Physical Disk

Each instance of this class represents a hard drive detected on the platform by BPM Express for Hardware. Its purpose is to monitor the status of each hard drive and possibly detect an incoming failure.

Physical disks must be monitored to avoid loss of data, un-availabilities and performance degradation. When available, S.M.A.R.T technology will be used to predict a disk failure before it occurs. Depending on the available information, the Predicted Failure and/or Status parameters will be displayed for each discovered physical disk:

●The Predicted Failure parameter uses S.M.A.R.T technology to predict physical disk failures. An alert will be triggered if it is predicted that the physical disk will soon break down. The Status parameter represents the current status of the physical disk. An alert is triggered if the physical disk is not available for proper operation.

●The Error Count parameter is incremented each time an error occurs on this physical disk. An alert is raised by the Status parameter from the first detected error. The Status parameter represents the overall status of the physical disk and triggers an alert is triggered if the physical disk is not available for proper operation or if any of the other parameters breach their thresholds.

●The Status parameter represents the overall status of the physical disk. It triggers an alert if the physical disk is missing or if any of the other parameters have breached their thresholds. It is only Status that will trigger and display the alerts. When all is fine, Status shows “OK”, and when there is a problem, it shows “Warning!” or “Alarm!!” with a detailed description of the issue, its consequences and recommended actions. The alert conditions for Status are: “!”=Warning; “!!”=Alarm

The "Status" parameter reports an Alarm if the "Error Count" parameter is greater than zero (that is: the disk encountered some errors). Since the counter is reset every 24th hour, the corresponding alert on the "Status" parameter will automatically be cleared after 24 hours. This mechanism enables BPM Express for Hardware/Portal to report pure event-driven alerts with no need for manual acknowledgement from the operators.

Name	Description	Unit	Alert Conditions
Error Count	Displays the number of errors encountered by the physical disk.	Errors	n/a
Locator	Helps to physically locate a component.	n/a	n/a
Predicted Failure	Triggers information if a failure is expected.	n/a	n/a
Status	Status of the physical disk. Example: “OK” or “Alarm!! This disk is not detected anymore”.	Values: OK; Warning; Alarm	Warning = “!” Alarm = “

Example

If BPM Express for Hardware detects that manufacturer-specified thresholds for the physical disk have been breached, the Status parameter will report “Warning! This physical disk is degraded/is about to fail” or “Alarm! This disk is not detected anymore", or as the case may be. The history graph shows the exact details of the problem, its consequences and recommended actions.