Storage space and service management

After deployment and array attachment, the IBM® Spectrum Control Base Edition administrators define the virtual entities, facilitating in simpler and more flexible storage management.

The virtual storage entities include:

  • Storage service
  • Storage space

A service is a combination of assigned storage resources (pools) and user-defined policies. The storage pools, assigned to the service, may reside on any array. The policies are additional capabilities, such as compression, encryption, etc.

Spaces are groups of services. Usually, a single space is assigned to a specific organization (storage tenant).

Figure 1. Storage elements without VVOL utilization
This image shows the storage elements utilized in a non-VVOL environment.

When the use of VMware virtual volumes (VVOLs) is enabled for a service, it is assigned to a space which must reside on a single array. Such array holds a storage resource (group pool) connected to the service. The storage resource consists of the following pools:

  • Thin pool for thin provisioning.
  • Thick pool for thick provisioning.
  • Meta pool for holding VM-related management metadata.
Thus, in addition to its set of attributes (compression, encryption, etc), each service receives a user-defined storage capacity.
Figure 2. Storage elements with VVOL utilization
This image shows the storage elements utilized in a VVOL environment.