Adding a storage service

After a storage space is defined, you can start adding storage services to the space.

Storage services contain one or more physical storage pools. In addition to storage capacity, a service has a set of capabilities, defining the storage quality, such as thin/thick provisioning, compression, encryption, etc.

The services that you add become available for the solution components included in the Spectrum Connect package (see Included cloud interfaces). When provisioning storage, the end users consume it from the spaces and services without dealing underlying physical storage infrastructure.

You can add each individual storage service separately, as described in the following procedure.

  1. In the Spaces tab of the Spaces/Storage Services pane, select a space on which you want to create a new service.
  2. Click Add button on the Spaces/Storage Services pane.
    The New Storage Service dialog box is displayed.
    Figure 1. New Storage Service dialog box
    This image shows the New Storage Service dialog box.
  3. Use the Select Capability drop-down box to define the new service attributes and their values. See table below for details.
    Table 1. Service parameters
    Parameter Description and values
    Name Alphanumeric string for service identification. This is a mandatory field. The service name must not contain spaces.
    Description Alphanumeric string for service description.
    QoS Enables the use of the Quality of Service (QoS) feature for the service. QoS is applicable to volumes (Max Independent Performance) or storage resources (Max Shared Performance), setting the IOPS and bandwidth limits within the following ranges:
    • IOPS: 0-100000
    • BW (bandwidth): 0-10000 MB/s

    Currently, the QoS capability is not available for IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) storage systems or Spectrum Accelerate Family products, using the domain administrator storage credentials.
    Encryption Enables encryption for the service. If enabled, you can attach only encrypted storage resource to the service.
    Flash Enables utilization of a storage resource, located on a flash-based storage resource. This can be one of the following storage systems: FlashSystem 900, FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem V9000, Storwize® Family.
    Replication Enables synchronous mirroring for the service provisioned on Spectrum Accelerate Family products. This capability is not available for VVol-enabled services. Additional service capabilities, such as encryption or compression, are applied to both primary and secondary storage pools if they are attached to the replicated service. See Defining and attaching replicated storage resources.
    Availability Enables the use of IBM high-availability technologies for HA storage deployments of IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and Storwize storage systems. Select one of the following HA methods:
    • Stretched – SVC stretched cluster topology. The data is mirrored across two different locations, allowing for fast non-disruptive failover with no interruption of service and automatic re-synchronization in the event of small-scale outages.
    • HyperSwap – SVC/Storwize local HyperSwap topology. The local HyperSwap is similar to the stretched cluster method, spreading the nodes of the system across two sites, with storage at a third site acting as a tie-breaking quorum device. However, it does not support VVols. The HyperSwap functionality is available for storage systems that support more than one I/O group.
    • Mirrored – Data mirroring for SVC/Storwize systems. Two mirrored copies of the volume are maintained on the same storage system, while each copy of the volume is kept in a separate storage pool.
    With the default, Regular, option, a storage system uses a single volume.
    Space Efficiency Enables storage space efficiency features for the service. When selected, you can configure the service to be attached to a thick- or thin-provisioned storage resource.

    Configuration considerations

    When adding a VVol-enabled service, define its space efficiency during VM provisioning via the vSphere web client. To allow this, disable space efficiency in Spectrum Connect.
    Data Reduction Enables the use IBM® Real-time Compression (RTC) with or without data deduplication as data reduction methods.
    • Compression – IBM Real-time Compression. A service with enabled IBM Real-time Compression will be able to support the compression-compatible (thin-provisioned) storage resources on the Spectrum Accelerate Family systems. For the Spectrum Virtualize Family systems, a storage resource must have the data compression enabled prior to service attachment (via product CLI or UI).
    • Deduplication – Data reduction method in use by Spectrum Virtualize Family products. The deduplication process eliminates duplicate data copies, resulting in substantial reduction in amount of stored information.
    • Compression + Deduplication – A combination of IBM RTC and deduplication techniques for additional data reduction on Spectrum Accelerate and Spectrum Virtualize storage systems.

    Configuration considerations

    For Spectrum Virtualize Family storage services with deduplication or compression + deduplication data reduction capabilities, you can attach only data reduction pools (DRPs) as storage resources.

    Currently, DS8000® storage systems do not support data reduction capability.
    VVol Service Enables virtual volume functionality for the service.

    The virtual volume functionality is supported by the IBM XIV® (11.5.1 or later) and storage systems that run IBM Spectrum Virtualize (7.6 or later).

    An XIV VVol-enabled service does not support IBM Real-time Compression.

  4. Click Create to finish the procedure.
    A new service is added to the current Spaces tab.
  5. You can edit the service properties by right-clicking a service which you want modify, and then selecting Modify Properties.
Define and attach storage resources (pools) to the service, as explained in Defining and attaching storage resources. For replicated serviced, define and attach paired pools, which contain primary and secondary pools, as detailed in Defining and attaching replicated storage resources.