VERITAS Storage Foundation 4.1 Intelligent Storage Provisioning Administrator's Guide

Chapter 1, Understanding ISP

Administration Roles in ISP

The administration of ISP can seem overwhelming when compared with the traditional

administration model in VERITAS Volume Manager. To simplify matters, it is useful to think in

terms of three levels of administration based on level of knowledge of ISP, and frequency of

application of this knowledge:

◆ Basic Administration Tasks

◆ Advanced Administration Tasks

◆ Expert Administration Tasks

Basic administration tasks are performed most often and require the least knowledge of ISP to

perform. Expert storage administration tasks are performed least often and require the most

knowledge of ISP to perform.

Basic Administration Tasks

Basic administration tasks include creating storage pools, and creating and administering volumes.

This includes performing tasks such as adding or removing mirrors or columns from volumes,

resizing volumes, and creating and using volume snapshots.

The system administrator’s role requires the following knowledge of ISP:

◆ Familiarity with the meaning of the terms disk group, storage pool, template, user template,

application volume, and capabilities such as reliability, performance and fault tolerance.

◆ What templates and user templates are available for use in creating volumes with the required

capabilities.

◆ What templates and user templates are associated with the disk groups in which you will create

volumes.

◆ How to use the VEA or the vxvoladm and vxtemplate commands to perform your tasks.

As a system administrator, you can use either the VEA or the vxvoladm and vxtemplate

utilities to perform your tasks. The VEA graphical interface is most suitable for day-to-day

administration. The vxvoladm utility is primarily intended for use in administration scripts. The

vxtemplate utility allows you to find out which templates are associated with disk groups and

with storage pools.