thin reclamation using veritas storage foundation enterprise ha from symantec and the ibm xiv...

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© Copyright IBM Corporation, 2011 All Rights Reserved. All trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective holders

Thin Reclamation Using Veritas Storage Foundation Enterprise HA from Symantec and the IBM XIV Storage

System Solution Installation Configuration and Best Practices

Document SM103-2 April 2011

Thin Reclamation Using Veritas Storage Foundation Enterprise HA and IBM XIV Storage Systems

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Table of contents Abstract........................................................................................................................................4 Introduction .................................................................................................................................4

About Thin Provisioning........................................................................................................................... 4 About Thin Reclamation .......................................................................................................................... 4 About SmartMove .................................................................................................................................... 4 About IBM ................................................................................................................................................ 4 About Symantec....................................................................................................................................... 5 About Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Operations Manager (VOM).......................................... 5 About the IBM XIV Storage System......................................................................................................... 5 About the IBM – Symantec partnership ................................................................................................... 6

Solution Overview.......................................................................................................................7 Effective space allocation and reclamation via Storage Foundation – XIV communication.................... 7

Thin-reclamation process................................................................................................................. 7 Pre-scheduled concurrent thin-reclamation operations ................................................................... 8

Thick to thin migrations on IBM XIV using SmartMove ........................................................................... 8 Integrated storage utilization reporting .................................................................................................... 8

Pre-implementation best practice considerations for thin environments for IBM XIV and Storage Foundation ....................................................................................................................9

VxVM volume layouts for thin environments and RAID layouts on storage..................................... 9 LUN sizes ......................................................................................................................................... 9 Using boot devices with thinrclm LUNs............................................................................................ 9

Test System Configuration ........................................................................................................9 Installing and Configuring IBM XIV Storage...........................................................................10

Microcode Requirements for Thin Reclamation ....................................................................................10 XIV GUI Installation................................................................................................................................ 10 IBM XIV Configuration ........................................................................................................................... 10

Thin Reclamation: Storage Foundation ..................................................................................15 Thin Reclamation Differences: UNIX v/s Windows:............................................................................... 15 Storage Foundation Administration for Thin Reclamation..................................................................... 16

VxVM Disk types for Reclamation: Sliced v/s CDS (cross-platform data sharing) ........................ 16 Listing thin and thinrclm devices .................................................................................................... 16 Analyzing Thin reclamation ............................................................................................................ 17 Invoking thin reclamation on VxVM objects and VxFS File System by command-line.................. 18 Turning reclaim operations off........................................................................................................ 18

Volume Flags and Plex Differences on UNIX........................................................................................ 18 Prerequisites for thin reclamation with IBM XIV (5.0 MP3 RP3 for UNIX)............................................. 19 VxVM DiskGroup versions and impact of VxVM Upgrades................................................................... 19 Reclaim on VxVM Volume Delete.......................................................................................................... 19 Veritas SmartMove ................................................................................................................................ 20 Setting tunables for enabling SmartMove.............................................................................................. 20 Using Veritas Thin Reclamation in VMware ESX Environments........................................................... 21

Automating thin reclamation operations ................................................................................................ 21 GUI Management: Veritas Operations Manager (VOM)........................................................................ 21 Storage Insight (Integration with XCLI for XIV Storage Subsystems)............................................ 21

Thin Pool Full Conditions ............................................................................................................... 23 Storage Insight provides reports on thin pool usage...................................................................... 23

Thin Reclamation Add-on ................................................................................................................... 25 Volume Migration: Thick > Thin using SmartMove .......................................................................... 28

Thin Reclamation with XIV Storage for SFW Windows using VEA ......................................34 Summary....................................................................................................................................40 APPENDIX: Configuring VOM 3.1 for Storage Insight Add-on..............................................41 Trademarks and Special Notices.............................................................................................42


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Abstract

This document describes the integrated solution for thin reclamation using the IBM XIV Storage System and Veritas Storage Foundation from Symantec, specifically, SmartMove and the Veritas Operations Manager Storage Insight feature. This paper explains the installation, configuration, and operation of the solution, including migrating data, reclaiming space, managing storage, and reporting.

Introduction

About Thin Provisioning

Thin provisioning offers a simple solution to the need to plan for storage capacity demand. Typical storage systems require the up-front allocation of large pools of storage capacity even if the storage will go unused for a long period of time. The thin provisioning storage optimization method allows IT departments to safely allocate, up front, as much logical capacity as is conceivably required by an application, while enabling physical storage allocation on demand in smaller increments.

About Thin Reclamation The Veritas Storage Foundation thin reclamation feature offers an easy way to reclaim space on thin-reclaim-capable LUNs, disk groups, volumes, and file systems. Recapturing storage previously allocated to systems or applications that are no longer in use enables users to optimize capacity utilization, saving storage investment costs and reducing management overhead. For thinly provisioned IBM XIV storage pools, thin reclamation provides highly effective space management on a large order of magnitude.

About SmartMove

SmartMove is a Veritas Storage Foundation function that lets Veritas Volume Manager know which blocks have data stored on Volume Manager volumes to enable the copy engine to copy only used blocks and skip unused blocks. By only copying used blocks, this feature promotes effective storage migration and helps optimize storage utilization.

About IBM IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with over 100 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate by delivering a wide range of solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to deliver more efficient and effective services. IBM's comprehensive server, storage, software and services portfolio is designed to help create new business insight by integrating, analyzing, and optimizing information on demand. From its foundations of virtualization, openness, and innovation through collaboration, IBM can optimize management of information through technology innovations and infrastructure simplification to help achieve maximum business productivity. Visit IBM at www.ibm.com.


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http://www.ibm.com/

About Symantec Symantec is a global leader in infrastructure software, enabling businesses and consumers to have confidence in a connected world. The company helps customers protect their infrastructure, information, and interactions by delivering software and services that address risks to security, availability, compliance, and performance. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries. Visit Symantec at www.symantec.com for more details.

About Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Operations Manager (VOM) Veritas Storage Foundation HA is a comprehensive solution that delivers data and application availability by bringing together two industry-leading products: Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Cluster Server. Veritas Storage Foundation provides a complete solution for heterogeneous online storage management. Based on the industry-leading Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System, it provides a standard set of integrated tools to centrally manage explosive data growth, maximize storage hardware investments, provide data protection and adapt to changing business requirements. Unlike point solutions, Storage Foundation enables IT organizations to manage their storage infrastructure with one tool. With advanced features such as centralized storage management, non-disruptive configuration and administration, dynamic storage tiering, dynamic multipathing, data migration and local and remote replication, Storage Foundation enables organizations to reduce operational costs and capital expenditures across the data center. Veritas Operations Manager (VOM) is the next generation heterogeneous data center management platform for servers and storage arrays and is fully integrated with Storage Foundation and IBM XIV Storage subsystems.

About the IBM XIV Storage System

The IBM XIV Storage System is a next-generation high-end open disk storage system. The XIV system has a revolutionary grid archidesigned to deliver the highest levels of reliability, scalability, anfunctionality at low overall cost, while providing unprecedented eaof management.

tecture d

se

The XIV system is designed to deliver consistently high performance through the elimination of hot spots and full exploitation of all key system resources. Its groundbreaking architecture delivers these performance levels while innovatively leveraging the capacity and cost benefits of large high-density drives.

Outstanding availability and reliability are delivered through a revolutionary redundancy scheme, enabling automated self-healing with exceptionally fast rebuild times. Software functionality including non-disruptive snapshots, thin provisioning with space reclamation, and remote mirroring, can help optimize storage utilization and protect business data from outages.

For more information on XIV, please visit http:// ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/xiv.


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http://symantec.com/

About the IBM – Symantec partnership IBM and Symantec have enjoyed a successful long-term relationship, combining industry-leading IBM hardware, systems, and services with powerful Symantec availability and security products. Jointly developed solutions help customers streamline management, reduce TCO, and optimize resources throughout the IT infrastructure.


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Solution Overview The integration between Veritas Storage Foundation (SF) and IBM XIV storage-array-based features such as thin storage, thin provisioning, and thin reclamation helps facilitate flexible and efficient storage activities, such as provisioning space, migrating data, and maximizing storage utilization. Leveraging this integration offers cost savings by reducing space consumption, preventing expensive storage outlays, and lowering storage management overhead.

Effective space allocation and reclamation via Storage Foundation – XIV communication IBM XIV and Storage Foundation leverage two-way host-storage collaboration to reclaim space freed up by both applications and file systems, and recover storage space during data migration from thick to thin storage. These online non-disruptive processes provide granular reclamation of all existing free space. SF identifies reclaimable storage and automatically sends the storage space reclamation parameters to the XIV Storage System via host-to-storage controller communication. IBM XIV then instantly makes this space available to other systems.

Storage Foundation’s host-based storage management, multipathing, and thin provisioning support an array of server environments, including: Windows, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX. The IBM XIV Storage System Host Attachment Kit enables host-to-storage connectivity and multipathing,

Thin-reclamation process Instant space reclamation is performed in three phases:

1. Storage discovery – SF sends an inquiry to IBM XIV to determine that the storage device is thin reclamation-enabled and that thin reclamation can be performed. SF obtains reclamation-related parameters, such as minimum storage chunk size to be reclaimed. For clustered environments, Veritas Cluster Server (VCS), managed by SF, extends thin reclamation to host clusters.

2. Reclamation request – Storage Foundation, which manages information on allocated and non-allocated storage, initiates a request command to IBM XIV to reclaim storage for space identified as no longer being used by the system and applications. IBM XIV processes the command by changing storage block status from reserved to unmapped.


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The command used is WRITE SAME (16) with UNMAP bit set to 1, which performs an unmap operation on the logical blocks specified in the transaction.

3. Reporting – IBM XIV reports current actual disk usage.

Pre-scheduled concurrent thin-reclamation operations Veritas Operations Manager’s thin reclamation add-on enables Veritas administrators to schedule periodic thin reclamation and perform multiple thin reclamation operations simultaneously. The process, which is non-disruptive and runs unattended in seconds, can be triggered by pool, enclosure, volume, or file system on XIV Storage Systems.

Thick to thin migrations on IBM XIV using SmartMove Migrating to IBM XIV thin storage on UNIX, Linux, or Windows, with Symantec SmartMove eliminates waste by migrating only file system space used. This approach can reclaim large amounts of unused storage compared with standard block level migrations.

Integrated storage utilization reporting For empowered storage management, allocation, and planning, IBM XIV reports to the SF administrator the amount of actual physical disk space that is allocated behind a thin device. Veritas Operations Manager CommandCentral Storage reports on thin pool usage and statistics on one unified workstation with the help of the VOM Storage Insight.


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Pre-implementation best practice considerations for thin environments for IBM XIV and Storage Foundation The following best practices are recommended:

VxVM volume layouts for thin environments and RAID layouts on storage

When migrating from thick to thin environments on IBM XIV Storage: o It is recommended to change volume layout to concat for thin friendliness o If configuring mirrored volumes, remove the DRL and add a DCO log to mirrored

volumes. o Keep in mind that thin reclamation is not supported with RAID-5 volumes, and it is

recommended to migrate to concat. VOM provides an easy interface for volume migration.

LUN sizes IBM XIV specifically requires a minimum of a 17 GB LUN size and performs better with bigger

LUN sizes. IBM XIV distributes chunks for each LUN across all disks in the enclosure and has redundancy

for each chunk within the enclosure so that losing multiple disks or trays will not affect availability. It is recommended that the storage administrators create higher thin-sized LUNs and use Concat

VxVM Volumes for simplicity of management of thin environments.

Using boot devices with thinrclm LUNs If IBM XIV LUNs are used for boot devices, the file systems such as root, swap and dump should

be closely monitored for oversubscription because running out of space can cause complications. It is recommended to turn thin reclamation off on boot devices. It is recommended to fully allocate space for boot devices.

Test System Configuration A sample two-node configuration includes:

Table 1 Hardware Configuration Server Storage 2 x IBM System x3550 M3 Servers Quad-core + 6 GB RAM

IBM XIV Storage System Microcode Level : 10.2.4.a

Table 2 Software Configuration Red Hat Linux 5.4 Storage Foundation 5.1 SP1


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Installing and Configuring IBM XIV Storage

Microcode Requirements for Thin Reclamation Thin Reclamation is supported by IBM XIV microcode version 10.2.1 and greater.

XIV GUI Installation Download and install XIV GUI:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/xiv_insta

llingthegui.html

IBM XIV Configuration 1. Create a storage pool (either regular or thin).


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http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/xiv_installingthegui.html

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/xiv_installingthegui.html

2. Create volumes.

3. Define hosts on the XIV System.

a. Install the XIV Host Attachment Kit (HAK) on two servers.

Download the XIV Host Attachment Kit (for Linux):

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S4000799

Note: HAKs for other operating systems:

Windows


Solaris


HP-UX


AIX



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b. Install the XIV Host Attachment Kit on two servers.

c. Run the XIV host attachment wizard.


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4. Create a cluster.

5. Add hosts to the cluster.


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6. Map volumes to the cluster.


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Thin Reclamation: Storage Foundation

Thin Reclamation Differences: UNIX v/s Windows:

The below table illustrates the different features/methods of using thin reclamation.

Feature/Reclaim function Storage Foundation for UNIX

Storage Foundation for Windows

Veritas Operations Manager GUI

SmartMove

YES

YES

YES

Reclaim by Storage Enclosure

YES

NO

YES

Reclaim by VxVM disk group

YES

YES

YES

Reclaim by VxVM LUN/Disk

YES

YES

YES

Reclaim by VxVM Volume

Not Available

YES

YES

Reclaim by Business Entity

NO

NO

YES

Reclaim space not occupied by VxVM Objects

YES YES NO

Reclaim by VxFS File System

YES (VxFS)

Not Applicable for NTFS

YES

Scheduling reclaim operations

Via cron

VEA scheduler interface

YES

Analyzing if aggressive reclamation is to be used reclaimed

YES (5.1 SP1)

No

NO

Monitoring Reclaim Operations

vxtask

VEA GUI

YES


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Storage Foundation Administration for Thin Reclamation

VxVM Disk types for Reclamation: Sliced v/s CDS (cross-platform data sharing) Thin Reclamation will work the following disk types

UNIX supports sliced, simple and CDS disk formats Windows requires Dynamic Disk support.

When using “thinrclm” LUNs, the LUN sizes are much larger than the pool and will be in Terabytes rather than Gigabytes. There are 2 known limitations on some platforms where CDS disk label is used

Solaris: If the LUN size is >1 TB then EFI label needs to be used and a sliced VxVM label applied.

Linux: If the LUN size is >2 TB then a GPT label needs to be used and a sliced VxVM label applied

NOTE: The above 2 limitations have been eliminated when using 5.1SP1 on UNIX i.e. CDS labels are supported when using 5.1SP1 on Storage Foundation for UNIX There are no known limitations when using simple disk on AIX and HPUX

Listing thin and thinrclm devices

The following commands list the extended attributes which define thinrclm devices capable of thin reclamation feature.


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UNIX

# vxdisk –e list (shows extended attributes .. tprclm and RAID type) # vxdisk –o thin list (shows device type: thin / thinrclm)

[root@]# vxdisk -o thin list DEVICE SIZE(mb) PHYS_ALLOC(mb) GROUP TYPE xiv0_06a0 16384 29 - thinrclm xiv0_06aa 16384 30 - thinrclm xiv0_06ab 16384 30 - thinrclm xiv0_06ac 16384 30 - thinrclm xiv0_06ad 16384 30 - thinrclm [root@]# vxdisk -e list DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS OS_NATIVE_NAME ATTR xiv0_06a0auto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10 xiv0_06aaauto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10 xiv0_06abauto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10 xiv0_06acauto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10

Windows C:\>vxdisk list (will show thin reclaim capable devices)

G:\>vxdisk -g datadg diskinfo XIV10 (partial listing) Disk information Device Name : Harddisk10 Media Name : XIV10 Length : 17174352384 …….. Serial Number: 068B Vendor ID : IBM Product ID : 2810XIV …….. VID/PID : IBM/2810XIV* Track Alignment Offset : 128 Track Alignment Setting : Enable Thin Provisioning Provision Type : ThinReclaim Provisioned Size : 2364538880 Allocation Unit : 1048576 Veritas Disk ID (VDID) : IBM-0134_XIV_068B Subdisks XIV10-01

Analyzing Thin reclamation If the administrator wishes to analyze if aggressive reclamation needs to be triggered, versus normal reclamation, then the command below is useful. Aggressive reclamation takes more time and is required only if there is a lot of defragmentation in the file-system. UNIX

# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm –R –o analyze < mount point> Windows: This option is not available in Windows.


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Invoking thin reclamation on VxVM objects and VxFS File System by command-line UNIX Reclaim by Disk group, Enclosure or LUN

# vxdisk reclaim <dg> # vxdisk reclaim <enclosure> # vdisk reclaim < da-name>

# vdisk –o full < dg>/<enclosure>/<da-name> By default, the reclamation does not affect unmarked space, which is unused space between subdisks. If a LUN has a lot of physical space that was previously allocated, the space between the subdisks could be substantial. Use the -o full option to reclaim the unmarked space

Reclaim by File System

# /opt/VRTSbin/fsadm –R < mount point> # /opt/VRTSbin/fsadm –R –A < mount point>

# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm –R –o analyze < mount point> # /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm –R –o auto < mount point>

Mounting filesystem and enabling quotas :mount -t vxfs -o quota /dev/vx/dsk/xivdg/xivol /xiv WINDOWS

Reclaim by volume , free space or both(all) C:\vxdg –g <DiskGroup> reclaim option=volumes|freespace|all Reclaim by Disk C:\vxdisk –g <DiskGroup> reclaim <DiskName>

NOTE : thin reclaim operations are not supported on RAID-5 VxVM volumes on UNIX and Windows.

Turning reclaim operations off

If for some reason the administrator wants to inhibit thin reclaim operations this can be achieved by

populating a file /etc/vxdefault/vxdisk with a value “reclaim=off”

Volume Flags and Plex Differences on UNIX There are differences in plexes when different volume layouts are created on thinrclm devices.

VxVM Volume Type Special objects created Concat none Striped none Mirrored dco


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Prerequisites for thin reclamation with IBM XIV (5.0 MP3 RP3 for UNIX)

The latest ASL for XIV for your OS Platform must be downloaded from the following URL: https://sort.symantec.com/asl.

To support thin reclamation with XIV on 5.0 MP3, release RP3 or a later patch is required. Please download latest patches from https://sort.symantec.com/patch/matrix.

The minimum microcode level required is 10.2.1. Please contact IBM to upgrade microcode if

required.

VxVM DiskGroup versions and impact of VxVM Upgrades

Storage Foundation upgrades 5.1 and above are “zero reboot”. i.e. the host does not to be rebooted and

only object versions need to be upgraded manually.

Always upgrade to the latest disk group version (160) and cluster protocol version (100)

# vxdg upgrade < dgname>

When using Cluster (CVM/CFS) the cluster protocol needs to be upgraded (to 100)

# vxdctl upgrade

Reclaim on VxVM Volume Delete

On UNIX this feature is supported only with version 5.1 and upwards.

If a VxVM volume is deleted on an XIV LUN(s), then VxVM will reclaim the space occupied by that volume and return it to the thin pool.


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https://sort.symantec.com/asl

https://sort.symantec.com/patch/matrix

Veritas SmartMove

Setting tunables for enabling SmartMove

UNIX: On Storage Foundation for UNIX SmartMove is enabled by default

#vxdefault list

KEYWORD

CURRENT-VALUE

DEFAULT-VALUE

autostartvolumes fssmartmovethreshold reclaim_on_delete_start_time reclaim_on_delete_wait_period sharedminorstart usefssmartmove usesmartmovewithvvr

on 100 22:10 1 33000 all on

on 100 22:10 1 33000 All on

Windows: On Storage Foundation for Windows SmartMove needs to be enabled

,


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Using Veritas Thin Reclamation in VMware ESX Environments

IBM XIV Storage supports thin reclamation with Storage Foundation running on VMware ESX guests

when LUNs are configured in RDM mode. The currently supported versions of ESX are 4.0 and 4.1u1.

Automating thin reclamation operations

UNIX-native cron jobs

Windows: VEA scheduler.

Using Veritas Operations Manager 3.1

GUI Management: Veritas Operations Manager (VOM)

Veritas Operations Manager is a unified management platform for managing IT environments in a single plane of glass to monitor applications, storage, and servers and provides centralized management for

Storage Foundation including add-ins for running thin reclamation

To download the latest version of VOM , please go to http:/go.symantec.com/vom.

There are multiple add-ons available for VOM . Add-ons are updates to VOM which allow advanced

operations. In this paper we will discuss the below add-ons as they are relevant to thin storage optimization and SmartMove.

Storage Insight (deep discovery for IBM Storage using XCLI)

Thin reclamation add-on (deep discovery of XIV Storage using XCLI)

Volume migration (template provisioning)

Storage Insight (Integration with XCLI for XIV Storage Subsystems)

VOM provides deep discovery into XIV Storage, offering the storage administrator insight without

having to switch between native storage GUI/CLI and VOM GUI.

VOM enables Storage Foundation to enhance discovery, with correlation and management of storage objects inside the array, such as LUNs and pools to Storage Foundation objects,

including disks, disk groups, volumes, and file systems. VOM—with the help of the Storage Insight add-on, helps identify which thin pool the LUN belongs to on XIV Storage and on which thin pool specific volumes and file systems consume space. This add-on provides the exact

mapping of LUNs to the thin pool, pool usage, subscription statistics, and reports on a single pane of glass. It requires one managed host running XCLI (CLI for XIV Storage) to be identified to the VOM CMS (Central Management Server) and the add-on configured to talk to the XIV

System.


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Storage out of band

This graph displays the utilization overview Raw storage capacity Storage provisioned in pools Allocated space for pool Volumes

This storage pool graph shows utilization Thin pool capacity Oversubscription if any Current consumption


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Thin Pool Full Conditions

There are 2 types of pool-full conditions listed below which should prevented. VOM reports display statistics for this purpose.

The array pool running out of space

Application I/O attempting to write beyond a fully allocated thin volume/filesystem

Storage Insight provides reports on thin pool usage

To run a report on thin pool usage/oversubscription risks, select the thin pool usage, click on run, and run for the entire domain.

This report can also be scheduled to run on a certain date and by week/day/month at a specified time.

There are multiple reports that are of interest to storage administrators:

Thin pool usage summary

Top 5 thin pools at risk

Top 10 thin pools with largest consumed capacity

Top 10 thin pools with highest subscribed capacity


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Report of top 5 thin pools at risk of being oversubscribed.


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Thin Reclamation Add-on

This add-on enables a VOM administrator to schedule and perform multiple thin reclaim operations simultaneously. These operations can be triggered by Pool, Enclosure, Volumes, or File systems on XIV Storage Systems. Additional this add-on assisted by the Storage Insight Add-on will provide

reports on thin pool usage and statistics on the amount of space reclaimed.

This Add-on supplements automation of thin reclaim operations on UNIX Environments and complements the “Disk Group reclaim Scheduler” provided by VEA on Storage Foundation for

Windows (SFW).

To invoke this option, click on “Solutions” and go to “Create Reclamation Process.”

The Create Reclamation Process starts a wizard which will either create a scheduled task or start the reclamation process for the array, Business Entity (filesystem) or a host.

Continue the wizard to select the array /LUNs or pool/LUNs, and a recurring schedule, if desired.

Reclamation can be scheduled by:

Business entity, enclosure, or file system ,

Day , week, or month (time is specified)


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To start reclamation immediately, click on “Run Reclamation Now.”

The reclamation task can be monitored from by clicking on “Configured Reclamation Processes” on the screen below.

Multiple reclamation tasks can be initiated and monitored.

Click on the task to see task progress.

.


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]

After the task is complete, it will indicate the approximate amount of space reclaimed during the

operation.

The Associations tab will show all the file systems and volumes for which the reclamation operation was executed.


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Volume Migration: Thick > Thin using SmartMove

SmartMove optimizes volume migration by moving only occupied files on a source VxFS filesystem to the

target volume. This process provides a wizard to move thick LUNs to thin IBM XIV LUNs using VOM 3.1. This migration is an offline migration, .i.e. application I/O must be stopped during this migration.

The prerequisites for this migration are:

Source volume and filesystem (in the example below, Hitachi USP V)

Please note that used space is 2.6 GB.

One target XIV LUN (17 GB) was added to the disk group containing source volume.

The Steps for this migration are:

Start the Wizard: Solutions Storage Provisioning Move Volumes


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Select the host (has 2 storage enclosures)

Select the source enclosure: Hitachi R600


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Mount point and change volume layout (if desired)

Click on Change Volume Layout and change the target layout to stripe.

Finalize source and target volume layouts


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View the Impact Analysis Report before starting the operation.

Display the Impact Analysis Report (partial screenshot).


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To view the task from VxVM command line (vxtask list).

The command line displays that the migration is SmartMove enabled.

To view the task from the VOM GUI, click on the job name.


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The old volume (hds_stripevol) is renamed (to hds_stripevol_old_0) and the new volume (hds_stripevol) is renamed to the original volume name and mounted on original mount point

(/usp).

The file allocation size on the XIV LUNs is only the filesystem size (3.69 GB) rather than the entire volume size (7 GB). This shows that SmartMove has only moved blocks with actual data,

which has optimized the storage migration.


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Thin Reclamation with XIV Storage for SFW Windows using VEA

Storage Foundation for Windows Version 5.1 SP1 and above support thin reclamation. SFW has a

graphic user administration interface called VEA (Veritas Enterprise Administrator) which is the de facto GUI for managing storage in Windows Administrators. This GUI has additional features to recognize thinreclaim capable XIV devices.

Discovery

The following screenshot of the VEA GUI shows XIV LUNs recognized as thin reclaim capable in the

“Disks” tab.

NOTE: The default GUI does not show the thin reclaim and provisioned size columns.

They need to be rearranged using the “customize table header option” by clicking on the table and

right-clicking.

Please note the fields: Provision Type, Size, and Provisioned Size.

The Size is the thin size of the XIV LUN

The Provisioned size is the allocated size of the XIV LUN and will change based on allocation.

It can be verified that the “thin reclaim” XIV LUNs have a 16 GB thin size and 2 GB provisioned size when there is no allocation on volume. The allocated 2 GB size is due to volume and NTFS filesystem creation.


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Triggering and scheduling reclamation

Triggering or scheduling reclamation operation is really simple using VEA. Under Actions, find the thin provisioning which has a drop-down for triggering and scheduling reclaim operations.

Triggering Reclamation

Click on Reclaim and this will start a “wizard” which will get information to start a reclaim operation


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Space can be reclaimed by LUNs (free space) and/or Volumes

Complete the wizard by specifying how space should be reclaimed.


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Scheduling Reclamation

VEA provides a simple interface to schedule thin reclamation at regular intervals.

There are options for pre-command and post-command which can be batch files to check volume sizes before and after to log the amount of space being reclaimed.

There are options to select days of the week/month/specific dates


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The below screenshot shows the “days of the month”


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onitoring Reclamation

e monitored

–whether in progress or complete

ed size)

ssification “Reclaim Class” and the message where it says

ed triggered reclamation.

M

The Status of reclamation can b

1. qualitative monitored by the event log

2. quantitatively monitored -how much space was reclaimed (new provision

Monitoring Event Log (VEA)

Please observe the messages with cla“Successfully reclaimed space from dynamic Volume(s).

This holds good for manually triggered as well as schedul


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Summary The integration between the IBM XIV Storage System, Veritas Storage Foundation, and Veritas Operations Manager offers the following features: Transparent reporting: End-to-end discovery and reporting of storage objects Storage reclamation: Ability to reclaim unused storage and schedule thin reclamation processes Storage migration: Ability to easily migrate data and reclaim space when migrating from non-IBM storage to IBM XIV, using SmartMove Detailed utilization reporting: Detailed reports on utilization, including thin pool utilization

These points of integration help facilitate effective storage resource utilization on an ongoing basis, minimize unnecessary storage outlays, streamline storage administration, and promote accurate storage capacity planning.


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APPENDIX: Configuring VOM 3.1 for Storage Insight Add-on


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Trademarks and Special Notices © International Business Machines 2011. IBM, the IBM logo, System Storage and other referenced IBM products and services are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines

Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All rights reserved.

References in this document to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in every country.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

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thin reclamation using veritas storage foundation enterprise ha from symantec and the ibm xiv...

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