HP Storage Provisioning Manager (SPM) Version 2.0 User Guide

E Working with HP P9000/XP Disk Array
HP P9000/XP Disk Arrays have several value-added features. It is important to understand how
SPM handles management of environments using those features. See the following sections for an
explanation of these features:
Supported configurations
SPM 2.0 requires fibre channel connectivity to the P9000/XP array. Verify that a command device
from the P9000/XP array is presented to the host running SPM. Additionally, there are constraints
on the configuration for array’s command device: it cannot be presented as a Windows shared
drive to the SPM server host.
Understanding how to import P9000/XP array into SPM
P9000 and XP arrays may be imported into SPM using the Import Array feature in the SPM 2.0
GUI. Then storage pools and volumes on the array to be imported. An SPM storage pool maps to
a parity group or thin provisioning pool on s P9000/XP array. During the array import wizard, a
set of authentication credentials must be provided. The credentials are the Remote Web Console
(RWC) IP address or hostname, a user name and password configured for P9000/XP array. Note
that this implies that P9000/XP arrays may only be imported one array at a time. The user name
should be configured within RWC so that it has the appropriate roles, such as Storage Administrator
(Provisioning) or Storage Administrator (View & Modify) or Administrator.
After importing the P9000/XP array, storage pools may be imported. This step of the import wizard
shows a list of available storage pools in the selected arrays. Note that SPM has no mechanism
for creating storage pools on the P9000/XP array. After importing existing storage pools from the
P9000/XP array, volumes from those pools may be imported. There are several classes of volumes
that cannot be imported: Business Copy, Snapshot, Continuous Access, Pool Volumes, Journal
Volumes and Unknown types will all be ignored by SPM’s import wizard.
Note that SPM 2.0 does not support dynamic provisioning (i.e. creating new volume or deleting
a volume or expanding size of a volume) on P9000/XP arrays.
Understanding P9000/XP disk array capacity reporting
SPM tracks capacity for storage pools and volumes within its catalog. These capacity values are
used to generate candidates for storage provisioning. In order to understand the candidate
generation process, it is important to know what SPM tracks and how that relates to P9000/XP
modeling of storage pools and volumes.
Storage pool capacity
At the storage pool level, SPM tracks physical capacity, committed capacity, and subscribed
capacity. Physical capacity is the total number of bytes that are physically allocated to the storage
pool. Committed capacity represents the space that has been allocated within the pool for all of
its volumes. Subscribed capacity is the total capacity for all the volumes contained in the pool.
Additionally there is a calculated value, “available capacity”, which is used when selecting
candidate pools for volume creation or growing.
In the P9000/XP disk array resource model, one finds that the combined capacity of all storage
pools represents the raw available capacity of the array. This raw available capacity can be used
to create volumes. In P9000/XP disk array, RAID levels may be associated with a storage pool.
All volumes created from a storage pool will inherit the RAID level from the pool. There is no RAID
level for thinly provisioned pools. Allocated capacity grows when:
• A fully provisioned volume is created, in which case necessary disk space is allocated to the
disk group to account for the full size of the volume, RAID overhead and admin space
• A thin volume is allocated, a small amount of disk space may be allocated to cover
administrative overhead space requirements
• When a host writes to a thinly provisioned volume, causing the array to allocate storage
Supported configurations 69