HP Storage Provisioning Manager (SPM) version 2.2 User Guide

E Working with HP XP/XP P9000 disk arrays
HP XP/XP P9000 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 requires Fibre Channel connectivity to the HP XP/XP P9000 disk array. Verify that a command
device from the HP XP/XP P9000 disk 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 HP XP/XP P9000 disk arrays into SPM
HP XP/XP P9000 disk arrays may be imported into SPM using the Import Array feature in the SPM
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 the HP XP/XP P9000 disk 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 the HP
XP/XP P9000 disk array. Note that this implies that HP XP/XP P9000 disk 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 HP XP/XP P9000 disk 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 cannot
create storage pools on the HP XP/XP P9000 disk array. After importing existing storage pools
from the HP XP/XP P9000 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 does not support dynamic provisioning (i.e. creating new volume or deleting a
volume or expanding size of a volume) on HP XP/XP P9000 arrays.
Understanding HP XP/XP P9000 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 HP XP/XP
P9000 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.
In the HP XP/XP P9000 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 HP XP/XP P9000 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
• A host writes to a thinly provisioned volume, causing the array to allocate storage
84 Working with HP XP/XP P9000 disk arrays