Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) LED Management Capabilities for Windows*

May. 19, 2025

Category:Article ID:000101209Environment:Intel® VROC for Windows*Date:5/19/25

The following information outlines the LED management features and functionality supported by Intel® VROC, including the Intel® VROC sub-products: Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID), Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) and Intel® VROC (Non-VMD NVMe* RAID). To learn about specific features supported by each Intel® VROC sub-product, refer to the following resources:

Intel® VROC Features

LED management is one of the features of the Intel® VROC family of products. To learn about other features of Intel® VROC, refer to the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Technical Product Specification for Windows*.

The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to perform basic LED management of the status LEDs within SFF-8485 (or equivalent) compliant backplane and with the blink patterns as defined in SFF-8489.

Intel® VROC LED management provides the capability to configure different LED behaviors for each of the supported controller configurations:

NVMe* LED management via the Intel® Volume Management Device (Intel® VMD) controller.
SATA LED management via the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) controller (SATA/sSATA/tSATA) in RAID mode.

For the platform, the PCH supports LED management through SGPIO signaling.

The LEDs management capabilities are outlined as follows:

Event	Behavior	Configuration Options	Default Setting
Activate LED	The ability to identify a specific device in an enclosure by blinking the status LED of that drive in the defined Locate pattern. The duration of this Locate pattern can be customized to meet the customers’ needs.	Adjustable time of blinking. The range can be from 1 to 3600 seconds. Any value entered that falls outside of this range will automatically be interpreted as 12 seconds.	12 seconds
Drive Fails	The ability to identify a drive that is in a failed state by illuminating the status LED of that device in a defined Fail pattern. This applies to RAID volumes in a degraded or failed state. A drive is generally marked as failed (causing the Fail LED light to illuminate) when communication to that drive has been interrupted and recovery attempts have failed to reestablish a connection. Some examples of (and by no means all) conditions that can cause a drive to be marked as failed are: Signal errors on the line. Drive has stopped responding. The drive Bad Block Management table is full.	The Fail pattern will be illuminated as follows: Option 1: From the time a failed drive is identified until it is: physically removed, or the RAID volume that contains the failed drive is either deleted or physically removed. Option 2: From the time a non-failed drive that is part of a RAID volume is removed, or failed drive is identified and removed. Until: a new drive is inserted into the same slot the failed drive resided in, or the platform is rebooted.	Option 1
Managed Unplug	When a managed hot-unplug is being administered, the status LED of that drive will blink in the defined Locate pattern until the drive is physically ejected.	None	Enabled
RAID Volume Initialization or Verify and Repair Process	When a RAID volume is in either the Initialization or Verify and Repair processes, the status LEDs will blink in the defined Rebuild pattern on all drives in the RAID volume until the process completes.	Enabled: Status LEDs will blink in the Rebuild pattern. Disabled: Status LEDs will not blink.	Enabled
RAID Volume Rebuilding Options	When a RAID volume is in a Rebuild state, the status LED(s) will blink in the defined Rebuild pattern on either the specific drive being rebuilt or on the entire RAID volume rebuilt.	Disabled: Only on one drive. Enabled: On all drives.	Disabled
RAID Volume is Migrating	When a RAID volume migration is in process, the status LEDs will blink in the defined Rebuild pattern on all drives until the process is complete.	Disabled: No status LED blinking. Enabled: Blinks status LEDs.	Enabled

It is left to the administrator making the changes to know how to open the Windows* Registry Editor, modify the entries, and properly save the updates. These options are available and can be customized via the Windows* registry with the following keys.

Note that the registry key line items below are an example for the SATA controller. For the sSATA controller, change to \iaStorB\, for the tSATA controller, change to \iaStorT\, and for the Intel® Volume Management Device (Intel® VMD) controller supporting NVMe* devices, change to \iaVROC\. The settings for each keys below are the same for all controllers.

The registry key that is used to set the activate the Locate LED blink pattern duration is LedLocateTimeout:
- HKLM, System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorE\Parameters\Device, LedLocateTimeout, %REG_TYPE_DWORD%, 0x0000000C
- The value entered for this registry key is in hexadecimal. In this example, 0x0000000C is translated to 12 seconds.
The registry key that is used to customize the drive fails behavior is LedFaultOnEmptyPortBehavior:
- HKLM, System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorE\Parameters\Device, LedFaultOnEmptyPortBehavior, %REG_TYPE_DWORD%, 0x00000000
- This registry key set to a value of 0x00000000 will select configuration option 1. The value of 0x00000001 will select configuration option 2.
The registry key that is used to customize the RAID volume Initialization or Verify and Repair process settings is LedBehaviorForInitilazing:
- HKLM, System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorE\Parameters\Device, LedBehaviorForInitilazing, %REG_TYPE_DWORD%, 0x00000001
- This registry key set to a value of 0x00000000 will disable this configuration option. The value of 0x00000001 will enable this option.
The register key that is used to customize the RAID volume Rebuilding options settings is LedBehaviorForRebuilding:
- HKLM, System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorE\Parameters\Device, LedBehaviorForRebuilding, %REG_TYPE_DWORD%, 0x00000000
- This registry key set to a value of 0x00000000 will disable this configuration option and set the LED behavior to blink the drive that is being rebuilt. This registry key set to a value of 0x00000001 will enable this configuration option and will blink all the status LEDs of the RAID volume being rebuilt.
The registry key that is used to customize the configuration option for the RAID volume that is migrating is LedBehaviorForMigrating:
- HKLM, System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorE\Parameters\Device, LedBehaviorForMigrating, %REG_TYPE_DWORD%, 0x00000001
- This registry key set to a value of 0x00000001 will enable this configuration option to blink the status LEDs in a Rebuild pattern while the RAID volume is migrated. This registry key set to a value of 0x00000000 will disable this configuration options and the status LEDs will not blink during a RAID volume migration.

Notes

Intel® VROC LED Management only applies to drives that reside within a supported drive backplane (NVMe* and/or SATA). Drives that are connected either by an I/O cable, PCIe add-in card or plugged directly into the motherboard (M.2) will not have LED management support.
Intel® VROC LED Management does not include drive activity LED management.

Failed Drive Indicator

When a member drive of a RAID volume is marked as failed, the Intel® VROC Graphical User Interface (GUI) application will indicate that the disk is failed and, if applicable, set the status LED to a failed state.

Activate LED

The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to blink the status LED on the specific drive when the Activate LED link is selected in the Intel® VROC GUI application.

The assumption is made that the platform is properly configured with an enclosure that supports LED management.

Start the Intel® VROC GUI application (run as administrator).
From the Home screen, in the Devices pane, select the device and navigate to the Disk Properties pane to run Verify and Repair on. In the Volume Properties pane, click on Verify by Verification details.
Locate the Activate LED link and click on the link. View the status LED of the enclosure blink in the pattern specified by SFF-8489.

For the SATA/sSATA/tSATA controller, LED management is only supported when these controllers are in RAID mode.

Rebuild LED

The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to blink the status LEDs on all drives that are members of the degraded RAID volume as part of the RAID rebuild process. This occurs automatically on supported platforms and no user interaction is required.

LED Patterns Conflict Precedence

When two or more different LED patterns are applicable to the same drive, the Intel® VROC driver for Windows* shall apply the following order in terms of precedence:

Locate LED pattern.
Fault LED pattern.
RAID Rebuild LED pattern.

LED Management on PCH-VMD

There are two PCIe ports designed and controlled under the Server platform PCH, since Emmitsburg.

UEFI LED Management

The Intel® VROC family of products supports LED management within the UEFI environment. This includes Locate, Rebuild and Fail patterns. The LED management in the UEFI environment will only support the default values specified in the table above. Any changes that are made to the configuration in the operating system environment will not be reflected in the UEFI environment. This means that the LED behavior seen in the UEFI environment may be different from what is seen in the operating system environment (if the default values have been modified). The ability to initiate the Locate option is available in the Intel® VROC UEFI HII interface. Rebuild and Fail blink patters will occur automatically based on the condition of the RAID volume state or member drives state.

When performing the Locate functionality in the UEFI environment, the process is to manually activate and then manually disable. The LED will continue to blink until the process is manually stopped.