HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions - Manual (Page 155)

12 Using volumes
A volume is a logical entity that is made up of storage on one or more storage systems. Servers
can use volumes as raw data storage or they can be formatted with a file system. Create volumes
on clusters that contain one or more storage systems.
Before creating volumes, plan your strategies for using the volume:
•
How you plan to use it
•
Its size
•
How servers will access it
•
How you will manage backups of the data
•
Whether you will use snapshots and/or Remote Copy
Volumes and server access
After you create a volume, assign it to one or more servers to provide access to the volume by the
application servers. For detailed information, see
“Controlling server access to volumes” (page 199) .
Prerequisites for creating a volume
Before you create a volume, you must create a management group and at least one cluster. For
more information, see the following:
•
“Working with management groups” (page 104)
•
“Creating a cluster” (page 133)
Planning volumes
Planning volumes takes into account multiple factors:
•
The number of volumes you need
•
The size for each volume
•
Whether you plan to use snapshots
•
The level of data protection required
•
Whether you want to use full or thin provisioning
•
Whether you plan to use Adaptive Optimization on the volume
NOTE: Microsoft Windows 2008 and later supports dynamic disks. The use of Dynamic Disks
is not recommended as HP StoreVirtual Storage provides this functionality.
TIP: If you plan to create multiple file systems for a server, create a volume for each file system.
This allows the file systems mounted on a server to grow independently.
Number of volumes
For information about the recommended maximum number of volumes and snapshots that can be
created in a management group, see
“Configuration Summary overview” (page 107) .
Planning volumes 155