Thin provisioning
VMAX3 arrays are pre-configured at the factory with thin provisioning pools ready for
use. Thin provisioning improves capacity utilization and simplifies storage
management. Thin provisioning enables storage to be allocated and accessed on
demand from a pool of storage that services one or many applications. LUNs can be
“grown” over time as space is added to the data pool with no impact to the host or
application. Data is widely striped across physical storage (drives) to deliver better
performance than standard provisioning.
Note
DATA devices (TDATs) are provisioned/pre-configured/created while the host
addressable storage devices TDEVs are created by either the customer or customer
support, depending on the environment.
Thin provisioning increases capacity utilization and simplifies storage management by:
l
Enabling more storage to be presented to a host than is physically consumed
l
Allocating storage only as needed from a shared thin provisioning pool
l
Making data layout easier through automated wide striping
l
Reducing the steps required to accommodate growth
Thin provisioning allows you to:
l
Create host-addressable thin devices (TDEVs) using Unisphere for VMAX or
Solutions Enabler
l
Add the TDEVs to a storage group
l
Run application workloads on the storage groups
When hosts write to TDEVs, the physical storage is automatically allocated from the
default Storage Resource Pool.
Thin devices (TDEVs)
Note
VMAX3 arrays support only thin devices.
Thin devices (TDEVs) have no storage allocated until the first write is issued to the
device. Instead, the array allocates only a minimum allotment of physical storage from
the pool, and maps that storage to a region of the thin device including the area
targeted by the write.
These initial minimum allocations are performed in small units called thin device
extents. The device extent for a thin device is 1 track (128 KB).
When a read is performed on a device, the data being read is retrieved from the
appropriate data device to which the thin device extent is allocated. Reading an area
of a thin device that has not been mapped does not trigger allocation operations.
Reading an unmapped block returns a block in which each byte is equal to zero.
When more storage is required to service existing or future thin devices, data devices
can be added to existing thin storage groups.
Provisioning
78
Product Guide
VMAX 100K, VMAX 200K, VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS
Summary of Contents for VMAX 100K
Page 1: ...EMC VMAX3 Family Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS REVISION 6 5 ...
Page 20: ...Preface 20 Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS ...
Page 46: ...VMAX3 with HYPERMAX OS 46 Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS ...
Page 72: ...Open systems features 72 Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS ...
Page 82: ...Provisioning 82 Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS ...
Page 158: ...Remote replication solutions 158 Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS ...
Page 186: ...Mainframe Error Reporting 186 Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS ...
Page 200: ...Licensing 200 Product Guide VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K with HYPERMAX OS ...
