Planning the storage arrays
Prepare for disk storage configuration by planning for RAID arrays and volumes, according to the size of your IBM Spectrum Protect™ system.
You create volumes, or LUNs, from the storage groups. The storage group defines which disks provide the storage that makes up the volume. When you create volumes, make them fully allocated. Faster disks types are used to hold the database volumes and active log volumes. Slower disk types can be used for the storage pool volumes, archive log, and database backup volumes. If you use a smaller disk storage pool to stage data, you might need to use faster disks to manage the daily workload performance for ingesting and migrating data.
Component | Details |
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Server storage requirement | How the storage is used by the server. |
Disk type | Size and speed for the disk type that is used for the storage requirement. |
Disk quantity | Number of each disk type that is needed for the storage requirement. |
Hot spare capacity | Number of disks that are reserved as spares to take over if disk failures occur. |
RAID level | Level of RAID array that is used for logical storage. The RAID level defines the type of redundancy that is provided by the array, for example, 5 or 6. |
RAID array quantity | Number of RAID arrays to be created. |
DDMs per RAID array | How many disk drive modules (DDMs) are to be used in each of the RAID arrays. |
Usable size per RAID array | Size that is available for data storage in each RAID array after accounting for space that is lost due to redundancy. |
Total usable size | Total size that is available for data storage in the RAID arrays:
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Suggested storage group and array names | Preferred name to use for MDisks and MDisk groups. |
Usage | Server component that uses part of the physical disk. |
Component | Details |
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Server storage requirement | Requirement for which the physical disk is used. |
Volume name | Unique name that is given to a specific volume. |
Storage group | Name of the storage group from which the space is obtained to create the volume. |
Size | Size of each volume. |
Intended server mount point | Directory on the server system where the volume is mounted. |
Quantity | Number of volumes to create for a specific requirement. Use the same naming standard for each volume that is created for the same requirement. |
Usage | Server component that uses part of the physical disk. |
Examples
Configuration examples for storage groups and volumes are available at the following link: Examples of worksheets for planning storage arrays. The examples show how to plan the storage for different server sizes. In the example configurations, there is a one-to-one mapping between disks and storage groups. You can download the examples and edit the worksheets to plan the storage configuration for your server.