10.5 HP StoreVirtual Storage User Guide (AX696-96269, March 2013)

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 202).
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 107)
• “Creating a cluster” (page 136)
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: Microsoft Windows 2008 supports dynamic disks. If you mount HP StoreVirtual Storage
volumes on Windows 2008 servers and use Windows Server Manager to format disks, be aware
that HP StoreVirtual Storage only supports simple volumes on dynamic disks. The other types of
volumes (striped, spanned, mirrored, RAID-5) are not supported with HP StoreVirtual Storage
features such as extending volumes, creating and mounting snapshots, and Remote Copy.
TIP: If you plan to mount file systems, create a volume for each file system you plan to mount.
Then grow each file system independently.
Number of 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 110).
158 Using volumes