Veritas Storage Foundation Intelligent Storage Provisioning 5.0 AdministratorÆs Guide, HP-UX 11i v3, First Edition, May 2008

20 Understanding ISP
Frequently asked questions about ISP
Limitations of ISP
The following features of vxassist are not currently supported for ISP volumes:
■ The vxassist utility includes a number of hard-coded rules that it uses
when selecting storage. For example,
vxassist may configure objects on
separate controllers without being instructed to do so. ISP requires that the
selection of storage is made explicit through rules, capabilities and
templates.
■ Disk group split and join is supported at the level of storage pools. A
snapshot of an application volume should be created within a clone pool if it
is to be moved between disk groups.
Frequently asked questions about ISP
■ What is the meaning of the new concepts that are introduced by ISP?
ISP introduces several new concepts in addition to those that are used with
traditional Veritas Volume Manager. New concepts, including storage pools,
capabilities, rules, volume templates and volume intent, are described in
“About ISP concepts” on page 33.
■ What is the relationship between a storage pool and a volume template?
Storage pools contain disks, VxVM objects such as volumes, and a set of
volume templates. A storage pool is defined by the volume templates that it
contains. The ISP Configuration Database contains a number of storage
pool definitions that you can use to create a storage pool object in VxVM.
Each definition contains a list of volume templates and the default policy
settings for the pool definition. When you create a storage pool object in a
disk group from a storage pool definition, these volume templates and
policies also get installed.
■ When do I need to specify a template set?
A storage pool contains volume templates that define its characteristics. A
template set is simply a collection of related volume templates that you can
associate with a storage pool.
■ When do I need to specify a storage pool set?
A disk group that you want to use with ISP must be configured to contain
one data storage pool, and optionally one or more clone storage pools. You
can use a storage pool set definition to organize a disk group so that it
contains data and clone storage pools with well-defined characteristics.
■ If I create a storage pool using a storage pool definition, can I later create a
volume in that pool using a volume template other than those that are
associated with the pool?