This section explains how to:
A storage pool is always added to a protection domain. Each time that you add devices to the system, you must map the devices to storage pools. You can add storage pools both from the CLI and from the UI.
Storage pools in protection domains are preconfigured at the factory. If your environment requires that you create new storage pools, as an administrator, create a storage pool as follows:
Figure 6. Creating a storage pool
Volumes are created from storage pools and can be exposed to the hypervisor as a local storage device using the storage data client (SDC). When a volume is configured from a storage pool, it is distributed over all devices residing in that pool. Each volume block has two copies on two different SDSs, enabling the system to maintain data availability following a single point of failure.
Volumes can be:
Dell Technologies recommends using thick provisioning for creating PowerFlex volumes that will be used as datastores for the SAP HANA persistence.
As an administrator, add volumes as follows:
The Add Volume page opens, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 7. Adding a volume using the PowerFlex UI
Multiple volumes are created with the same name. A number is appended to each volume.
Map PowerFlex volumes to all vSphere servers in the cluster before you create a datastore on the volumes. The PowerFlex SDC on the vSphere server presents the volumes to the ESXi operating system.
To map volumes using the PowerFlex UI:
The Map Volumes window shows a list of the volumes that are to be mapped.
The Map Volumes page opens.
Figure 8. Mapping volumes to servers using the PowerFlex UI
To create a VMFS datastore on a PowerFlex volume:
Note: You can also identify the unique ID in vSphere Web Client, which shows each PowerFlex device as EMC Fibre Channel Disk followed by an ID number that has eui as a prefix.
The following figure shows the New Datastore page prior to completion of the create operation:
Figure 9. Creating a vSphere datastore on a PowerFlex volume
The datastore that you created is connected to all the vSphere servers in the cluster and available to all VMs.