Volume manager

This window enables you to perform these tasks:

Creating a volume

You can create up to 23 volumes on each filer. To create a volume, follow these steps:

  1. If you want the filer to select the disks to be included in the new volume, click the Create button and go to step 4. If you want particular disks to be in the new volume, click the Create (specify disks) button and go to step 5.
  2. In the Volume name field, type the name of the volume. The volume name can contain letters, numbers, and the underscore character(_), but the first character must be a letter or underscore.
  3. In the RAID Group Size field, type the number of disks per RAID group in the volume. The maximum number is 28.
  4. In the Spare Disks field, type the addresses of the disks that you want to be included in the volume. Separate two addresses with a space. For example, you can type 9a.1 9a.2.

    Click the OK button. The procedure for creating a volume is now complete.

  5. In the Number of Disks field, type the number of disks to be added to the volume including the parity disks. Disks in this newly created volume come from the pool of spare disks. The smallest disks in this pool join the volume first, unless you specify disk size in the Disk Size field.
  6. In the Disk Size field, select the disk size if you want the disks in this volume to be at least a certain size.

    Click the OK button. The procedure for creating a volume is now complete.

    NOTE: Disks are added to one RAID group at a time. For example, if the number of disks in each RAID group is 14, and you create a volume of 33 disks, the volume will contain two RAID groups of 14 disks and one RAID group of 5 disks.

Adding disks to a volume

The procedure for adding a disks to a volume is the same as the procedure for creating a volume except that you cannot specify the size of each RAID group when you add disks.

Click the OK button after you fill out the appropriate fields.

Destroying a volume

To destroy a volume, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Destroy button.
  2. Specify the volume to be destroyed in the Volume field. The volume must be off-line.
  3. Click the OK button.

The disks originally in the volume become spare disks.

Renaming a volume

To rename a volume, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Rename button.
  2. In the Volume Name field, type the name of the volume to be renamed.
  3. In the New Volume Name field, type the new name of the volume.
  4. Click the OK button.

If the renamed volume is an NFS-exported file system, modify the /etc/exports file so that the volume can be exported next time the filer reads the file. For CIFS and HTTP services, the filer automatically updates the volume name.

Putting a volume on-line or taking a volume offline

To put a volume on-line or take a volume off-line, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Online or Offline button.
  2. In the Volume Name field, type the name of the volume to be put on-line or off-line.

    To put a volume on-line, the volume must be currently offline or foreign. A foreign volume is a volume that consists of disks moved from another filer and that has never been brought online on the current filer.

  3. Click the OK button.

    A volume can go on-line immediately without a filer reboot. A volume goes off-line only after a filer reboot. Before the reboot, if you change your mind about taking a volume off-line, click the Online button and then the OK button. In this case, the volume will not change its status after the filer reboot.

Specifying options for a volume

You can specify several options for a volume in the Volume Options section of this window. The buttons in this section enables you to determine whether the option is on or off, or whether the specified option is the root volume.

For each option, click on the option button and then the OK button. If you don't want to make any changes to the current settings of the volume options, click the None button and then the OK button. The following list shows the volume options:

Minra

Configures the filer to perform minimal read ahead. By default, the option is disabled and the filer does aggressive read ahead.

Update_atime

Prevents the update of the access time (atime) on an inode when a file is read. This option prevents inode updates from contending with reads from other files. Use this option only on a volume with extremely high read traffic (for example, on a news server used by an Internet access provider or on a filer used mainly as an HTTP server).

Snap

Enables or disables snapshots. A snapshot is a read-only copy of the entire file system-it reflects the state of the file system at the time the snapshot was created. Any client of a filer can access snapshots to recover old versions of files (for example, files that have been accidentally changed or deleted). The snapshot feature allows users to restore their own files without your intervention, because files in snapshots can be viewed and copied by those who have permission to do so with the original files.

Each volume can have up to 20 snapshots at one time.

Snapdir

Makes the .snapshot directory that is typically present at client mount points or the root of the CIFS share invisible. It also turns off access to the .snapshot directory and all .snapshot directories under the mount point or the root of the CIFS share. By default, this option is disabled.

Root

Makes the selected volume the root volume at the next filer reboot. This option can be selected for one volume only. The existing volume, at the next reboot, will become a non-root volume.