An effective management application allows a remote administrator to query the RAID system and to gather vital statistics about the performance and health of the system. Information such as the status of the drives, the rebuilding status of a new drive and error conditions, as well as detailed performance data, give new insights into the disk array. Indicators and status information are often taken for granted but are nonetheless important. Minimally, there should be some visible indication of the status of each drive and of the array itself. This alerting mechanism can be as simple as green and red LEDs.
Some systems use an LCD panel that gives detailed information about the unit.
This is important for two reasons. First, if a computer is unavailable, the status of the disk array can be determined easily. Second, if a drive or other component does need replacing, the service technician or tech support engineer will be able to determine which drive needs to be replaced, thus reducing the chance that the wrong drive will be removed. Expanding The Capacity Of RAID The ability to dynamically expand the capacity of your RAID system while keeping the system online and accessible to the end users is one of the newest RAID features. Both Compaq and Storage Dimensions have added this capability to their arsenals of features.