Creating a pool, advanced method

Ops Center Administrator User Guide

Version

10.9.x

File Size

6.6 MB

Audience

anonymous

Part Number

MK-99ADM001-17

You can use the advanced method of pool creation to select parity groups filtered by disk type, speed, layout, and RAID level. This method does not use best practices.

Note: Best practice is not to mix different disk types in a Thin pool. If you choose to create such a pool, Ops Center Administrator identifies the tier in this pool as "mixed".

Create and configure parity groups on the storage system.
License requirements:
- For a Dynamic Tiering pool: Dynamic Tiering
- For a Thin pool: Dynamic Provisioning
- For a Thin Image pool: Thin Image
- For active flash: active flash

On the Ops Center Administrator dashboard, click Storage Systems to see the inventory of registered storage systems.
Click a storage system to create a pool for it.
Click Pools.
Click the plus sign (+) to open the Create Pool window, then click Advanced.
Enter a Pool Name.
Pool names can contain alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and underscores only. Initial hyphens are not allowed.
To use the pool to migrate volumes greater than 4 TiB, select Yes under ENABLE DDM?.
Click the Type list and choose one of the following: Thin, Tiered, or Snap. You can create snapshots on DP pools and on Snap pools.

The following options are available for a tiered pool :
- Tiering: Select Automatic or Manual monitoring and tier relocation.
- Cycle Time: Select the cycle of performance monitoring and tier relocation. For automatic tiering, select one of the monitoring cycles from drop down. Cycle time can be 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 or 24 hours.
- Monitoring Period: When you select 24 hours as the cycle time, specify the time from 00:00 to 23:59 (default value) in which to perform the performance monitoring. Set one or more hours between the start and end time. The start time cannot be later than the end time.
- Monitoring: Specifies the monitoring mode. If you perform the tier relocation weighted to the past period monitoring result, select Continuous. If you perform the tier relocation on the specified cycle, select Periodical.
- Relocation Speed: Specifies the window relocation speed. You can set the speed to: 1 (Slowest), 2 (Slower), 3 (Standard), 4 (Faster), or 5 (Fastest). The default is 3 (Standard). If the speed specified is slower than 3 (Standard), the data drive load is low when tier relocation is performed.
- Buffer Space for Relocation: Specifies the storage area required for processing tier relocation. Set this as percentage of the tier size. For each tier enter an integer value from 2 to 40 as the percentage to set for that tier. The default value for each tier is 2%.
- Buffer Space for New Page Assignment: Specifies the storage area required for processing new page assignments. Set this as a percentage of the tier size. For each tier enter an integer value from 0 to 50 as the percentage to set for that tier. For tier 1, this value must be between 0 and 50. The default value is 8% for all drive types.
Note: Tiering, Cycle Time, Monitoring Period and Relocation Speed can only be set in environments with an SVP.
Choose whether to enable active flash, which needs capacity from the Platinum or Diamond tier.
Click Tier Management to see the definitions of disk type, and speed of each pool category.
Select one or more parity groups to use when creating the pool. External parity groups can also be used. You can scroll through the parity groups or use the search and filter functions.
- For a Snap pool, select one or more parity groups with identical disk types.
- For a Thin pool, select one or more parity groups with identical disk types.
- For a Tiered pool, select one or more parity groups with two or three disk types.
Ops Center Administrator shows the total size of the pool using the selected parity groups.
Set the utilization thresholds or use the default threshold settings.
The thresholds specify the Warning and Critical thresholds for Capacity Monitoring.
If you are creating an HDP pool you can also choose to permanently suspend snapshots when usage exceeds the Critical threshold to reserve capacity for user data. If the threshold is exceeded, the pairs are suspended (PSUE) and the S-VOLs cannot accept read-write processes. You can still write to P-VOLs. If this option is selected, a message displays in the Utilization graph in the detail window for the pool.
Note: This option is available for the following storage systems:
- VSP 5000 series
- VSP E series
- VSP G1x00, F1500 with microcode version 80-05-4x and later.
- VSP G200, G/F400, G/F600, G/F800 with firmware version 83-04-4x and later.
- VSP G/F350, G/F370, G/F700, G/F900
- VSP N400, N600, N800
The subscription limit can be set higher than 100%. To set the limit to Unlimited, select the Subscription Limit % check box.
Note: Subscription Limit % is not applicable to Snap pools or to the following storage systems:
- VSP 5000 series with firmware versions 90-01-6x
- VSP E990 with firmware version 93-02-02-60/8x or earlier
- VSP G/F350, G/F370, G/F700, G/F900
Click Submit.

A job is started to allocate the storage capacity and create the pool.

Verify the status of the pool-creation job by clicking Jobs.
Create volumes.