9.5.01 HP P4000 SAN Solution User Guide (AX696-96168, February 2012)

12 Using volumes
A volume is a logical entity that is made up of storage on one or more storage systems. It can be
used as raw data storage or it can be formatted with a file system and used by a host or file server.
Create volumes on clusters that contain one or more storage systems.
Before creating volumes, plan your strategies for using the volume: how you plan to use it, its size,
how servers will access it, and how you will manage backups of the data, whether through Remote
Copy or third-party applications, or both.
Volumes and server access
After you create a volume, assign it to one or more servers to provide access to volumes by
application servers. For detailed information, see “Controlling server access to volumes” (page 197).
Prerequisites
Before you create a volume, you must have created a management group and at least one cluster.
For more information, see the following:
• “Working with management groups” (page 104)
• “Creating a cluster” (page 133)
Planning volumes
Planning volumes takes into account multiple factors.
• The number of volumes you need
• The type of volumes you are creating - primary or remote
• The size for each volume
• Whether you plan to use snapshots
• The level of data protection required
• Whether you plan to grow the volume, or leave it the same size
NOTE: If you plan to mount file systems, create a volume for each file system you plan to mount.
Then grow each file system independently.
Planning how many volumes
For information about the recommended maximum number of volumes and snapshots that can be
created in a management group, see “Configuration Summary overview” (page 109).
Planning volume types
• Primary volumes are volumes used for data storage.
• Remote volumes are used as targets for Remote Copy for business continuance, backup and
recovery, and data mining/migration configurations. See the Remote Copy User Guide for
detailed information about remote volumes.
• A SmartClone volume is a type of volume that is created from an existing volume or snapshot.
SmartClone volumes are described in “SmartClone volumes” (page 178).
Guide for volumes
When creating a volume, you define the following characteristics.
Volumes and server access 155