Volume manager
Creating a volume

Adding disks to a volume

Destroying a volume

Renaming a volume

Putting a volume on-line or taking a volume off-line

Specifying volume options

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. If you want particular disks to be in the new volume, click the Create (specify disks) button.
  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. This step is applicable only if you clicked the Create button in Step 1. Otherwise, go to Step 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.
    • In the Disk Size field, select the disk size if you want the disks in this volume to be at least a certain size.
  5. This step is applicable only if you clicked the Create (specify disks) button in Step 1. 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.
  6. Click the OK button.

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 contains two RAID groups of 14 disks and one RAID group of 5 disks.

Adding disks to a volume

The procedure for adding a disk 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 name 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 the 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 off-line

NOTE: If you try to bring a foreign volume on-line, you must first rename the foreign volume. A foreign volume is a volume that consists of disks moved from another filer and that has never been brought on-line on the current filer. By default, a foreign volume's name contains the parenthesis characters, which are illegal characters for the names of native volumes.

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 off-line or foreign.
  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 does not change its status after the filer reboot.

Specifying volume options

To specify a volume option, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Options button.
  2. In the Volume name field, enter the name of the volume for which you want to specify options.
  3. Specify the RAID group size or click one of the option buttons. The RAID group size and the option buttons are described after this procedure.
    NOTE: You can click one option button at a time. That is, you cannot specify multiple options and then click the OK button.
  4. Click the OK button.
    NOTE: Before you click the OK button, if you want to revert to the original option setting, click the None button and then the OK button.

The following list describes the field or options that you can specify:

RAID Group Size
Specifies the maximum number of disks that can exist in a RAID group. Changing this number does not increase or decrease the number of disks in current RAID groups. It determines whether more disks can be added to the last RAID group of a volume and how large future RAID groups will be.
Minra (on)/Minra (off)
Specifies whether the filer performs minimal read ahead. By default, the Minra option is Off and the filer does aggressive read ahead.
Update_atime (on)/Update_atime (off)
Specifies whether the access time (atime) on an inode is updated when the filer reads a file. By default, the Update_atime option is On. Click Update_atime (off) if you want to prevent inode updates from contending with reads from other files. Update_atime (off) is applicable 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 (on)/Snap (off)
Enables or disables snapshots. By default, snapshots are On. 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 enables 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 (on)/Snapdir (off)
Specifies whether the .snapshot directory  at client mount points or the root of the CIFS share is visible. If Snapdir is off, 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, Snapdir is on.
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, becomes a non-root volume.