After a storage space is defined, you can start adding
storage services to the space.
About this task
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, snapshots, encryption, etc.
The services that you add become available
for the solution components included in the Spectrum Control Base 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.
Procedure
In the Spaces tab of the Spaces/Services pane, select a space on which
you want to create a new service.
Click Add button on the Spaces/Services
pane. The New Service dialog box is displayed.Figure 1. New Service dialog box
Enter parameters for the new service, according to the
table below.
Table 1. Service parameters
Parameter
Description and values
Name
Alphanumeric string for service identification.
This is a mandatory field.
Description
Alphanumeric string for service description.
Encryption
Enables or disables encryption for the service. If disabled, you can attach
any storage resource (encrypted or not) to the service.
Flash
Enables or disables utilization of a storage resource, located on a
flash-based storage resource. This can be one of the following storage systems: FlashSystem™ 900, FlashSystem V9000, Storwize®
Family.
Space Efficiency
Enables storage space efficiency features for the service. When enabled, you
can configure the service to be thick- or thin-provisioned or make it use IBM
Real-time Compression™. If disabled, you can
attach any storage resource (thin, thick, compressed or not) to the service.
Configuration
considerations
A service with enabled IBM
Real-time Compression will be able to support
the compression-compatible (thin-provisioned) storage resources on XIV® and Spectrum Accelerate systems. For the FlashSystem V9000, Storwize Family
storage systems, a storage resource must have the data compression enabled prior to service
attachment (via product CLI or GUI).
Currently, DS8000® storage systems do not support IBM
Real-time Compression.
Over-provisioning
Percentage of over-provisioned storage space on the service, defining the
ratio between logical and physical storage capacity. For example, when configured to 100, it sets a
1:1 ratio between the two values, while a value of 200 defines the logical capacity (soft size) to
be twice the physical capacity (hard size).
Configuration considerations
The
recommended over-provisioning value for a VVol-enabled service with XIV storage systems is 400®%.
The recommended
over-provisioning value for a service with IBM
Real-time Compression is 200%.
The XIV utilizes thin provisioning for all VM configuration volumes.
When creating a regular VM on an XIV disk, you can choose the
provisioning mode, according to your application requirements.
For other cases, you can choose any
value:
100%, if you do not want to utilize thin provisioning.
Above 100%, if you want to take a risk of allocating resources that the XIV storage system may not have.
In addition, when utilizing the over-provisioning, XIV
storage systems must be also configured to allow support for this feature. When used with the XIV domains, the domain must be also configured with matching soft
and hard capacity settings. To enable the VVol functionality at the XIV side, see Creating a VVol-enabled service.
Important
The managed domain that you created cannot be used for traditional
volumes without virtualization. You must create a separate regular domain for them. This domain must
have the same user and the ESXi hosts that you intend to manage. However, you need to create a
separate storage resource and a new service on the regular domain via Spectrum Control Base for
subsequent use by the VMware vWC.
The over-provisioning is not relevant for the storage
systems that run IBM Spectrum Virtualize™
and DS8000.
Configuration examples
Storage pools in a regular service with over-provisioning at 100% are created as thick
pools.
Storage pools in a regular service with over-provisioning at 150% are created as thin pools. If
a hard pool size is 500 GiB, its soft size is 750 GiB.
Group storage pools in a VVol-enabled service with over-provisioning at 400% are created as thin pools with their soft sizes to be four time bigger than
their hard sizes.
Snapshot reserve
Percentage of storage space on the service reserved
for snapshots.
Automatic resource adjustment
Controls automatic adjustment of a storage resource, according to the settings
of a service, to which the resource is attached. For example, when adding existing storage pools to
a service with certain over-provisioning and snapshot settings, the pool sizes will be changed to
match the service requirements. To prevent this, disable the automatic resource adjustment.
This
parameter is always On for VVol-enabled services.
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.
Important: The following requirements apply to the VVol-enabled services:
All storage pools attached to a VVol-enabled service must reside on the same system.
Only one VVol-enabled service is allowed per storage system and per storage space.
Click Apply to finish the procedure. A new service is added to the current Spaces tab.
You can edit the service properties by moving the mouse pointer over a service which you want
configure, clicking the Edit button, and then clicking
Settings.
