Capacity pools

Capacity pools are groups of storage resources. You can use capacity pools to separate storage resources in any way that serves the needs of your environment or business. Configure capacity pools to track the used and available capacity for block and file storage on any set of storage resources. Provisioning requests can also be restricted to resources in a capacity pool.

The following types of storage resources can be grouped into capacity pools:
  • Storage systems
  • Storage pools
  • File systems of file storage systems

You can organize storage resources into capacity pools in any way that serves your business needs. For example, you can separate the storage resources that are allocated for separate divisions of your business into separate capacity pools. You can then track the storage use for each division separately, and restrict provisioning requests to the appropriate set of storage resources.

Tracking used and available capacity in a capacity pool

You can track the used and available capacity for any set of storage resources by adding the storage resources to a capacity pool. From the Capacity Pools page of the GUI, you can view the total capacity of the resources, and monitor the following capacity measurements:
  • Used file space
  • Available file space
  • Used block space
  • Available block space

Restricting a provisioning request to a capacity pool

You can use capacity pools to define a set of storage resources from which provisioning requests must be satisfied. When you are provisioning storage, you can specify a capacity pool. If you do, the provisioning request is restricted to resources in the capacity pool. Only those resources are candidates for provisioning.

You can also associate a service class with capacity pools. If a service class is associated with capacity pools, provisioning requests for the service class must specify, and be constrained to, one of the associated capacity pools. Because you can also grant non-administrative users permission to provision storage by using the service class, associating capacity pools with the service class restricts the users to a specific set of resources.