Administrator Guide

Creating thin-enabled virtual volumes through the legacy provisioning method
In the legacy method, you can create a thin-enabled virtual volume in these two ways:
● EZ Provisioning: Use the storage-tool compose --thin command to create a virtual-volume on top of the specified
storage-volumes, building all intermediate extents, local, and distributed devices as necessary.
● Advanced provisioning: Perform these tasks:
○ Manually claiming thin storage volumes that are discovered by metro node.
○ Creating extents on top of the thin-capable storage volume using the extent create command.
○ Creating thin-capable local devices using the local-device create command.
○ Creating thin-enabled virtual volumes using the virtual-volume create --thin command.
NOTE: If you create a virtual volume without the --thin attribute, a thick volume is created by default. The virtual
volume must be built on top of a local RAID 0 device or a RAID 1 device. If you try to create a RAID C local-device
with multiple children, or a device that incorporates multiple extents, the created local device is not thin-capable.
The following example shows how to create two extents on top of a thin-capable storage volume (with the restriction that a
thick extent is created):
VPlexcli:/clusters/cluster-1/storage-elements/storage-volumes> extent create myVolume --
num-extents 2
You are creating 2 extents on top of 1 thin-capable storage-volume 'myVolume'. The
resulting extents will not be thin-capable.
The following example shows how to create an extent that is smaller than the supporting storage volume (with the restriction
that a thick extent is created):
VPlexcli:/clusters/cluster-1/storage-elements/storage-volumes> extent create myVolume --
size 1MB
The new extent will not completely encompass the following thin-capable storage-volume:
myVolume. The resulting extent will not be thin-capable.
Use the following commands to list thin-capable virtual volumes, or to set virtual volumes as thin-enabled:
virtual-volume list-thin --enabled false --
capable true --clusters cluster
List all thin-capable virtual volumes that are not currently
thin-enabled.
virtual-volume list-thin --capable true --
clusters cluster
List all thin-capable volumes (whether they are thin-enabled
or not).
virtual-volume set-thin-enabled [true|false]
--virtual-volumes virtual-volumes
Set virtual volumes as thin-enabled.
For example, to set all virtual volumes at cluster-1 to thin-enabled, type the following command:
virtual-volume set-thin-enabled true --virtual-volumes /clusters/cluster-1/virtual-
volumes/*
The CLI Guide for metro node provides more information on the commands and their usage.
Changing the thin personality of a virtual volume
Metro node does not report a volume as thin to host initiators until its thin-enabled option is set to true (enabled). This
value can be set to true as part of the creation process as described in Creating thin-enabled virtual volumes. You can set
a virtual volume's thin-enabled value to true only if it is thin-capable. Use the set command to change the value of the
thin-enabled attribute to true or false. The value true sets the thin-enabled attribute to enabled, and the value false
sets the thin-enabled attribute as disabled. After the behavior of the virtual volume is changed, the hosts will need to
perform certain actions (for example, a rescan) to detect the changed behavior.
VPlexcli:/clusters/cluster-2/virtual-volumes/XtremIO_LUN_1_vol> set thin-enabled true
VPlexcli:/clusters/cluster-2/virtual-volumes/XtremIO_LUN_1_vol> ls
Name Value
-------------------------- ----------------------------------------
block-count 5242880
Thin support in metro node
25