Creating a VVOL-enabled service

The IBM® Spectrum Control Base Edition introduces a comprehensive storage virtualization support, using VMware Virtual Volume (VVOL) technology.

Before you begin

  • Verify that all required ESXi hosts are connected and defined at the XIV® side.
  • Verify that the Spectrum Control time is synchronized with the time, used by the vCenter server.

About this task

This section details how to create a VVOL-enabled storage service. The service or a group of services can be used to define storage spaces, serving as virtual datastores for VM deployment.

To create a VVOL-enabled storage service:

  • Enable VVOL utilization at the XIV side.
  • Create the service, using Spectrum Control.

Procedure

  1. Launch the XIV management GUI and log in as a storage administrator.
  2. Create a domain with required soft and hard capacity. Make sure that the soft capacity is four times larger than the hard capacity.
  3. Define a user with category storageintegrationadmin.
  4. Associate the storageintegrationadmin user with the domain.
  5. Associate all ESXi hosts with the domain.
  6. Launch the XIV XCLI tool.
  7. Enable the metadata service for the XIV, using the metadata_service_enable command.
  8. Close the he XIV XCLI tool and return to the XIV management GUI.
  9. Change the storage administrator user to storageintegrationadmin user and re-launch the XIV XCLI tool
  10. Create a new Administrative Logical Unit (ALU) per each ESXi host. Use the following XCLI format: alu_create alu=<alu-name> host=<host-name> lun=logical-unit-number. Make sure that the LUN is in the 512–755 range.
  11. Launch Spectrum Control.
  12. Configure a fully qualified domain name for the Spectrum Control server and define a high-availability group. See GUI – Defining a high-availability group.
  13. Generate a self-signed Spectrum Control server certificate. See GUI – Managing server certificates.
  14. Set up VASA credentials. See GUI – Setting the VASA credentials.
  15. Enable the storageintegrationadmin to access the XIV storage resources. See GUI – Entering the storage array credentials.
  16. Add the XIV array to the Spectrum Control. See GUI – Adding a storage array.
  17. Add a new storage space. See GUI – Adding a storage space.
  18. Add a VVOL-enabled service to the storage space. See GUI – Adding a storage service.
  19. Define a storage resource and attach it to the VVOL-enabled service. See GUI – Defining and attaching storage resources.
  20. Register Spectrum Control as a storage provider on VMware vCenter server. See Registering Spectrum Control as a storage provider in vCenter Server.
  21. Launch the vWC and create a VVOL-enabled datastore. Select the storage space that you defined as an underlying storage resource for the datastore.