Learn About Creating Storage Partitions

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After you have organized your total storage capacity into logical drives, you must then consider how to share those logical drives among hosts in the Enterprise. In this release of the storage management software, hosts with different operating systems (heterogeneous hosts ) can share access to a storage subsystem.

A storage partition is a logical entity consisting of one or more storage subsystem logical drives that can be shared among hosts that are part of a host group or accessed by a single host. A storage partition is created when you define a collection of hosts (a host group ) or a single host and then define a logical drive-to-logical unit number (LUN) mapping . This mapping allows you to define what host group or host will have access to a particular logical drive in your storage subsystem.

Storage partitioning is a premium feature of the storage management software and therefore must be enabled either by you or your storage vendor supplier. There is a maximum number of storage partitions that can be created on the storage subsystem depending on the premium feature that has been enabled. Benefits of storage partitioning include ease of management, amortization of costs, scalability, and flexibility. For a tutorial explaining how to set up Storage Partitioning, see Setting up Storage Partitioning, Step-by-Step.

There are three major steps to creating storage partitions:

1

Create logical drives on the storage subsystem. During logical drive creation, you can specify one of two logical drive-to-LUN mapping settings: Automatic or Map Later with Storage Partitioning.

  • Automatic - this setting specifies that a LUN should be automatically assigned to the logical drive. This setting will allow host groups or hosts that do not have specific logical drive-to-LUN mappings (designated by the default host group node in the Topology View) to have access to the logical drive. If you are not going to be using Storage Partitioning, this is the setting you would want to specify.

-OR-

  • Map Later with Storage Partitioning - this setting specifies that a LUN will not be assigned to the logical drive. This setting allows you to define a specific logical drive-to-LUN mapping and create Storage Partitions using the Configure >> Storage Partitioning option from the Subsystem Management Window. If you are going to be using Storage Partitioning, this is the setting you would want to specify.

2

Then, define Storage Partitions Topology, that is, the host groups, hosts, and host ports that will access the logical drives.

3

Third, grant logical drive access to defined host groups or hosts by defining logical drive-to-LUN mappings.

Each host group or host is granted a unique view of partitioned storage. A defined host group or host can either see:

  • logical drives with default logical drive-to-LUN mappings. In this case, the host group or host will be part of the Default Host Group .

    -OR-

  • logical drives to which it has been granted access through a specific logical drive-to-LUN mapping

The following example shows that two host groups have been defined (host group Omaha and Kansas City) that have access to various logical drives. In this example, two partitions have been used. The first partition consists of logical drives Financial and Legal and it is accessed by the hosts in host group Kansas City using LUNs 4 and 2, respectively. The second partition consists of logical drives Engineering, Marketing, and H Resources and it is accessed by the hosts in host group Omaha using LUNs 5, 6, and 7, respectively.

Related Topics

Learn About Granting Logical Drive Access to Hosts and Host Groups

Defining a Logical Drive-to-LUN Mapping

Using the Mappings Window

Learn About Defining Storage Partition Topology