Top
ETERNUS SF Storage Cruiser V16.2 Operation Guide
FUJITSU Storage

1.2.6 Storage Capacity Virtualization Operation

The ETERNUS Disk storage systems below are equipped with a storage capacity virtualization function that uses Thin Provisioning technology.

Storage Device Name

Firmware Version

ETERNUS DX400 series
ETERNUS DX8000 series
ETERNUS DX S2 series (DX60 S2 excluded)
ETERNUS DX S3 series
ETERNUS DX200F

All versions

Thin provisioning technology virtualizes and allocates storage resources, thus enabling the physical capacity of the storage to be reduced. Environments where thin provisioning have been installed manage physical disks as a common disk pool, and allocations to servers are treated as allocations to a virtual volume. When writing to a virtual volume, physical disks are allocated from the disk pool in accordance with the size of the data being written. Physical disks can be extended in accordance with the disk pool busy rate without affecting the servers. This enables users to start operation using only a small physical disk capacity to make large capacity virtual disk allocations to servers, thus keeping the initial investment low (small start).

In this software, the following functionality is provided for the above ETERNUS Disk storage systems with Thin Provisioning.

Configuration Management

This function makes the associations between virtual volumes and physical disks visible. The Web Console displays the associations between the configuration that is virtualized by means of thin provisioning (disk pool and virtual volumes) and the physical configuration (RAID groups and physical disks). This function makes it easy to check the affected location when a physical disk fault or other problem occurs.

Threshold Monitoring

This function monitors the disk pool threshold values and performs capacity management. Threshold values are established for the physical disk pool and these values are monitored so that consumption of the physical capacity does not cause disk pool shortages. When the disk busy rate reaches the threshold value, an alarm notifies the user, thus preventing operation stoppages.

See

Refer to "6.4 Thin Provisioning Management" for details.

Notes on Storage Capacity Virtualization Operation

There are following concerns when managing storage capacity virtualization operations.

Operations That Are Not Possible

This product cannot perform the following operations related to thin provisioning and Flexible Tier:

  • Performance monitoring of disk pools