User guide
Volumes
Storage pools are combined to create the volumes that users see. From the user’s
perspective, the SAN volume looks and behaves like a large local disk, except that:
The size of the volume can grow as you add underlying arrays or new storage pools Â
Multiple users on the SAN can access les on the volume at the same time Â
In the illustration on page 16, ve storage pools are combined to create a single shared
volume. You use Xsan Admin to create volumes and mount them on client computers.
The following screen shot shows how LUNs, storage pools, and volumes look as
you organize them in Xsan Admin. This example shows a SAN with a single shared
volume named “SanVol.” Storage for the volume is provided by two storage pools,
“MetadataAndJournal” and “Data1,” the rst based on a single LUN and the other on
two LUNs.
Volume
Storage pool
LUN
Folders with Anities
To control which storage pools are used to store specic les (for example, to provide
dierent levels of service for dierent users or applications), you can associate a folder
on an Xsan volume with an anity tag that’s assigned to storage pools that make up
the volume.
For example, you can associate some folders with an anity whose storage pools have
faster LUNs, and associate other folders with an anity whose storage pools have
safer LUNs. Users can choose between faster and safer storage by putting les in the
appropriate folder.
18 Chapter 1 Overview of Xsan