Provisioning Manager and Thin Provisioned LUN's

[erick_moore]

Is there a way to create a provisioning policy that will allow me to have thin provisioned LUN's?  What I want the policy to do is reserve the volume space, set snapshots to auto-delete, volume to auto-grow, allow the LUN to grow the volume, and have the LUN space not be reserved.  I only see 4 options, and none of them seem to accomplish all of what I need.

[watan]

Will forward your question to the Storage Management Software team.

[erick_moore]

Thanks.  It seems like the options are greatly scaled down in Provisioning Manager.  I understand that the UI is meant to take some of the complexity out of the setup, but I would love to see an "Advanced" mode or something similar for more seasoned users.  Exposing all of the volume options would be a nice start.  Our typical setup for ESX LUN's is Volume auto-grow, snap auto-delete, lun not space reserved and set to auto-grow volume, dedup set to run weekly, and a weekly physical reallocation scan.  Some of these things I can set, but others I obviously cannot.  I look forward to seeing the next release.

[erick_moore]

OK, so maybe someone can answer the following:

Scenario 1

Space guarantee set on volume

Fractional reserve set to 0%

Snapshots set to auto-delete

Single LUN exists in volume and set with no space guarantee, but volume auto-grow

Scenario 2

No space guarantee set on volume

Fractional reserve set to 100%

Snapshots set to auto-delete

Single LUN exists in volume and set with no space guarantee

Do both of these configurations accomplish the same thing?  That is a thin provisioned LUN that has no chance to go offline as there is enough protected space for the size of the LUN?  I know we have been using scenario 1 in our environment, and as long as the volume is set to auto-grow to a size slightly large than the LUN you are protected.  Will scenario 2 (as is setup by Provisioning Manager) behave the same way?

Thanks,

Erick

[watan]

Both scenarios look to accomplish the same thing , except scenario 1 is reserving the volume space in the aggregate as opposed to scenario 2 is not reserving any space.

In Scenario 2, you have the potential of running out of space in the volume if the aggr gets full.  It's probably set this way in Provisioning manager because of the toolset it has to manage its storage space.

[erick_moore]

Tthat is unfortunate.  I would like to see more options exposed to PM from a Volume and LUN configuration standpoint.  As it stands right now I will still have to use my scripts to manage large groups of volumes and LUN's since PM is crippled in its ability to make the changes we need.

[erick_moore]

I just want to confirm there is currently no way in Provisioning Manager to set a LUN with no space reservation but have the parent volume have a space guarantee.  Is this correct?