Parity groups inventory

After you create parity groups, you can view them for each storage system.

To view parity groups for a storage system, click Storage Systems on the dashboard, then click a storage system tile to view the associated parity groups, pools, volumes, and ports. Click Parity Groups to open the Parity Groups window.

You can perform the following actions in this window:

• If there are hardware alerts related to the parity groups, you can click the Hardware Alerts tile to view details for different types of components on the Monitoring window for the storage system.
• To assign free and spare disks, click Manage Spare Disks to open the Disk Management window.
  Note: This feature is not available for the following storage systems:

  • VSP 5000 series
  • VSP G1x00, F1500
• Select one or more parity groups and do one of the following:
  • To initialize parity groups, click Initialize Parity Groups.

    You can create and initialize pool volumes on a parity group if you have not created pool volumes. You can also format any pool volumes that are in blocked state. You can initialize parity groups under the following conditions:

    • When the parity group has no pool volumes or at least one of the pool volumes is in Blocked state. In this case, notice that the parity group status is UNINITIALIZED.
    • When the pool volumes on the parity group do not account for the entire parity group capacity and there are unused partitions on the parity group. In this case, notice that the parity group status is AVAILABLE but the available capacity is much less than the total capacity. This is supported only when the parity group status is AVAILABLE_PHYSICAL, IN_USE, or UNINITIALIZED.
  • To delete the parity group, click Delete. When you delete a parity group, it is removed from the storage system and the disks used to create the parity group are no longer in use. You can delete the parity group to reconfigure the storage system with some other RAID configuration or simply decommission the array.
    Note: You cannot delete the following parity groups:

    • Parity groups on VSP 5000 series, VSP G1x00, and F1500 storage systems.
    • Parity groups that contain NAS startup volumes.
  • To enable accelerated compression on parity groups, click Enable Compression on Parity Groups.

    You can enable compression for unencrypted parity groups that were created using FMD DC2 or FMD HDE disks. The parity groups must also be in IN_USE status.

    Note: The IN_USE status means that the parity group is in a pool. You can create a pool on an existing parity group that was created using FMD DC2 or FMD HDE drives. Then identify the parity group in the detail window for the pool and enable compression in the Parity Groups window.

    You cannot compress parity groups that contain NAS startup volumes.

    After compression is enabled, the status of the parity group is IN_USE.

• To create a new parity group, click the plus sign (+) .
  Note: Parity groups on the following storage systems are created outside Ops Center Administrator by an authorized service representative:

  • VSP 5000 series
  • VSP G1x00, F1500
• To view the status of parity groups, use the filters. Click a filter to apply it, then click it again to remove it.
  • AVAILABLE: Parity group is not being used for any storage pools. It is available for pool creation.
  • AVAILABLE_PHYSICAL: Parity group is not being used for any storage pools. Compression is enabled on the parity group and physical capacity of the parity group is available for pool creation. Not applicable to parity groups that are not enabled for compression.
  • FORMATTED: At least one of the pool volumes in the parity group is being formatted. The full format takes longer than a quick format because the service processor fully scans the hard drive.
  • QUICK_FORMATTING: At least one of the pool volumes in the parity group is being formatted using the quick format method. To make the formatting process quick, the drive is not fully checked, the files are still there, and the volume could be re-built to gain access to the files again.
  • IN_USE: Parity group is being used by a storage pool.
  • UNINITIALIZED: Parity group either has no volumes or at least one of the pool volumes is in Blocked status, or one or more partitions is uninitialized and has a size greater than 16,787,456 blocks.
  • UNSUPPORTED_ATTACHED: At least one of the pool volumes has a path to a storage port.
  • UNSUPPORTED_INACCESSIBLE_RESOURCE_GROUP: Parity group and at least one of its pool volumes are in different resource groups and the user does not have access to one of the resource groups.