Creating, attaching, and protecting volumes with local replication for configuring LUN paths

Create parity groups.
Create pools.
Add servers.

On the Ops Center Administrator dashboard, click Servers to see the inventory of servers.
Select a Fibre or iSCSI server, click Actions > Attach Volumes > Create, Attach, and Protect Volumes with Local Replication.
Configure volumes for the specified storage system.
You can switch to another storage system by using the Storage System list. To add the volume to a virtual storage machine, use the Virtual Storage Machine list.
1. Select the number of volumes.
2. Enter the volume label and select a suffix for it.
3. Select the volume size.
4. Select the volume unit: GiB, TiB, or Blocks.
5. (Optional) Select a Volume ID Range to specify one for the new volume for granular management of volumes. For instance, for ease of management, you can assign a certain range of IDs to certain departments in your organization. ID ranges can be specified in Decimal or Hexadecimal. The default selection is Auto, which means that Ops Center Administrator automatically selects the ID for the volume. You can also specify a Virtual ID / Range.
6. Select the pool type: Thin or Tiered.
7. For a Thin pool, select the pool tier: Diamond, Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze.
  If the storage system has available capacity from external storage, you can also select the External tier.
8. (Optional) Select the pool from the list of available pools. The default selection is Auto Selected, which means that Ops Center Administrator selects the best pool for provisioning the volume based on utilization and tier requirements.
  
  Note: DDM pools are not available and cannot be used to create volumes.
9. Optionally, select a type of Capacity Saving: Compression or Deduplication and Compression.
  Note: You can set capacity saving for volumes based on tiered pools for the following storage systems:
  - VSP 5000 series
  - VSP G1x00, F1500 with microcode version 80-05-4x or later.
  Note: If you choose Deduplication and Compression and later want to update the volume to Compression you must first disable Capacity Saving.
10. (Optional) For a tiered pool, select the Tiering Policy from the list. Tiering policy choices available in the list depend on the choice of pool that was made in the previous step. Tiering policy choice is not available for auto-selected pools.
When you have made your choices, click the plus sign (+) to add a volume row to the list of volumes being created. Add more rows as needed.
Click Next to attach volumes to the selected servers.
The Host Mode is set by default to the server operating system. You can make a selection if needed.
The server OS Type is provided when the server is added to Ops Center Administrator.
The prepopulated Host Mode Option depends on the Host Mode selection. The default Host Mode Option can be changed manually.
Default values are set only for VMWARE EX and WIN EX host modes. The default for all other Host Modes is none.

Ops Center Administrator identifies all host groups containing any of the server WWNs. If all of those host groups have the same host mode and host mode options, those settings are prepopulated with the same settings in the host groups.
Select Mandate LUN Alignment.
This option specifies whether to assign the same LUN number to multiple servers for a volume. If Yes is specified, the same LUN number is always assigned, and if No is specified, the same value is not necessarily used. If the volumes is attaching to only one server, this setting has no effect.
The Auto Create Zone is set to No by default, which means that no auto-zone is created. You can set it to Yes to automatically create zones.

Physical connections must be available on the switch. If these exist, Ops Center Administrator creates an auto-zone between the ports you selected in the Attach Volumes window.

Note: If there was already a zone connected between those two ports, an existing zone is used. (A new one will not be created.)
You can confirm which Volume IDs will be used by clicking View Proposed Volume ID Selection.
To mandate using volume IDs shown in pop-up dialog, select Yes under Mandate Using Displayed Volume ID.
Note: The Mandate Using Displayed Volume ID selection will be reset to No if you move back to the previous step.
Click Next to view options for creating and editing LUN paths. The displayed path configuration of the Path Settings window depends on the selected Host Mode and Host Mode Option set in the Attach Settings window.
In the Path Settings window, you can view servers and their WWNs, along with ports on the storage system. Ops Center Administrator scans for existing host groups on the storage array and try to reuse them by default.
For VSP 5000 series storage systems, you can click a port to display a list of ports with their DKC locations, CTL locations, and redundancy levels.
The following options are available for managing LUN paths:
- If you connect more than one server to the same port, the Share a host group with all servers box displays. Select the box to add the servers to a single host group.
- Note: If host groups already exist on that port and a single host group cannot be created, the check box will not appear.
  
  Existing paths are populated as follows: all existing host groups with one or more server WWN and the exact same host mode and host mode options selected in the Attach Settings window are populated as paths.
  
  To prevent the volume from being added to an existing path, click the existing path to remove it.
- Click Suggest to populate automatically selected paths. By default, the least-used ports are selected. Suggest paths need both server and storage ports to be logged into the fabric switches in the Ops Center Administrator inventory.
  Note: For VSP 5000 series storage systems, the first port suggested has the fewest LUN definitions and the second port suggested has the fewest number of LUNs in the highest redundancy level.
- To manually create a path, click WWNs to select them and click a port to connect those with a blue connector lines. To delete the connection, click the connector again.
- Optionally, you can click Switch View to use tables to create paths by selecting Server Ports to attach to Storage Ports.
When you are satisfied with the paths, click Next to view options for protecting volumes.
Click Next to continue to the optional Operation Plan step, you can confirm settings specified in each window and can confirm the resources to be used in the job, including LUN candidates.

Note: To view the plan summary page, limit the number of LUN Paths to 5000.
You can specify the LUN range for volumes in the LUN Settings pop up window which is launched by clicking LUN Settings above the Planned Path Configuration table.
You can make it mandatory to use the LUNs displayed in the table by specifying Yes to Mandate Using Displayed LUN.
When you are satisfied with all the settings, click Submit.