Provisioning policy
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.
An administrator or security administrator can use a provisioning policy to define a set of rules that are applied when volumes are created within a storage pool or child pool. Currently, provisioning policies can be created and managed by using the command-line interface only. 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. The capacity savings for existing volumes do not change if the provisioning policy is removed from the storage pool or a different policy is applied. A provisioning policy defines only the capacity savings that are used when you create new volumes in the pool.
- Drive-based (-capacitysaving drivebased)
- Use the drive-based capacity saving option to indicate that volumes should use only the built-in capacity saving functions of the drives in the pool, if available. For example, certain drive types, such as FlashCore Module drives, are self-compressing. Capacity savings are not applied if this option is used with drives that do not support any built-in capacity savings.
- Thin-provisioning (-capacitysaving thin)
- Use the thin-provisioning option to indicate that all volumes in a pool use thin-provisioning to save capacity. Thin-provisioning allocates capacity only when data is written to storage.
- Compression (-capacitysaving compressed)
- Use the compression option to indicate that all volumes in a pool use compression to save capacity. Compression reduces the capacity that data requires by removing unnecessary content from the data.
- Deduplication (-deduplicated)
- Use deduplication when you create a new provisioning policy to add deduplication to your capacity saving for a data reduction pool. Both compression and thin-provisioning capacity saving can be used with deduplication to increase capacity savings for data reduction pools. Standard pools do not support deduplication.
A provisioning policy can be renamed after the policy is created. However, the capacity savings option of a provisioning policy cannot be changed. To change the capacity savings to be used for new volumes, create and assign a new provisioning policy to the storage pool, then delete the old policy if it is no longer required. Also, the capacity savings for a volume can be changed after a volume is created. A provisioning policy for a storage pool is only applied when new volumes are created.
A provisioning policy can be associated with multiple pools. However, it not possible to add multiple policies to one pool.
After adding a provisioning policy to a pool, or assigning a different provisioning policy, it is possible to use the addvolumecopy command to convert existing volumes to use the capacity savings of the new provisioning policy. The -autodelete parameter can be used to automatically delete the original copy of the volume after the new copy is synchronized.