Storage configuration planning

Complete all storage configuration planning tasks before you configure your SAN Volume Controller environment.

Planning the clustered systems

Determine:

The number of clustered systems and the number of node pairs (I/O groups). Each pair of nodes is the container for one or more volumes.
The number of hosts to use.
The number of I/Os per second between the hosts and nodes.

Planning the hosts

Host mapping provides a way for hosts to access specific logical units (LUs) within the storage systems. Determine:

For hosts that use a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) over Fibre Channel connection, the worldwide port names (WWPNs) of the Fibre Channel (HBA) ports are on the hosts.
For hosts that use an Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) over Ethernet connection, the iSCSI qualified name (IQN) of the host and the authentication credentials.
The names to assign to the hosts.
The volumes to assign to the hosts.
For hosts that use a SCSI over Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connection, the WWPNs of the Converged Network Adapter (CNA) ports are on the hosts.

Planning the MDisks

Note:

To plan the managed disks (MDisks), determine:

The logical or physical disks (logical units) in the storage systems
The logical units structure
Technology type (such as the RAID level)
Whether the drives are flash drives
Whether the internal MDisks must not lose redundancy to maintain performance

Planning the storage pools

Necessary activities:

Determine the types of storage systems to use.
To create volumes with the sequential policy: plan to create a separate storage pool for these volumes, or ensure that you create these volumes before you create volumes with the striped policy.
Plan to create storage pools for the storage systems that provide the same level of performance, reliability, or both performance and reliability. For example, group all of the managed disks that are RAID 10 in one storage pool and all of the MDisks that are RAID 5 in another storage pool.
Plan whether to create storage pools that have multiple tiers of storage. Multiple tiers of storage include both flash drive based volumes and normal hard disk drive (HDD) volumes that are managed by Easy Tier®. In multiple-tiered storage pools, plan to create the same level of performance, reliability, or both performance and reliability within each tier.
Plan the extent size of the storage pool. For example, a larger extent size increases the total amount of storage that the system can manage. A smaller extent size provides more fine-grained control of storage allocation. Extent size does not affect performance.
If you are attaching more than 4 PB of storage to a SAN Volume Controller system, you are not able to use all this capacity with the default extent size of 1 GB. Run the following CLI command one time to enable support for larger extent sizes in the GUI.
```
chsystem -guiadvancedpool yes
```

Planning the volumes

An individual volume is a member of one storage pool and one I/O group. The storage pool defines which MDisks provide the back-end storage that makes up the volume. The I/O group defines which nodes provide I/O access to the volume.

Before you create a volume, determine:

Whether to create the volume in image mode from a managed disk that contains data that must be preserved.
Note: You can map the logical unit number (LUN) presented from an external storage system as an image mode managed disk. Then, you can migrate data from that volume onto the system.
The volume name.
The volume I/O group.
The volume storage pool. For example, different storage pools might have different performance characteristics, depending on the storage that is contained by that storage pool.
The volume capacity.
Whether to provide extra redundancy by mirroring the volume across storage pools. For example, you might use the volume mirroring feature to provide redundancy across storage pools.
Whether to create fully allocated volumes or use thin-provisioned volumes.
Whether the cache mode for the volume is either readwrite, readonly, or none. The default is readwrite.

Consider the effect that FlashCopy®, Global Mirroring, Metro Mirroring, and thin-provisioned volumes have on performance. The effect depends on the type of I/O, and is calculated by using a weighting factor.

Compressed volumes are a special type of volume where data is compressed as it is written to the volume, saving extra space. To use the compression function, you must obtain the IBM Real-time Compression license.

Before you purchase a compression license, you can use the analyzevdiskbysystem command to determine potential compression savings for your current environment. Single volumes can also be analyzed for compression savings by using the analyzevdisk command. Both of these commands are available and do not require a compression license.