Veritas Storage Foundation and IBM XIV Thin Reclamation

Thin Reclamation Using
Veritas Storage Foundation Enterprise HA
from Symantec and the IBM XIV Storage
System
Solution Installation Configuration and Best Practices
. . . . . . . .

Document SM103-2
April 2011

© Copyright IBM Corporation, 2011 All Rights Reserved.
All trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective holders

Table of contents
Abstract........................................................................................................................................4
Introduction .................................................................................................................................4
About Thin Provisioning ........................................................................................................................... 4
About Thin Reclamation .......................................................................................................................... 4
About SmartMove .................................................................................................................................... 4
About IBM ................................................................................................................................................ 4
About Symantec....................................................................................................................................... 5
About Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Operations Manager (VOM).......................................... 5
About the IBM XIV Storage System......................................................................................................... 5
About the IBM – Symantec partnership ................................................................................................... 6
Solution Overview.......................................................................................................................7
Effective space allocation and reclamation via Storage Foundation – XIV communication.................... 7
Thin-reclamation process ................................................................................................................. 7
Pre-scheduled concurrent thin-reclamation operations ................................................................... 8
Thick to thin migrations on IBM XIV using SmartMove ........................................................................... 8
Integrated storage utilization reporting .................................................................................................... 8
Pre-implementation best practice considerations for thin environments for IBM XIV and
Storage Foundation ....................................................................................................................9
VxVM volume layouts for thin environments and RAID layouts on storage..................................... 9
LUN sizes ......................................................................................................................................... 9
Using boot devices with thinrclm LUNs............................................................................................ 9
Test System Configuration ........................................................................................................9
Installing and Configuring IBM XIV Storage ...........................................................................10
Microcode Requirements for Thin Reclamation .................................................................................... 10
XIV GUI Installation................................................................................................................................ 10
IBM XIV Configuration ........................................................................................................................... 10
Thin Reclamation: Storage Foundation ..................................................................................15
Thin Reclamation Differences: UNIX v/s Windows:............................................................................... 15
Storage Foundation Administration for Thin Reclamation ..................................................................... 16
VxVM Disk types for Reclamation: Sliced v/s CDS (cross-platform data sharing) ........................ 16
Listing thin and thinrclm devices .................................................................................................... 16
Analyzing Thin reclamation ............................................................................................................ 17
Invoking thin reclamation on VxVM objects and VxFS File System by command-line .................. 18
Turning reclaim operations off........................................................................................................ 18
Volume Flags and Plex Differences on UNIX........................................................................................ 18
Prerequisites for thin reclamation with IBM XIV (5.0 MP3 RP3 for UNIX)............................................. 19
VxVM DiskGroup versions and impact of VxVM Upgrades................................................................... 19
Reclaim on VxVM Volume Delete.......................................................................................................... 19
Veritas SmartMove ................................................................................................................................ 20
Setting tunables for enabling SmartMove.............................................................................................. 20
Using Veritas Thin Reclamation in VMware ESX Environments........................................................... 21

Thin Reclamation Using Veritas Storage Foundation Enterprise HA and IBM XIV Storage Systems
2

Automating thin reclamation operations ................................................................................................ 21
GUI Management: Veritas Operations Manager (VOM)........................................................................ 21
Storage Insight (Integration with XCLI for XIV Storage Subsystems)............................................ 21
Thin Pool Full Conditions ............................................................................................................... 23
Storage Insight provides reports on thin pool usage...................................................................... 23
Thin Reclamation Add-on ................................................................................................................... 25
Volume Migration: Thick > Thin using SmartMove .......................................................................... 28
Thin Reclamation with XIV Storage for SFW Windows using VEA ......................................34
Summary....................................................................................................................................40
APPENDIX: Configuring VOM 3.1 for Storage Insight Add-on..............................................41
Trademarks and Special Notices .............................................................................................42

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Abstract
This document describes the integrated solution for thin reclamation using the IBM XIV Storage System
and Veritas Storage Foundation from Symantec, specifically, SmartMove and the Veritas Operations
Manager Storage Insight feature. This paper explains the installation, configuration, and operation of the
solution, including migrating data, reclaiming space, managing storage, and reporting.

Introduction
About Thin Provisioning

Thin provisioning offers a simple solution to the need to plan for storage capacity demand. Typical
storage systems require the up-front allocation of large pools of storage capacity even if the storage will
go unused for a long period of time. The thin provisioning storage optimization method allows IT
departments to safely allocate, up front, as much logical capacity as is conceivably required by an
application, while enabling physical storage allocation on demand in smaller increments.

About Thin Reclamation
The Veritas Storage Foundation thin reclamation feature offers
an easy way to reclaim space on thin-reclaim-capable LUNs, disk
groups, volumes, and file systems. Recapturing storage
previously allocated to systems or applications that are no longer
in use enables users to optimize capacity utilization, saving
storage investment costs and reducing management overhead.

For thinly provisioned IBM XIV storage pools, thin reclamation
provides highly effective space management on a large order of
magnitude.

About SmartMove

SmartMove is a Veritas Storage Foundation function that lets
Veritas Volume Manager know which blocks have data stored on
Volume Manager volumes to enable the copy engine to copy only used blocks and skip unused blocks.
By only copying used blocks, this feature promotes effective storage migration and helps optimize storage
utilization.

About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with over 100 years of leadership in helping
businesses innovate by delivering a wide range of solutions and technologies that enable customers,
large and small, to deliver more efficient and effective services. IBM's comprehensive server, storage,
software and services portfolio is designed to help create new business insight by integrating, analyzing,
and optimizing information on demand. From its foundations of virtualization, openness, and innovation
through collaboration, IBM can optimize management of information through technology innovations and
infrastructure simplification to help achieve maximum business productivity. Visit IBM at www.ibm.com.

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About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in infrastructure software, enabling businesses and consumers to have
confidence in a connected world. The company helps customers protect their infrastructure, information,
and interactions by delivering software and services that address risks to security, availability,
compliance, and performance. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Symantec has operations in more
than 40 countries. Visit Symantec at www.symantec.com for more details.

About Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Operations Manager (VOM)
Veritas Storage Foundation HA is a comprehensive solution that delivers data and application availability
by bringing together two industry-leading products: Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Cluster
Server.

Veritas Storage Foundation provides a complete solution for heterogeneous online storage management.
Based on the industry-leading Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System, it provides a standard
set of integrated tools to centrally manage explosive data growth, maximize storage hardware
investments, provide data protection and adapt to changing business requirements. Unlike point
solutions, Storage Foundation enables IT organizations to manage their storage infrastructure with one
tool. With advanced features such as centralized storage management, non-disruptive configuration and
administration, dynamic storage tiering, dynamic multipathing, data migration and local and remote
replication, Storage Foundation enables organizations to reduce operational costs and capital
expenditures across the data center.

Veritas Operations Manager (VOM) is the next generation heterogeneous data center management
platform for servers and storage arrays and is fully integrated with Storage Foundation and IBM XIV
Storage subsystems.

About the IBM XIV Storage System

The IBM XIV Storage System is a next-generation high-end open disk
storage system. The XIV system has a revolutionary grid architecture
designed to deliver the highest levels of reliability, scalability, and
functionality at low overall cost, while providing unprecedented ease
of management.

The XIV system is designed to deliver consistently high performance
through the elimination of hot spots and full exploitation of all key
system resources. Its groundbreaking architecture delivers these
performance levels while innovatively leveraging the capacity and
cost benefits of large high-density drives.

Outstanding availability and reliability are delivered through a
revolutionary redundancy scheme, enabling automated self-healing
with exceptionally fast rebuild times. Software functionality including
non-disruptive snapshots, thin provisioning with space reclamation,
and remote mirroring, can help optimize storage utilization and
protect business data from outages.

For more information on XIV, please visit
http:// ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/xiv.

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About the IBM – Symantec partnership

IBM and Symantec have enjoyed a successful long-term relationship, combining industry-leading IBM
hardware, systems, and services with powerful Symantec availability and security products. Jointly
developed solutions help customers streamline management, reduce TCO, and optimize resources
throughout the IT infrastructure.

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Solution Overview
The integration between Veritas Storage Foundation (SF) and IBM XIV storage-array-based features
such as thin storage, thin provisioning, and thin reclamation helps facilitate flexible and efficient storage
activities, such as provisioning space, migrating data, and maximizing storage utilization. Leveraging this
integration offers cost savings by reducing space consumption, preventing expensive storage outlays,
and lowering storage management overhead.

Effective space allocation and reclamation via Storage Foundation –
XIV communication
IBM XIV and Storage Foundation leverage two-way host-storage collaboration to reclaim space freed up
by both applications and file systems, and recover storage space during data migration from thick to thin
storage. These online non-disruptive processes provide granular reclamation of all existing free space.

SF identifies reclaimable storage and automatically sends the storage space reclamation parameters to
the XIV Storage System via host-to-storage controller communication. IBM XIV then instantly makes this
space available to other systems.

Storage Foundation’s host-based storage management, multipathing, and thin provisioning support an
array of server environments, including: Windows, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX. The IBM XIV Storage
System Host Attachment Kit enables host-to-storage connectivity and multipathing,

Thin-reclamation process
Instant space reclamation is performed in three phases:

1. Storage discovery – SF sends an inquiry to IBM XIV to determine that the storage device is thin
reclamation-enabled and that thin reclamation can be performed. SF obtains reclamation-related
parameters, such as minimum storage chunk size to be reclaimed.

For clustered environments, Veritas Cluster Server (VCS), managed by SF, extends thin
reclamation to host clusters.

2. Reclamation request – Storage Foundation, which manages information on allocated and non-
allocated storage, initiates a request command to IBM XIV to reclaim storage for space identified
as no longer being used by the system and applications. IBM XIV processes the command by
changing storage block status from reserved to unmapped.

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The command used is WRITE SAME (16) with UNMAP bit set to 1, which performs an unmap
operation on the logical blocks specified in the transaction.

3. Reporting – IBM XIV reports current actual disk usage.

Pre-scheduled concurrent thin-reclamation operations
Veritas Operations Manager’s thin reclamation add-on enables Veritas administrators to schedule
periodic thin reclamation and perform multiple thin reclamation operations simultaneously. The process,
which is non-disruptive and runs unattended in seconds, can be triggered by pool, enclosure, volume, or
file system on XIV Storage Systems.

Thick to thin migrations on IBM XIV using SmartMove
Migrating to IBM XIV thin storage on UNIX, Linux, or Windows, with Symantec SmartMove eliminates
waste by migrating only file system space used. This approach can reclaim large amounts of unused
storage compared with standard block level migrations.

Integrated storage utilization reporting
For empowered storage management, allocation, and planning, IBM XIV reports to the SF administrator
the amount of actual physical disk space that is allocated behind a thin device.
Veritas Operations Manager CommandCentral Storage reports on thin pool usage and statistics on one
unified workstation with the help of the VOM Storage Insight.

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Pre-implementation best practice considerations for
thin environments for IBM XIV and Storage
Foundation
The following best practices are recommended:

VxVM volume layouts for thin environments and RAID layouts on storage

 When migrating from thick to thin environments on IBM XIV Storage:
o It is recommended to change volume layout to concat for thin friendliness
o If configuring mirrored volumes, remove the DRL and add a DCO log to mirrored
volumes.
o Keep in mind that thin reclamation is not supported with RAID-5 volumes, and it is
recommended to migrate to concat. VOM provides an easy interface for volume
migration.

LUN sizes
 IBM XIV specifically requires a minimum of a 17 GB LUN size and performs better with bigger
LUN sizes.
 IBM XIV distributes chunks for each LUN across all disks in the enclosure and has redundancy
for each chunk within the enclosure so that losing multiple disks or trays will not affect availability.
 It is recommended that the storage administrators create higher thin-sized LUNs and use Concat
VxVM Volumes for simplicity of management of thin environments.

Using boot devices with thinrclm LUNs
 If IBM XIV LUNs are used for boot devices, the file systems such as root, swap and dump should
be closely monitored for oversubscription because running out of space can cause complications.
 It is recommended to turn thin reclamation off on boot devices.
 It is recommended to fully allocate space for boot devices.

Test System Configuration
A sample two-node configuration includes:

Table 1 Hardware Configuration

Server Storage
2 x IBM System x3550 M3 IBM XIV Storage System
Servers Quad-core + 6 GB RAM Microcode Level : 10.2.4.a

Table 2 Software Configuration

Red Hat Linux 5.4
Storage Foundation 5.1 SP1

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Installing and Configuring IBM XIV Storage
Microcode Requirements for Thin Reclamation

Thin Reclamation is supported by IBM XIV microcode version 10.2.1 and greater.

XIV GUI Installation

Download and install XIV GUI:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/xiv_insta
llingthegui.html

IBM XIV Configuration

1. Create a storage pool (either regular or thin).

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2. Create volumes.

3. Define hosts on the XIV System.
a. Install the XIV Host Attachment Kit (HAK) on two servers.
Download the XIV Host Attachment Kit (for Linux):

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S4000799

Note: HAKs for other operating systems:
Windows
Solaris
HP-UX

AIX

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b. Install the XIV Host Attachment Kit on two servers.

c. Run the XIV host attachment wizard.

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4. Create a cluster.

5. Add hosts to the cluster.

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6. Map volumes to the cluster.

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Thin Reclamation: Storage Foundation

Thin Reclamation Differences: UNIX v/s Windows:
The below table illustrates the different features/methods of using thin reclamation.
Feature/Reclaim function Storage Storage Veritas
Foundation for Foundation for Operations
UNIX Windows Manager GUI

SmartMove YES YES YES

Reclaim by Storage Enclosure YES NO YES

Reclaim by VxVM disk group YES YES YES

Reclaim by VxVM LUN/Disk YES YES YES

Reclaim by VxVM Volume Not Available YES YES

Reclaim by Business Entity NO NO YES
Reclaim space not occupied by YES YES
VxVM Objects NO
Not Applicable
Reclaim by VxFS File System YES (VxFS) for NTFS YES

Scheduling reclaim operations Via cron VEA scheduler YES
interface
Analyzing if aggressive YES
reclamation is to be used (5.1 SP1) No NO
reclaimed

Monitoring Reclaim Operations vxtask VEA GUI YES

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Storage Foundation Administration for Thin Reclamation

VxVM Disk types for Reclamation: Sliced v/s CDS (cross-platform data sharing)
Thin Reclamation will work the following disk types

 UNIX supports sliced, simple and CDS disk formats
 Windows requires Dynamic Disk support.

When using “thinrclm” LUNs, the LUN sizes are much larger than the pool and will be in Terabytes rather
than Gigabytes. There are 2 known limitations on some platforms where CDS disk label is used

 Solaris: If the LUN size is >1 TB then EFI label needs to be used and a sliced VxVM label
applied.
 Linux: If the LUN size is >2 TB then a GPT label needs to be used and a sliced VxVM label
applied

NOTE: The above 2 limitations have been eliminated when using 5.1SP1 on UNIX i.e. CDS labels are
supported when using 5.1SP1 on Storage Foundation for UNIX

There are no known limitations when using simple disk on AIX and HPUX

Listing thin and thinrclm devices
The following commands list the extended attributes which define thinrclm devices capable of thin
reclamation feature.

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UNIX

# vxdisk –e list (shows extended attributes .. tprclm and RAID type)
# vxdisk –o thin list (shows device type: thin / thinrclm)

[root@]# vxdisk -o thin list
DEVICE SIZE(mb) PHYS_ALLOC(mb) GROUP TYPE
xiv0_06a0 16384 29 - thinrclm
xiv0_06aa 16384 30 - thinrclm
xiv0_06ab 16384 30 - thinrclm
xiv0_06ac 16384 30 - thinrclm
xiv0_06ad 16384 30 - thinrclm

[root@]# vxdisk -e list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS OS_NATIVE_NAME ATTR
xiv0_06a0auto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10
xiv0_06aaauto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10
xiv0_06abauto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10
xiv0_06acauto:cdsdisk - - online thinrclm sdbg tprclm RAID_10

Windows

C:>vxdisk list (will show thin reclaim capable devices)

G:>vxdisk -g datadg diskinfo XIV10 (partial listing)
Disk information
Device Name : Harddisk10
Media Name : XIV10
Length : 17174352384
……..

Serial Number: 068B
Vendor ID : IBM
Product ID : 2810XIV
……..
VID/PID : IBM/2810XIV*
Track Alignment Offset : 128
Track Alignment Setting : Enable
Thin Provisioning
Provision Type : ThinReclaim
Provisioned Size : 2364538880
Allocation Unit : 1048576
Veritas Disk ID (VDID) : IBM-0134_XIV_068B
Subdisks XIV10-01

Analyzing Thin reclamation

If the administrator wishes to analyze if aggressive reclamation needs to be triggered, versus normal
reclamation, then the command below is useful. Aggressive reclamation takes more time and is required
only if there is a lot of defragmentation in the file-system.

UNIX

# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm –R –o analyze < mount point>

Windows: This option is not available in Windows.

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Invoking thin reclamation on VxVM objects and VxFS File System by command-line

UNIX

Reclaim by Disk group, Enclosure or LUN

# vxdisk reclaim <dg>
# vxdisk reclaim <enclosure>
# vdisk reclaim < da-name>
# vdisk –o full < dg>/<enclosure>/<da-name>
By default, the reclamation does not affect unmarked space, which is unused space between
subdisks. If a LUN has a lot of physical space that was previously allocated, the space
between the subdisks could be substantial. Use the -o full option to reclaim the unmarked
space

Reclaim by File System

# /opt/VRTSbin/fsadm –R < mount point>
# /opt/VRTSbin/fsadm –R –A < mount point>

# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm –R –o analyze < mount point>
# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm –R –o auto < mount point>

Mounting filesystem and enabling quotas :mount -t vxfs -o quota /dev/vx/dsk/xivdg/xivol /xiv

WINDOWS

Reclaim by volume , free space or both(all)

C:vxdg –g <DiskGroup> reclaim option=volumes|freespace|all

Reclaim by Disk

C:vxdisk –g <DiskGroup> reclaim <DiskName>

NOTE : thin reclaim operations are not supported on RAID-5 VxVM volumes on UNIX and
Windows.

Turning reclaim operations off
If for some reason the administrator wants to inhibit thin reclaim operations this can be achieved by
populating a file /etc/vxdefault/vxdisk with a value “reclaim=off”

Volume Flags and Plex Differences on UNIX
There are differences in plexes when different volume layouts are created on thinrclm devices.

VxVM Volume Type Special objects created
Concat none
Striped none
Mirrored dco

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Prerequisites for thin reclamation with IBM XIV (5.0 MP3 RP3 for UNIX)
 The latest ASL for XIV for your OS Platform must be downloaded from the following URL:
https://sort.symantec.com/asl.

 To support thin reclamation with XIV on 5.0 MP3, release RP3 or a later patch is required. Please
download latest patches from https://sort.symantec.com/patch/matrix.
 The minimum microcode level required is 10.2.1. Please contact IBM to upgrade microcode if
required.

VxVM DiskGroup versions and impact of VxVM Upgrades

Storage Foundation upgrades 5.1 and above are “zero reboot”. i.e. the host does not to be rebooted and
only object versions need to be upgraded manually.
Always upgrade to the latest disk group version (160) and cluster protocol version (100)
# vxdg upgrade < dgname>
When using Cluster (CVM/CFS) the cluster protocol needs to be upgraded (to 100)
# vxdctl upgrade

Reclaim on VxVM Volume Delete

On UNIX this feature is supported only with version 5.1 and upwards.
If a VxVM volume is deleted on an XIV LUN(s), then VxVM will reclaim the space occupied by that
volume and return it to the thin pool.

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Veritas SmartMove

Setting tunables for enabling SmartMove
UNIX: On Storage Foundation for UNIX SmartMove is enabled by default

#vxdefault list
KEYWORD CURRENT-VALUE DEFAULT-VALUE
autostartvolumes on on
fssmartmovethreshold 100 100
reclaim_on_delete_start_time 22:10 22:10
reclaim_on_delete_wait_period 1 1
sharedminorstart 33000 33000
usefssmartmove all All
usesmartmovewithvvr on on

Windows: On Storage Foundation for Windows SmartMove needs to be enabled

,

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Using Veritas Thin Reclamation in VMware ESX Environments
IBM XIV Storage supports thin reclamation with Storage Foundation running on VMware ESX guests
when LUNs are configured in RDM mode. The currently supported versions of ESX are 4.0 and 4.1u1.

Automating thin reclamation operations
 UNIX-native cron jobs
 Windows: VEA scheduler.
 Using Veritas Operations Manager 3.1

GUI Management: Veritas Operations Manager (VOM)
Veritas Operations Manager is a unified management platform for managing IT environments in a single
plane of glass to monitor applications, storage, and servers and provides centralized management for
Storage Foundation including add-ins for running thin reclamation
To download the latest version of VOM , please go to http:/go.symantec.com/vom.
There are multiple add-ons available for VOM . Add-ons are updates to VOM which allow advanced
operations. In this paper we will discuss the below add-ons as they are relevant to thin storage
optimization and SmartMove.
 Storage Insight (deep discovery for IBM Storage using XCLI)

 Thin reclamation add-on (deep discovery of XIV Storage using XCLI)
 Volume migration (template provisioning)

Storage Insight (Integration with XCLI for XIV Storage Subsystems)
VOM provides deep discovery into XIV Storage, offering the storage administrator insight without
having to switch between native storage GUI/CLI and VOM GUI.
VOM enables Storage Foundation to enhance discovery, with correlation and management of
storage objects inside the array, such as LUNs and pools to Storage Foundation objects,
including disks, disk groups, volumes, and file systems. VOM—with the help of the Storage
Insight add-on, helps identify which thin pool the LUN belongs to on XIV Storage and on which
thin pool specific volumes and file systems consume space. This add-on provides the exact
mapping of LUNs to the thin pool, pool usage, subscription statistics, and reports on a single
pane of glass. It requires one managed host running XCLI (CLI for XIV Storage) to be identified
to the VOM CMS (Central Management Server) and the add-on configured to talk to the XIV
System.

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Storage out of band

This graph displays the utilization
overview

 Raw storage capacity
 Storage provisioned in pools
 Allocated space for pool
 Volumes

This storage pool graph shows
utilization

 Thin pool capacity
 Oversubscription if any
 Current consumption

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Thin Pool Full Conditions
There are 2 types of pool-full conditions listed below which should prevented. VOM reports display
statistics for this purpose.

 The array pool running out of space
 Application I/O attempting to write beyond a fully allocated thin volume/filesystem

Storage Insight provides reports on thin pool usage

To run a report on thin pool usage/oversubscription
risks, select the thin pool usage, click on run, and run
for the entire domain.
This report can also be scheduled to run on a certain
date and by week/day/month at a specified time.

There are multiple reports that are of interest to storage administrators:

 Thin pool usage summary
 Top 5 thin pools at risk
 Top 10 thin pools with largest consumed capacity

 Top 10 thin pools with highest subscribed capacity

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Report of top 5 thin pools at risk of being oversubscribed.

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Thin Reclamation Add-on
This add-on enables a VOM administrator to schedule and perform multiple thin reclaim operations
simultaneously. These operations can be triggered by Pool, Enclosure, Volumes, or File systems on
XIV Storage Systems. Additional this add-on assisted by the Storage Insight Add-on will provide
reports on thin pool usage and statistics on the amount of space reclaimed.
This Add-on supplements automation of thin reclaim operations on UNIX Environments and
complements the “Disk Group reclaim Scheduler” provided by VEA on Storage Foundation for
Windows (SFW).
To invoke this option, click on “Solutions” and go to “Create Reclamation Process.”

The Create Reclamation Process starts
a wizard which will either create a
scheduled task or start the reclamation
process for the array, Business Entity
(filesystem) or a host.

Continue the wizard to select the array /LUNs or pool/LUNs, and a recurring schedule, if desired.
Reclamation can be scheduled by:
 Business entity, enclosure, or file system ,
 Day , week, or month (time is specified)

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To start reclamation immediately, click on “Run Reclamation Now.”

The reclamation task can be monitored from by clicking on “Configured Reclamation Processes” on
the screen below.

Multiple reclamation tasks can be initiated and monitored.

Click on the task to see task progress.
.

26

]
After the task is complete, it will indicate the approximate amount of space reclaimed during the
operation.
The Associations tab will show all the file systems and volumes for which the reclamation operation
was executed.

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Volume Migration: Thick > Thin using SmartMove
SmartMove optimizes volume migration by moving only occupied files on a source VxFS filesystem to the
target volume. This process provides a wizard to move thick LUNs to thin IBM XIV LUNs using VOM 3.1.
This migration is an offline migration, .i.e. application I/O must be stopped during this migration.
The prerequisites for this migration are:
 Source volume and filesystem (in the example below, Hitachi USP V)

Please note that used space is 2.6 GB.
 One target XIV LUN (17 GB) was added to the disk group containing source volume.

The Steps for this migration are:
 Start the Wizard: Solutions  Storage Provisioning  Move Volumes

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 Select the host (has 2 storage enclosures)

 Select the source enclosure: Hitachi R600

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 Mount point and change volume layout (if desired)

 Click on Change Volume Layout and change the target layout to stripe.

 Finalize source and target volume layouts

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 View the Impact Analysis Report before starting the operation.

 Display the Impact Analysis Report (partial screenshot).

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 To view the task from VxVM command line (vxtask list).

The command line displays that the migration is SmartMove enabled.
 To view the task from the VOM GUI, click on the job name.

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 The old volume (hds_stripevol) is renamed (to hds_stripevol_old_0) and the new volume
(hds_stripevol) is renamed to the original volume name and mounted on original mount point
(/usp).

 The file allocation size on the XIV LUNs is only the filesystem size (3.69 GB) rather than the
entire volume size (7 GB). This shows that SmartMove has only moved blocks with actual data,
which has optimized the storage migration.

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Thin Reclamation with XIV Storage for SFW Windows
using VEA

Storage Foundation for Windows Version 5.1 SP1 and above support thin reclamation. SFW has a
graphic user administration interface called VEA (Veritas Enterprise Administrator) which is the de facto
GUI for managing storage in Windows Administrators. This GUI has additional features to recognize
thinreclaim capable XIV devices.

Discovery
The following screenshot of the VEA GUI shows XIV LUNs recognized as thin reclaim capable in the
“Disks” tab.
NOTE: The default GUI does not show the thin reclaim and provisioned size columns.
They need to be rearranged using the “customize table header option” by clicking on the table and
right-clicking.
Please note the fields: Provision Type, Size, and Provisioned Size.
The Size is the thin size of the XIV LUN

The Provisioned size is the allocated size of the XIV LUN and will change based on allocation.
It can be verified that the “thin reclaim” XIV LUNs have a 16 GB thin size and 2 GB provisioned size when
there is no allocation on volume. The allocated 2 GB size is due to volume and NTFS filesystem creation.

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Triggering and scheduling reclamation

Triggering or scheduling reclamation operation is really simple using VEA. Under Actions, find the thin
provisioning which has a drop-down for triggering and scheduling reclaim operations.

Triggering Reclamation
Click on Reclaim and this will start a “wizard” which will get information to start a reclaim operation

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Space can be reclaimed by LUNs (free space) and/or Volumes

Complete the wizard by specifying how space should be reclaimed.

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Scheduling Reclamation
VEA provides a simple interface to schedule thin reclamation at regular intervals.

There are options for pre-command and post-command which can be batch files to check volume sizes
before and after to log the amount of space being reclaimed.

There are options to select days of the week/month/specific dates

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The below screenshot shows the “days of the month”

38

Monitoring Reclamation
The Status of reclamation can be monitored
1. qualitative monitored by the event log –whether in progress or complete
2. quantitatively monitored -how much space was reclaimed (new provisioned size)

Monitoring Event Log (VEA)
Please observe the messages with classification “Reclaim Class” and the message where it says
“Successfully reclaimed space from dynamic Volume(s).
This holds good for manually triggered as well as scheduled triggered reclamation.

39

Summary
The integration between the IBM XIV Storage System, Veritas Storage Foundation, and Veritas
Operations Manager offers the following features:

Transparent reporting: End-to-end discovery and reporting of storage objects

Storage reclamation: Ability to reclaim unused storage and schedule thin reclamation processes

Storage migration: Ability to easily migrate data and reclaim space when migrating from non-IBM
storage to IBM XIV, using SmartMove

Detailed utilization reporting: Detailed reports on utilization, including thin pool utilization

These points of integration help facilitate effective storage resource utilization on an ongoing basis,
minimize unnecessary storage outlays, streamline storage administration, and promote accurate storage
capacity planning.

40

APPENDIX: Configuring VOM 3.1 for Storage Insight
Add-on

41

Trademarks and Special Notices
© International Business Machines 2011. IBM, the IBM logo, System Storage and other referenced IBM
products and services are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines
Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All rights reserved.
References in this document to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them
available in every country.
Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the
United States, other countries, or both.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.
UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
Information is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind.

Information concerning non-IBM products was obtained from a supplier of these products, published
announcement material, or other publicly available sources and does not constitute an endorsement of
such products by IBM. Sources for non-IBM list prices and performance numbers are taken from publicly
available information, including vendor announcements and vendor worldwide homepages. IBM has not
tested these products and cannot confirm the accuracy of performance, capability, or any other claims
related to non-IBM products. Questions on the capability of non-IBM products should be addressed to the
supplier of those products.
Any references in this information to non-IBM Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in
any manner serve as an endorsement of those Web sites. The materials at those Web sites are not part
of the materials for this IBM product and use of those Web sites is at your own risk.

42

Veritas Storage Foundation and IBM XIV Thin Reclamation

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