Provisioning

The advanced provisioning software products and features of the storage systems enable you to implement the appropriate provisioning strategies for your operational environment and improve performance and capacity utilization. Dynamic Provisioning allows you to reserve virtual storage capacity based on anticipated future capacity needs using virtual volumes instead of physical disk capacity, providing lower initial cost, greater efficiency, and ease of storage management.

Child Topics
  • Introduction to provisioning

    There are several provisioning strategies that you can implement on your storage system to solve business requirements. Provisioning your storage system requires balancing the costs of the solution with the benefits that the solution provides.

  • Managing virtual storage machine resources

    The virtual storage machine is the unit that is used to manage virtualized resources for each storage system. For software with global storage virtualization functions (for example, global-active device, nondisruptive migration), a virtual storage machine is created in the storage system.

  • Creating resource groups and managing storage system resources

    You can divide a provisioned storage system into resource groups that allow you to manage the storage system as multiple virtual private storage systems. Configuring resource groups involves creating resource groups, moving storage system resources into the resource groups, and assigning resource groups to user groups.

  • Configuring custom-sized provisioning

    Configuring custom-sized provisioning involves creating and configuring custom-size volumes (CVs). CVs are created by dividing a fixed-sized volume (FV) into several smaller volumes of arbitrary sizes.

  • Configuring thin provisioning

    Thin provisioning technology allows you to allocate virtual storage capacity based on anticipated future capacity needs, using virtual volumes instead of physical disks. Thin provisioning is an optional provisioning strategy for your storage systems. Thin provisioning is implemented by creating one or more Dynamic Provisioning pools (DP pools) of physical storage space.

  • Protecting volumes using Data Retention Utility

    After provisioning your system, you can assign access attributes to open-system volumes to protect the volumes against read, write, and copy operations and to prevent users from configuring LU paths and command devices. Data Retention Utility software is required to assign access attributes to volumes.

  • Managing logical volumes

    After provisioning your system, you can begin to manage open-system logical volumes. Managing logical volumes includes tasks such as configuring hosts and ports, configuring LU paths, setting LUN security on ports, and setting up Fibre Channel authentication. LUN Manager is required to manage logical volumes.

  • Working with ALUs and SLUs for vSphere VVOL

    The storage systems can be integrated with a VMware® ESXi host or VMware® vCenter Server by Storage Provider for VMware vCenter, which provides support for vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA). Snapshot and replication functions are used in storage systems that are configured with Administrative Logical Units (ALUs) and Subsidiary Logical Units (SLUs).

  • Troubleshooting for provisioning

    Troubleshooting for provisioning operations involves identifying the cause of the error and resolving the problem. For information about the error messages displayed by Device Manager - Storage Navigator, see Device Manager - Storage Navigator Messages. If you are unable to solve a problem, please contact customer support.

  • CCI command reference for provisioning

    Provisioning tasks can be performed using Device Manager - Storage Navigator and Command Control Interface (CCI).

  • Guidelines for pools when accelerated compression is enabled

    You must follow specific guidelines for sizing, creating, and maintaining a pool that uses LDEVs carved from parity groups with accelerated compression enabled.

  • Resource Partition Manager GUI reference

    The Resource Partition Manager windows in Device Manager - Storage Navigator display the resource group information for the storage system and allow you to create, configure, and delete resource groups.

  • LDEV GUI reference

    The Device Manager - Storage Navigator windows display the logical device (LDEV) information for the storage system and allow you to configure and manage LDEVs.

  • Dynamic Provisioning, Dynamic Tiering, and active flash GUI reference

    The Dynamic Provisioning and Dynamic Tiering windows in Device Manager - Storage Navigator display the Dynamic Provisioning and Dynamic Tiering information for the storage system and allow you to perform Dynamic Provisioning and Dynamic Tiering operations.

  • Data Retention Utility GUI reference

    The Data Retention Utility windows in Device Manager - Storage Navigator display the Data Retention Utility information for the storage system and allow you to perform Data Retention Utility operations.

  • LUN Manager GUI reference

    The LUN Manager windows in Device Manager - Storage Navigator display the LUN information for the storage system and allow you to configure and manage LUNs.