Creating FlexVol volumes

You can create a FlexVol volume for your data by using the Create Volume dialog box. You should always create a separate volume for your data rather than storing data in the root volume.

Before you begin

•	The cluster must contain a non-root aggregate and a Storage Virtual Machine (SVM).

•	If you want to create read/write (rw) volumes, you must have configured the protocols for the SVM and must have installed either the SnapMirror or the SnapVault license.

If you have not configured the protocols but have installed any one of these licenses, you can create only data protection (DP) volumes.

About this task

•	You can enable storage Quality of Service (QoS) only for a read/write (rw) volume.

Steps

1.	From the home page, double-click the appropriate storage system.

2.	Expand the Storage Virtual Machines hierarchy in the left navigation pane.

3.	In the navigation pane, select the SVM and click Storage > Volumes.

4.	Click Create.

5.	In the Create Volume dialog box, specify a new name if you want to change the default name.

6.	Select the containing aggregate for the volume.

7.	Select the type of storage for which you are creating this volume.

You have to select Data Protection if you are creating a SnapMirror destination volume. You are provided read-only access to this volume.

8.	Specify the size of the volume and the percentage of the total volume size that you want to reserve for Snapshot copies.

The default space reserved for Snapshot copies is zero percent for SAN and VMware volumes. For NAS volumes, the default is five percent .

9.	If you want to enable thin provisioning for the volume, select Thin Provisioned.

When thin provisioning is enabled, space is allocated to the volume from the aggregate only when data is written to it.

10.	If you want to enable deduplication on this volume, make the necessary changes in the Storage Efficiency tab.

System Manager uses the default deduplication schedule. If the specified volume size exceeds the limit required for running deduplication, the volume is created and deduplication is not enabled.

11.	If you want to enable storage QoS for the FlexVol volume to manage workload performance, select the Manage Storage Quality of Service check box in the Quality of Service tab.

12.	Create a new storage QoS policy group or select an existing policy group to control the input/output (I/O) performance of the FlexVol volume:

If you want to...

Then do the following...

Create a new policy group

a.	Specify the policy group name.

b.	Specify the maximum throughput limit to ensure that the workload of the objects in the policy group do not exceed the specified throughput limit.

If you do not specify the maximum throughput limit, the value is set to Unlimited and the unit that you specify does not affect the maximum throughput.

Select an existing policy group

Select Existing Policy Group and click Choose to select an existing policy group from the Select Policy Group dialog box.

Note The Storage Objects Count column in the Select Policy Group dialog box is displayed only for storage systems running Data ONTAP 8.2.1 or later.

You can also choose to modify the maximum throughput for the selected policy group.

If the policy group is assigned to more than one object, the maximum throughput that you specify is shared among the objects.

13.	Click Create.

14.	Verify that the volume you created is included in the list of volumes in the Volume window.

The volume is created with UNIX style security and UNIX 700 "read write execute" permissions for the Owner.

Related reference

Volumes window