Administrator Guide
Table Of Contents
- Dell EMC Storage Systems Administrator Guide for the metro node appliance
- Contents
- Preface
- CLI Workspace and User Accounts
- Meta Volumes
- System Management
- Thin support in metro node
- Provisioning Storage
- Volume expansion
- Data migration
- About data migrations
- Migrating thin-capable storage
- About rebuilds
- One-time data migrations
- Batch migrations
- Prerequisites
- Creating a batch migration plan
- Checking a batch migration plan
- Modifying a batch migration file
- Starting a batch migration
- Pausing/resuming a batch migration (optional)
- Canceling a batch migration (optional)
- Monitoring a batch migration’s progress
- Viewing a batch migration’s status
- Committing a batch migration
- Cleaning a batch migration
- Removing batch migration records
- Configure the WAN Network
- Cluster Witness
- Consistency Groups
- Performance and Monitoring
- Metro node with active-passive storage arrays
Provisioning Storage
This chapter describes how to provision storage using metro node integrated storage provisioning.
Topics:
• Provisioning Overview
• Provisioning storage using EZ provisioning
• Changing the thin personality of a virtual volume
Provisioning Overview
To begin using metro node, you must provision storage so that hosts can access that storage. There are three ways to provision
storage in metro node:
● EZ provisioning
● Advanced provisioning
NOTE: Dell EMC recommends using the metro node Unisphere GUI to provision storage.
Provisioning storage using EZ provisioning
EZ provisioning is a simple method of provisioning that is available only in Unisphere for metro node. EZ provisioning creates a
virtual volume with a one-to-one mapping to a selected storage volume. Use EZ provisioning to create a virtual volume that uses
the entire capacity of the storage volume.
In EZ provisioning, you select storage arrays and define how you want them to be used, protected, and presented to hosts. To
provision storage using EZ provisioning, do the following:
1. Register initiators that access metro node storage.
2. Create storage views that include virtual volumes, initiators, and metro node ports to control host access to the virtual
volumes.
3. Select the storage array and storage volumes to create virtual volumes.
The Unisphere for metro node Online Help provides more information on provisioning storage using EZ provisioning.
NOTE:
In the metro node CLI, you can use the storage-tool compose command to create a virtual-volume on top
of the specified storage-volumes, building all intermediate extents, local, and distributed devices as necessary. The CLI
Reference Guide for metro node provides more details on the use of this command.
Changing the thin personality of a virtual volume
Metro node does not report a volume as thin to host initiators until its thin-enabled option is set to true (enabled). This
value can be set to true as part of the creation process as described in Creating thin-enabled virtual volumes. You can set
a virtual volume's thin-enabled value to true only if it is thin-capable. Use the set command to change the value of the
thin-enabled attribute to true or false. The value true sets the thin-enabled attribute to enabled, and the value false
sets the thin-enabled attribute as disabled. After the behavior of the virtual volume is changed, the hosts will need to
perform certain actions (for example, a rescan) to detect the changed behavior.
VPlexcli:/clusters/cluster-2/virtual-volumes/XtremIO_LUN_1_vol> set thin-enabled true
VPlexcli:/clusters/cluster-2/virtual-volumes/XtremIO_LUN_1_vol> ls
Name Value
-------------------------- ----------------------------------------
block-count 5242880
6
Provisioning Storage 33