Correctly identifying the database disks and setting the appropriate ownership and permission on them are critical steps to take to ensure that Oracle can properly take control of the disks. Creating and mapping PowerFlex volumes is necessary, as part of getting started process, before Oracle RAC can access the PowerFlex volumes. Adding and Mapping one or more PowerFlex volumes to specified SDCs, effectively creating a block device on the SDC. The following procedures describe how to do so with the PowerFlex GUI:

Perform the following steps:

1. Add one or multiple PowerFlex volumes. Select Frontend > Volumes, go to the Storage Pool to which you want to add the volume, and select it.
2. In the Add Volume window, you can create more than one volume, select Create multiple volumes and type the number of volumes you would like to add in the Copies box.
3. Type a number in the Size box, representing the volume size in GB (basic allocation granularity is 8 GB).
4. Select Thick provisioning option.
5. To map one or more PowerFlex volumes. Select Map Volumes. The Map Volumes window is displayed, showing a list of the volumes that will be mapped.
6. In the Select Nodes panel, select one or more SDCs to which you want to map the volumes.
7. Click Map Volumes.

In the VMware management interface, the device is called EMC Fiber Channel Disk, followed by an ID number starting with the prefix eui. These devices are used to create a VMFS datastore, which is mounted on all the ESXi hosts. You must add virtual drives for Oracle RAC VM using these VMFS datastores. Use the lsblk command to identify the wanted PowerFlex devices and their corresponding capacity.