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Create, attach, and protect volumes

Use a single workflow to create volumes, attach them to servers, and then apply data protection.

Creating volumes to attach to servers

Start the create-and-attach workflow by selecting a server and creating volumes.

When you create volumes in Storage Advisor you can:

  • Create multiple volumes of the same size or different sizes at the same time.
  • Select the specific pool for volume creation or let Storage Advisor automatically select the best pool based on utilization.
  • Specify a common label and starting label suffix for identical volumes that are the same size and have the same pool requirement.

Before you begin

  • Create parity groups.
  • Create pools.
  • Add servers.

Procedure

  1. On the Storage Advisor dashboard, click Servers to see the inventory of servers.

  2. Do one of the following to open the Create, Attach and Protect Volumes page:

    • Select a server, click Attach Volumes, and select Create, Attach, and Protect Volumes with Local Replication.
    • Click a server tile to open the Server <ID> details page. Click the cylinder icon (GUID-D3DF6AD9-ACC0-4A2E-9CAC-CCED0D49E426-low.png) in the upper right area and select Create, Attach and Protect Volumes with Local Replication.
    Create attach and protect volumes
  3. Configure volumes for the specified storage system.

    You can switch to another storage system by using the drop-down Storage System list. If you want 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 size.

    4. Select the volume unit: GiB, TiB, or PB.

    5. Select the pool type: Thin or Tiered.

    6. For a Thin pool, select the pool tier: Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze.

      If the storage system has available capacity from external storage, you can also select the External tier.
    7. (Optional) Select the pool from the list of available pools. The default selection is Auto Selected, which means that Storage Advisor selects the best pool for provisioning the volume based on utilization and tier requirements.

      NoteDDM pools are not available and cannot be used to create volumes.
  4. If desired, select a type of Capacity Saving: Compression or Deduplication and Compression.

    NoteCapacity saving can be set for volumes based on tiered pools only for VSP F1500, VSP G1000, and VSP G1500 models with microcode version 80-05-4x or later.
    NoteIf you choose Deduplication and Compression and later want to update the volume to Compression you must first disable Capacity Saving.
  5. (Optional) Select an Volume ID Range if you would like 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 Storage Advisor automatically selects the ID for the volume.

    NoteID range selection is not available for volumes created on Virtual Storage Machines.
  6. (Optional) For a Tiered Pool, select the Tiering Policy from the drop-down list. Tiering policy choices available in the drop down will depend on the choice of pool that was made in the previous step. Tiering policy choice is not available for auto-selected pools.

  7. When you have made your choices, click the plus sign (+) to add volume row to the list of volumes that will be created. Add more rows as needed.

  8. Click Next to be directed to attach volumes to the selected servers.

Attaching newly-created volumes to servers

Storage Advisor provides options as part of the attachment of the new volumes to a single server or multiple servers.

GUID-676DCCB4-963B-4A5A-B364-C0A3AE24544B-low.png

Procedure

  1. 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 Storage Advisor.
  2. The prepopulated Host Mode Option will depend 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. Storage Advisor 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.
  3. Select the LUN Alignment.

    By default, Storage Advisor uses the LUN number that is common to the servers. If attachment is to only one server, this setting has no effect.
  4. The Auto Create Zone is set to No by default. You can set it to Yes to automatically create zones.

  5. Click Next to view options for creating and editing LUN paths.

    GUID-B0B502CB-C524-4451-8A5E-1A3F339D5D62-low.png
  6. In the Create Paths panel, you can view servers and their WWNs, along with ports on the storage system. Storage Advisor will scan for existing host groups on the storage array and attempt to reuse them by default.

    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.
    • NoteIf host groups already exists on that port and single host group cannot be created, the checkbox 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 on the Attach Settings panel are populated as paths.

      To prevent the volume from being added to an existing path, click the path to highlight it and click Delete Selected.

    • Click Suggest to populate automatically selected paths. By default, the least-used ports are selected. Suggest paths requires that both server and storage ports be logged into the fabric switches in the Storage Advisor inventory.
    • To manually create a path, click a WWN and a port to connect them with a blue connector line. Click the connector again and then click Delete Selected to delete the connection.
  7. When you are satisfied with the paths, click Next to view options for protecting volumes.

Protecting volumes by creating snapshots

After creating and attaching volumes, you can implement data protection by creating incremental snapshots.

You can use the Snapshot method if you don't need continuous copying but want to schedule the copy depending on expected changes in the data.

NoteFor volumes on the following storage systems, you can create snapshots by accessing Storage Advisor Embedded: VSP F350, F370, F700, F900 and VSP G350, G370, G700, G900.

The snapshot creation process creates the secondary volume on a snap pool. If there is more than one snap pool, the least-utilized snap pool is used.

Note If you want to create snapshots outside of Storage Advisor for a volume that is in Storage Advisor, use a new snapshot group.

Procedure

  1. In the Protect Volumes page, select the volumes you want to protect and click Snapshot.

  2. Enter a number from 1 to 1024 in the Snapshot Retention Policy (Max 1024) field to specify the number of snapshots to be created.

    When the specified number of snapshots is reached, older snapshots will be deleted as new ones are added. The maximum number of snapshots that can be retained is 1024.
  3. You can enable Consistency to perform data protection on all pairs in the group simultaneously.

    Consistency acts a filter for replication groups, so your choice may affect the availability of replication groups.
  4. Set an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly schedule. A volume cannot have more than one schedule. The schedule is based on UTC time.

    • Hourly: Select a start time in minutes after the hour, and the number of hours between snapshots to start creating snapshots at the selected time and interval.
    • Daily: Select a start time, available in five minutes increments, to start a snapshot every day at the selected time.
    • Weekly: Select a start time and a day to create a snapshot every week at the selected date and time. You can select more than one day to create more than one weekly snapshot.
    • Monthly: Select a start time and the day of the month (from 1 to 31) to create a snapshot once a month at the selected day and time.
  5. In Volumes to be Protected, select a Replication Group for each volume or select Use New and enter a name for the new replication group in the Replication Group Name. Up to 26 alphanumeric characters, also hyphens (-) and underscores (_), are allowed. Spaces are not allowed.

  6. (Optional) Select the pool from the list of available pools. The default selection is Auto Selected, which means that Storage Advisor selects the best pool based on utilization and tier requirements.

    If you choose a Thin (HDP) pool or a Snap (HTI) pool, the replication technology used will be Snap on Snap, unless there is already a Snap volume created in an earlier version of Storage Advisor. In that case, the replication technology used will continue to be Snap.
  7. Click Submit.

Results

A summary message is displayed and snapshots are created according to the schedule. The replication group can be viewed on the Replication Groups page.

Global-active device

Storage Advisor supports the display of high availability as a replication technology when the following conditions are met:

  • GAD has been configured on the storage system.
  • GAD pairs have been created on the storage system.

GAD pairs display in Virtual Storage Machines, Volumes inventory, and Volume detail pages as high availability (HA).

Global-active device enables you to create and maintain synchronous, remote copies of data volumes.