Managing provisioning policies

A provisioning policy is an entity that defines a set of rules for allocating capacity from a pool. Any volumes that are created in the pool adopt the capacity-saving methods that are defined in the provisioning policy. A provisioning policy of a pool defines how to provision new volume capacity. Use the management command-line interface to manage provisioning policies.

With a provisioning policy, an administrator or security administrator can define the new volume capacity to be provisioned within a pool.

When a storage pool is assigned with a provisioning policy, all volumes that are created in that pool by using the mkvolume command get automatically created with the capacity savings that are defined by the policy. Provisioning policies allow a simpler and consistent provisioning process that can be used with external automation software.

For existing pools, you can assign new provisioning policies. Any new volumes that are created and assigned to the pool automatically adopt the capacity savings method that is defined in the provisioning policy. Older volumes in the pool retain their capacity savings method that was defined on the volume when it was created.

You can migrate existing volumes in the pool to use a new provisioning policy by creating a copy of the volume within the pool. When the volume is migrated, you can delete the original copy of the volume from the pool.