Installation manual

Configuring a Namespace
Concepts and Terminology
7-2 CLI Storage-Management Guide
The purpose of the namespace is to contain one or more volumes with a common set
of access protocols (CIFS/NFS), authentication mechanisms, and character encoding.
This chapter explains how to create a namespace. The next chapters explain how to
aggregate your storage into various types of namespace volumes.
From gbl mode, use the
namespace command to create a new namespace.
namespace name
where name (1-30 characters) is a name you choose for the namespace. This is
only a configuration name. It is not visible to clients.
The CLI prompts for confirmation before creating the namespace; this provides an
opportunity to check for mistakes in the name. Enter yes to proceed. This puts you
into gbl-ns mode, where you configure the volumes for the namespace.
For example, this command set creates a namespace called “wwmed:”
bstnA6k(gbl)# namespace wwmed
This will create a new namespace.
Create namespace 'wwmed'? [yes/no] yes
bstnA6k(gbl-ns[wwmed])# ...
Concepts and Terminology
A namespace can contain up to three types of volume: managed, direct, or shadow.
A managed volume keeps track of all files and directories in the servers behind it. The
file and directory locations are called the volume’s metadata. A managed volume
builds its database of metadata when you first enable it; it scans all of its back-end
servers and imports all files and directories by recording their locations. By keeping
metadata, a managed volume can support policies for balancing or migrating files.
A direct volume is a collection of mount points into its back-end storage. It does not
import files and directories, does not keep metadata, and does not support policies.
The direct volume is useful for quickly aggregating storage into a single mount point.