volumes on
NetWare servers, you will not see the Disks and Volumes storage
objects in the console view of those servers.
The left pane shows the objects detected by the Array Manager software. In the example screen below, the local computer object, DELL4, is at the top. The other major storage objects are Arrays, Disks, and Volumes. By clicking the plus sign (+) in front of a storage object, you can see the subordinate storage objects under that object.
Disks represent the disks recognized by the Microsoft® Windows NT® or Windows® 2000 operating system. This can include regular hard disks, CD-ROM drives and other removable media, and virtual disks created through Array Manager.
Volumes include dynamic RAID volumes created in Array Manager, primary and extended partitions, logical drives associated with extended partitions, and RAID volumes created in NT 4.0 Disk Administrator.
Array Manager uses History to store a list of the most recent connections made from the computer. You may want to delete some computer names from the History list. To delete a computer name from the History list, right-click the name and select Remove Computer from the context menu that appears.
You can use the Favorites option for easy storage and retrieval of frequently used computer names. The Favorites option lets you display and retrieve NetWare server names, as well as other computers.
The right pane identifies the various objects and their status, and displays any error conditions that may exist. The screen below shows the right-pane console view on a Windows NT 4.0 console with its two tabbed views, General and Events.
The four tabbed views in the Windows 2000 right-pane console view are shown in the following screen. It includes the General, Events, Disk View, and DM View tabs.
The sections that follow describe the right pane's four tabbed views:
The objects you select in the console's tree view determine what parameters display in the right pane's General tab. The parameters are briefly discussed as follows:
Name — The name of the object.
Status — This can vary, depending on the object. Common Status conditions are Online, Healthy, and Resynching. If Status shows as Failed, refer to the Array Disk Status Information in the Troubleshooting chapter.
Type — Identifies the object, such as Array Disk.
Disk Group — Shows an entry for disks in a basic or dynamic group.
Capacity — The maximum size of the disk.
Unallocated Space — The amount of free disk space still available.
Graphical Layout — How much of the disk is being used.
Progress — The current progress (percentage of completion) for tasks.
Device — The type of disk: SCSI, IDE, etc.
Port — Identifies the controller card. A SCSI port has zero or more target IDs, and a target ID has one or more LUNs.
LUN — Logical Unit Number.
Target — SCSI ID, which uniquely identifies the disk on the controller card.
Vendor — Identifies vendor on hardware objects.
You can change the sort order of columns. First, click on a header, such as Name, and either an up or down arrow will display (indicating the current sort of the column—ascending or descending). Then click on the arrow to reverse the sort. The arrow appears only for a short time. You can also right-click on a header and the context menu that comes up has commands for ascending and descending sort. If you left-click or right-click on a header and do not get the sort arrow or the sort menu commands, the column most likely is not sortable because it contains storage objects that are displayed in a hierarchical order.
You will see the Disk View tab only on the Windows 2000 console. It will not appear if you are running Array Manager on a Windows NT 4.0 machine. The Disk View tab displays a view similar to that in Disk Administrator in Windows NT 4.0 and Disk Management in Windows 2000. It has a graphical layout of the disks on your system, including CD-ROMs or other removable media. As with the tree view and General tab view, right-clicking on an object or portion of the window relating to an object brings up a context menu that has commands related to the object.
The DM View tab appears only on the Windows 2000 console. You will not see this tab if you are running Array Manager on a Windows NT 4.0 machine.The DM View tab displays the information for the Windows 2000 Disk Management snap-in, which is also called LDM (Logical Disk Manager). Disk Management is the built-in disk and volume manager that comes with Windows 2000.
The DM View tab is grayed out in an Array Manager console when it is connected to a local or remote Array Manager for Windows 2000 server machine. That is because Array Manager for Windows 2000 and Disk Management cannot run on the same computer. Array Manager for Windows 2000 is an upgrade that replaces the Disk Management product during installation. For details, see the section More on the Array Manager and Disk Management Relationship at the end of the Overview chapter.
The reason that the DM View tab exists on the Windows 2000 console is that you can remotely connect from a Windows 2000 console to a server with Disk Management. Once you make the connection to the server with Disk Management, the DM View will become active. Because Array Manager for Windows 2000 and Disk Management are related products, you can connect to the server with Disk Management and view and manage its storage. Refer to the Windows 2000 Disk Management online help for details on how the function works.
To customize the Array Manager console display, you can add or remove categories, customize headers, resize columns, and change the colors in the graphical layout. Topics in this section include:
The default Array Manager console view shows three categories: Arrays, Disks, and Volumes. (NetWare users will see only Arrays.) You can configure this view to show what you want to view and manage. For example, if you are interested primarily in looking at hardware, you can add a hardware category and then select the hardware objects you want to see. You can add more than one kind of object to a category, so a hardware category can contain battery, power supply, and fan objects.
Highlight an object in the left pane of the console.
In the right pane, right-click in one of the column headings, such as Name.
Select Customize header.
A dialog box comes up with two panes:
Hide columns on the left
Visible columns and order on the right
Add and Remove buttons are provided to allow you to move the column headers provided by the program between each pane.
Use the Add or Remove buttons to move the column headers you want to the Visible columns and order pane. Once the desired headers are moved to the right pane, you can change their order with the Move Up and Move Down buttons.
Note: You can also change the order of the column headers by
dragging a header to the right or the left in the General tab view.
The color preference option allows you to select how you want to view particular items in the graphical layout, such as RAID-5 volumes, mirrored disks, and other managed objects.
*Offers subject to change. Taxes, shipping, handling and other fees apply. U.S. Dell Small Business new purchases only. LIMIT 5 DISCOUNTED OR PROMOTIONAL ITEMS PER CUSTOMER. LIMIT 5 VOSTRO OR INSPIRON UNITS PER CUSTOMER. Dell reserves right to cancel orders arising from pricing or other errors.
