praid.exe is a scriptable executable program that offers a single user interface for both configuring and replicating all RAID controllers supported by ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit.
PRAID works with both the 32- and 64-bit versions of the Windows Preinstallation Environment.
PRAID has three modes of operation:
- Deploy mode for scripted configuration of RAID controllers.
- Capture mode for replicating RAID controller settings.
- Restore-defaults mode for resetting RAID controllers to factory-default settings only.
Deploy mode
Used in Deploy mode, PRAID offers the following features:
- Configures all RAID controllers in a server with a single call to the program.
- Automatically resets all RAID controllers to factory-default settings before configuring.
- Uses customizable logic to decide which configuration (policy) is applied to a server based on system hardware. The logic can involve:
- Machine type of the server
- Serial number of the server
- Number of drives connected to the RAID controller
- RAID controller type
- Controller number (order) of the RAID controller
- Can be highly customized for specific RAID configurations, or highly generalized to handle many different RAID configurations.
- Provides a default or AUTO mode for automatically creating arrays and logical drives by using default settings. This mode requires no knowledge of the number, size, or location of the drives connected to the RAID controllers.
- Automatically applies default values for any RAID configuration parameters that you do not supply. You supply only the parameters that you want to change.
- Default values for each configuration parameter are equivalent to the default settings of the ServeRAID Manager express configuration method, where applicable.
- Allows up to 50 policies for configuring RAID controllers to be specified in a single policies file.
Note: When you use PRAID in Deploy mode, you must use the /r parameter.
To delete RAID configuration on all controllers, specify /r. To delete RAID configuration on a specific controller, specify /r# where # is the controller number.
For example, praid /f:policiy.ini /r /y.
Capture mode
Used in Capture mode, PRAID offers the following features:
- Captures the RAID configurations of all supported controllers to the policies file, a text file, with a common format.
- Captured RAID configurations can be immediately used with PRAID in Deploy mode to easily replicate the RAID configuration to many servers.
- Allows customizable logic when saving the captured parameters to determine when each captured configuration should be deployed.
- Saves useful information about each captured configuration, including the system machine type, date, and time when the configuration was captured.
- Allows you to edit any RAID configurations that you capture before deploying them to other systems.
Restore-defaults mode
Used in Restore-defaults mode, PRAID offers the following features:
- Deletes all arrays and logical drives on all RAID controllers.
- Sets other RAID controller settings back to factory defaults.