How volumes work

Volumes are data containers that enable you to partition and manage your data. Understanding the types of volumes and their associated capabilities enables you to design your storage architecture for maximum storage efficiency and ease of administration.

Volumes are the highest-level logical storage object. Unlike aggregates, which are composed of physical storage resources, volumes are completely logical objects.

Data ONTAP provides two types of volumes: FlexVol volumes and Infinite Volumes. There are also volume variations, such as FlexClone volumes, data protection mirrors, and load-sharing mirrors. Not all volume variations are supported for both types of volumes. Data ONTAP efficiency capabilities, compression and deduplication, are supported for both types of volumes.

Volumes contain file systems in a NAS environment, and LUNs in a SAN environment.

Volumes are associated with one Storage Virtual Machine (SVM). The SVM is a virtual management entity, or server, that consolidates various cluster resources into a single manageable unit. When you create a volume, you specify the SVM it is associated with. The type of the volume (FlexVol volume or Infinite Volume) is determined by an immutable SVM attribute.

Volumes have a language. The language of the volume determines the character set Data ONTAP uses to display file names and data for that volume. The default value for the language of the volume is the language of the SVM.

Volumes depend on their associated aggregates for their physical storage; they are not directly associated with any concrete storage objects, such as disks or RAID groups. If the cluster administrator has assigned specific aggregates to an SVM, then only those aggregates can be used to provide storage to the volumes associated with that SVM. This impacts volume creation, and also copying and moving FlexVol volumes between aggregates.

For more information about Infinite Volumes, see the Infinite Volumes Management Guide.

For more information about SVMs, see the Clustered Data ONTAP System Administration Guide for Cluster Administrators.

For more information about data protection mirrors, see the Clustered Data ONTAP Data Protection Guide.

For more information about physical storage resources such as aggregates, disks, and RAID groups, see the Clustered Data ONTAP Physical Storage Management Guide.