3PAR InForm® OS 2.3.1 Concepts Guide (320-200112 Rev B, February 2010)

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3PAR InForm Software
3PAR InForm OS Concepts Guide InForm OS Version 2.3.1
volumes from the volume set are autonomically provisioned to the new host without any
administrative intervention. If you add a new volume or a new domain to a set, the volume
or domain inherits all the privileges of the set.
■ 3PAR Persistent Cache, allows InServ Storage Servers to maintain a high level of
performance and availability during node failure conditions, and during hardware and
software upgrades. This feature allows the host to continue to write data and receive
acknowledgments from the storage server if the backup node is unavailable. Persistent
Cache automatically creates multiple backup nodes for logical disks that have the same
owner.
■ 3PAR mySnapshot, is a copy utility designed for non-storage professionals such as
database administrators, software developers, and test engineers to safely and easily copy
and provision their own test data. With mySnapshot, developers have instant access to test
data, thus eliminating the time required to request, justify, and receive these copies from
the storage administrator. To learn more about the mySnapshot utility, see Chapter 12,
Enhanced Storage Applications.
2.2.2 Optional Software Features
Optional 3PAR software features may not currently be enabled on your system because they
require additional licenses and may require separate installations. When features are not
available on your system because they are not licensed for use, screens and functionality
relating to those features may appear grayed-out or be otherwise inaccessible in the InForm
Management Console and InForm CLI.
InServ Storage Servers may use the following optional software features:
■ 3PAR Virtual Domains are used for access control. Virtual Domains allow you to limit the
privileges of users to only subsets of volumes and hosts in an InServ Storage Server and
ensures that virtual volumes associated with a specific domain are not exported to hosts
outside of that domain. To learn more about domains, see Chapter 5, 3PAR Virtual
Domains.
■ 3PAR Thin Provisioning allows you to allocate virtual volumes to application servers yet
provision only a fraction of the physical storage behind these volumes. By enabling a true
capacity-on-demand model, a storage administrator can use 3PAR Thin Provisioning to
create Thinly-Provisioned Virtual Volumes (TPVVs) that maximize asset use. To learn more
about TPVVs, see Chapter 10, Virtual Volumes.