Dell Unity™ Family Configuring Pools

Version 5.x

Part Number: H14976

May 2023
Rev. 10
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 Contents

Additional resources......................................................................................................................6

Chapter 1: Introduction to pools.................................................................................................... 7

About pools........................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Dynamic pools.......................................................................................................................................................................7
Traditional pools................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Storage tiers......................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Pool best practices............................................................................................................................................................ 10
Spare drive policy (physical deployments only).......................................................................................................... 11
Considerations for expanding pools...............................................................................................................................12

Chapter 2: Configuring pools....................................................................................................... 13

Create a dynamic pool...................................................................................................................................................... 13
Create a traditional pool in physical deployments...................................................................................................... 14
Create a pool in virtual deployments............................................................................................................................. 14
Enable automatic snapshot deletion for a pool...........................................................................................................15
Monitor pool space allocation and usage..................................................................................................................... 15
View drive information .....................................................................................................................................................15
Change pool properties.................................................................................................................................................... 16
Expand a pool in physical deployments.........................................................................................................................16
Expand a pool in virtual deployments............................................................................................................................ 17
Delete a pool........................................................................................................................................................................17

Chapter 3: Introduction to Data Efficiency...................................................................................18

Optimizing drive performance using the FAST Cache and FAST VP (supported physical deployments
only).................................................................................................................................................................................. 18
Automatic snapshot deletion...........................................................................................................................................19
About Data Reduction and Advanced Deduplication.................................................................................................19

Chapter 4: Managing the FAST Cache (supported physical deployments only)............................. 21

About the FAST Cache ....................................................................................................................................................21
FAST Cache best practices............................................................................................................................................ 22
Create the FAST Cache ................................................................................................................................................. 22
Enable or disable the FAST Cache for a pool ............................................................................................................22
View system-level FAST Cache information ............................................................................................................. 22
View pool-level Fast Cache Information .....................................................................................................................23
Expand or shrink the FAST Cache capacity .............................................................................................................. 23
Delete the FAST Cache .................................................................................................................................................. 23

Chapter 5: Managing FAST VP (supported physical deployments only)........................................24

About FAST VP .................................................................................................................................................................24
Data relocation with FAST VP ...................................................................................................................................... 24
FAST VP tiering policy .................................................................................................................................................... 25
Enable or disable scheduled data relocations at the system level........................................................................ 26

Contents 3
 Stop a pool from participating in scheduled data relocations ............................................................................... 26
Manually initiate or stop data relocations for a pool ............................................................................................... 26
Pause or resume data relocations for all pools ......................................................................................................... 27
Change system-level data relocation information ....................................................................................................27
Change data relocation information for a pool ..........................................................................................................27
View pool-level FAST VP information ......................................................................................................................... 28

Chapter 6: Understanding RAID (physical deployments only) ..................................................... 29

About RAID ........................................................................................................................................................................ 29
RAID configurations .........................................................................................................................................................30
RAID for dynamic pools in Unisphere ...........................................................................................................................31
Drive IOPS by RAID type .................................................................................................................................................31

Chapter 7: Configuring pools using the CLI..................................................................................33

Configure pools automatically ....................................................................................................................................... 33
Initiate automatic pool configuration...................................................................................................................... 34
View configuration settings for automatic pool creation...................................................................................34
Configure custom pools...................................................................................................................................................35
Create pools..................................................................................................................................................................38
Change pool settings...................................................................................................................................................41
Add drives to pools..................................................................................................................................................... 43
View pools..................................................................................................................................................................... 44
Delete pools...................................................................................................................................................................47
Manage pool tiers..............................................................................................................................................................48
View storage tiers....................................................................................................................................................... 49
View pool resources......................................................................................................................................................... 50
View storage profiles (physical deployments only)...................................................................................................52
Manage drive groups (physical deployments only)...................................................................................................54
View drive groups........................................................................................................................................................55
View recommended drive group configurations.................................................................................................. 56
Manage storage system capacity settings..................................................................................................................57
View system capacity settings.................................................................................................................................58
Manage system tier capacity settings......................................................................................................................... 58
View system tier capacity......................................................................................................................................... 59
Change disk settings (virtual deployments only)...................................................................................................... 59
Pool use cases................................................................................................................................................................... 60
Create a pool using drives with specific characteristics................................................................................... 60
Configure a dynamic pool...........................................................................................................................................61
Configure a traditional pool for an all-Flash model..............................................................................................62
Add drives to an existing pool.................................................................................................................................. 63
The show action command............................................................................................................................................. 64

Chapter 8: Managing the FAST Cache using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)....... 66
Manage FAST Cache........................................................................................................................................................66
Create FAST Cache.................................................................................................................................................... 66
View FAST Cache settings........................................................................................................................................67
Extend FAST Cache....................................................................................................................................................67
Shrink FAST Cache..................................................................................................................................................... 68
Delete FAST Cache.....................................................................................................................................................68

4 Contents
 Manage FAST Cache storage objects (physical deployments only).....................................................................69
View FAST Cache storage objects..........................................................................................................................69

Chapter 9: Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)................... 71
Manage FAST VP pool settings...................................................................................................................................... 71
View FAST VP pool settings..................................................................................................................................... 72
Change FAST VP pool settings................................................................................................................................ 73
Start data relocation................................................................................................................................................... 74
Stop data relocation....................................................................................................................................................75
Manage FAST VP general settings............................................................................................................................... 75
Change FAST VP general settings.......................................................................................................................... 76
View FAST VP general settings................................................................................................................................77

Contents 5
 Preface

As part of an improvement effort, revisions of the software and hardware are periodically released. Therefore, some functions
described in this document might not be supported by all versions of the software or hardware currently in use. The product
release notes provide the most up-to-date information on product features. Contact your technical support professional if a
product does not function properly or does not function as described in this document.

Where to get help

Support, product, and licensing information can be obtained as described below.

Product information
For product and feature documentation or release notes, go to Unity Technical Documentation at: dell.com/unitydocs.

Troubleshooting
For information about products, software updates, licensing, and service, go to Support (registration required) at: dell.com/
support. After logging in, locate the appropriate product page.

6 Additional resources
 1
Introduction to pools
Topics:
• About pools
• Dynamic pools
• Traditional pools
• Storage tiers
• Pool best practices
• Spare drive policy (physical deployments only)
• Considerations for expanding pools

About pools
A pool is a set of drives that provide specific storage characteristics for the resources that use them. For example, the pool
configuration defines the types and capacities of the drives in the pool. For physical deployments, the pool configuration also
defines the RAID configurations (RAID types and stripe widths) for these drives.
You choose which pool to use when you create a new storage resource.
NOTE: Before you create storage resources, you must configure at least one pool. You cannot shrink a pool, and you
cannot change its storage characteristics without deleting the storage resources configured in the pool and the pool itself.
However, you can add drives to expand the pool.
Pools generally provide optimized storage for a particular set of applications or conditions. When you create a storage resource
for hosts to use, you must choose a pool with which to associate the storage resource. The storage that the storage resource
uses is drawn from the specified pool. If there are multiple drive types on the system, you can define multiple tiers for the pool.
In physical deployments, each tier can be associated with a different RAID type.
Unity supports two types of pools, depending on your Unity model.
● Dynamic pools
● Traditional pools
All-Flash models running Unity OE version 4.2 and later supports both dynamic and traditional pools. In these models, all new
pools created in the Unisphere GUI are dynamic pools. New pools created using the Unisphere CLI or REST API can be dynamic
pools (the default) or traditional pools. Although you cannot create traditional pools in the Unisphere GUI, you can use the GUI
to manage existing traditional pools.
All-Flash models running Unity OE version 4.1x and earlier, and all hybrid and VSA models support traditional pools only.

Dynamic pools
In Unity All-Flash models running OE version 4.2.x or later, all new pools created in the Unisphere GUI are dynamic pools, and
new pools created in the Unisphere CLI and REST API are dynamic pools by default. Dynamic pools implement advanced RAID
technology. In dynamic pools, a RAID group is spread across drive extents in multiple drives. The required spare space is also
spread across drive extents in multiple drives. When a drive fails, the extents on the failed drive are rebuilt to spare space
extents within the pool.
NOTE: For Unity All-Flash models running OE version 4.2.x or later, you can create traditional pools using the Unisphere CLI
or REST API.
Dynamic pools have the following advantages over traditional pools:
● Drives are not wasted, because there are no fixed spares. All drives in the system can be added to a pool. This prolongs the
life of the drives in the pool, since the load is spread across additional drives.

Introduction to pools 7
● Rebuild times are usually much faster than with traditional pools. Since spare capacity for a dynamic pool is spread across
multiple drives rather than concentrated in on a single hot spare drive, more drives contribute to the rebuilding process when
a drive fails.
● Pools can usually be expanded based on desired capacity. For example, you can add one drive at a time to a dynamic pool,
providing provisioning flexibility and cost savings.
In a dynamic pool, drives are grouped. When the number of drives reaches 64, a new group is created. Different groups follow
the same common rule. In each group, you can generally provision a dynamic pool with any number of drives, as long as
the minimum drive number is satisfied for each specified drive type/capacity combination. The minimum drive number is the
selected stripe width for a drive type/capacity combination plus additional spare space count (for example, 6 drives for RAID 5
(4 + 1) by default (1 of 32), but 7 drives if spare space count is 2 of 32).
The following considerations apply to dynamic pools:
● Once a dynamic pool is created, you cannot change its RAID type or stripe width. However, if you expand the pool using a
different drive type, the added drives can have a different stripe width.
● You cannot shrink a dynamic pool or change its storage characteristics without deleting the storage resources configured in
the pool and the pool itself. However, you can add drives to expand the pool.
● You can mix Flash drives of the same drive type with different capacities when you provision a dynamic pool. However, if you
do this, the system might not use the entire capacity of the larger drives. This depends on how many drives of each capacity
are in the pool. The unused capacity in a dynamic pool might become available during a future pool expansion.
One drive's worth of capacity equal to that of the largest drive in the pool is set aside as spare space for every set of 32 drives
in a dynamic storage pool by default. If using two drive's worth of capacity for every 32 drives, the spare space will be doubled.
For example, by default a dynamic pool with 1 to 32 drives of a given drive type has 1 drive's worth of spare space, while a
dynamic pool with 33 to 64 drives of a given drive type has 2 drive's worth of spare space. However, if using 2 drive's worth of
spare space, a dynamic pool with 2 to 32 drives of a given drive type has 2 drive's worth of spare space, while a dynamic pool
with 33 to 64 drives of a given drive type has 4 drive's worth of spare space.
At a minimum, there must be the equivalent capacity of one spare drive per pool. Therefore, to minimize the amount of spare
capacity required, it is recommended that you create dynamic pools with larger, rather than smaller, numbers of drives of the
same drive type.
Dynamic pools can be homogeneous or heterogeneous. All drives in a homogeneous pool have the same drive type, such as SAS
Flash 2 or SAS Flash 3 drives. Drives in a heterogeneous pool can include SAS Flash 2 drives, SAS Flash 3 drives, and SAS Flash
4 drives.

Traditional pools
Pools created in UnityVSA models, hybrid models, and Unity All-Flash models running OE version 4.1.x or earlier are traditional
pools. For Unity All-Flash models running OE version 4.2.x or later, you can create traditional pools using the Unisphere CLI or
REST API, but not the Unisphere GUI.
Traditional pools can be homogeneous or heterogeneous. All drives in a homogeneous pool have the same drive type, such as
SAS drives or SAS Flash 2 drives. Drives in a heterogeneous pool have a mixture of drive types, such as a mixture of NL-SAS,
SAS, and SAS Flash 2 drives. Traditional pools can also be All-Flash or hybrid. A hybrid pool contains a mixture of Flash and
non-Flash drives. All supported drive types can be included in a hybrid pool, except for SAS Flash 4 drives, which must be in an
All-Flash pool.
In physical deployments, storage in traditional pools is managed in RAID group units, where:
● A drive is consumed by a single RAID group.
● A RAID group is limited to a maximum of 16 drives and is composed of drives of the same type.
● Each tier supports a single RAID type.
Since storage in traditional pools is managed in RAID group units, adding capacity to a pool requires that you add drives in
RAID group increments. For example, to add drives to a pool with RAID 5 (4+1), you must add at least 5 drives to the pool.
As drive capacity increases, the minimum amount of storage that can be added to a pool and the cost of that storage become
increasingly large.
The following considerations apply to traditional pools:
● Once a tier in a traditional pool is created, you cannot change the RAID type or stripe width of the existing drives in the
tier. However, if you expand a tier within a traditional pool, you can specify a different stripe width for the newly-added
drives. When you add a new tier to a traditional pool, you can specify a different RAID type, stripe width, or both for the
newly-added drives.
● You cannot shrink a traditional pool or change its storage characteristics without deleting the storage resources configured
in the pool and the pool itself. However, you can add drives to expand the pool.

8 Introduction to pools
With traditional pools, the storage system uses dedicated hot spares to replace a drive that has failed or faulted. Any unused
drive in the system with the appropriate drive technology and size can be used to replace a failed or faulted drive in a pool. If
a spare drive with the same type and size is not available, the system can use a larger drive of the same type. Because spare
drives are dedicated hot spares, they cannot be used to improve pool performance or mitigate Flash drive wear. Also, when a
drive fails or is faulted, the whole drive must be rebuilt on the spare drive. Therefore, the rebuild time can be very long, because
it is limited by the performance of the single drive whose contents is being rebuilt. This can impact performance. It can also
increase the chances of encountering additional drive failures during the rebuild process, which can lead to data loss.

Storage tiers
The storage tiers available for both physical and virtual deployments are described in the table below.
● For physical deployments, the storage tier is associated with the physical drive type.
● For virtual deployments, the storage tier is associated with the virtual disk's underlying characteristics and must be manually
assigned.
● For both types of deployments, if FAST VP is installed on the system, you can create tiered pools to optimize drive
utilization. A tiered pool consists of multiple drive types, such as SAS Flash 2 drives and SAS drives.
NOTE: For dynamic storage pools, Unused Drives does not include HDD system drives. For traditional storage pools,
Unused Drives includes HDD system drives.
During creation of a dynamic pool, you can configure the hot spare capacity for each storage tier as follows:
● 1/32—Reserve 1 drive capacity for each 32 drives as a spare
● 2/32—Reserve 2 drives capacity for each 32 drives as spares
Once configured, the hot spare capacity configuration is permanent for the life of the pool, and cannot be changed.
The minimum number of drives to use for a dynamic pool is the selected RAID width plus one or two, depending on the spare
policy used.

Table 1. Storage tier descriptions

Storage tier Drive types Description Default RAID configuration
(physical deployments
only)
Extreme Performance tier Solid state extreme Provides very fast access RAID 5 (8 + 1).
performance drives. The times for resources subject
following types are supported: to variable workloads.
● SAS Flash 2 For example, databases
● SAS Flash 3 can achieve their best
performance when using SAS
● SAS Flash 4
Flash drives. SAS Flash drives
are more expensive than SAS
drives per GB of storage.
SAS Flash 2, SAS Flash 3, and
SAS Flash 4 drives can be
used together in the Extreme
Performance tier. Only SAS
Flash 2 drives can be used
in the FAST Cache, and only
SAS Flash 2 and SAS Flash 3
drives can be used in FAST
VP.

Performance tier SAS - Rotating performance Provides high, all-around RAID 5 (4 + 1).
drive performance with consistent
response times, high
throughput, and good
bandwidth at a mid-level
price point. Performance tier
storage is appropriate for
database resources accessed
centrally through a network.

Introduction to pools 9
Table 1. Storage tier descriptions (continued)
Storage tier Drive types Description Default RAID configuration
(physical deployments
only)
Capacity tier NL-SAS - Rotating capacity Provides the highest storage RAID 6 (6 + 2).
drive capacity with generally
lower performance. Capacity
storage is appropriate for
storing large amounts of
data that is primarily static
(such as video files, audio
files, and images) for users
and applications that do
not have strict performance
requirements.
NOTE: For data that
changes or is accessed
frequently, capacity tier
storage has significantly
lower performance.

Pool best practices

Using fewer pools reduces complexity and increases flexibility. However, it may be appropriate to configure multiple pools, in
order to:
● Separate workloads with different I/O profiles.
● Dedicate resources to meet specific performance goals.
● Separate resources for multi-tenancy.
● Create smaller failure domains.
● (Traditional hybrid pools only) Separate pools where FAST Cache is and is not active.
Pools must maintain free capacity in order to operate properly. By default, the storage system raises an alert if a pool has less
than 30% free capacity, and will begin to automatically invalidate snapshots and replication sessions if a pool has less than 5%
free capacity. It is recommended that a pool always have at least 10% free capacity.

All-Flash pools
All-Flash pools provide the highest level of performance in Unity. Use an all-Flash pool for applications that require the highest
storage performance at the lowest response time. Note the following about all-Flash pools:
● Compression is only supported in all-Flash pools.
● Snapshots and replication operate most efficiently in all-Flash pools.
● FAST Cache and FAST VP are not applicable to all-Flash pools.
Follow these best practices for dynamic pools:
● Because of the way spare space is reserved for dynamic pools, it is recommended that you create dynamic pools with
larger, rather than smaller, numbers of drives of the same drive type. Following this practice minimizes the amount of spare
capacity required for a dynamic pool.
● Expanding a dynamic pool by adding multiples of the pool's RAID stripe width plus one allows space to be available faster
than if you expand the pool by adding fewer drives. You can see the RAID stripe width for a pool with a single drive type by
using the CLI.
For traditional pools, it is recommended that you use a single drive size and a single RAID width within a traditional all-Flash pool.

10 Introduction to pools
Hybrid pools
Hybrid pools typically provide greater capacity at a lower cost than all-Flash pools, but also typically have lower overall
performance and higher response times. Use hybrid pools for applications that do not require consistently low response times, or
that have large amounts of mostly inactive data.
It is recommended that you provision a Flash tier in hybrid pools. The Flash tier helps enable pool performance efficiencies, and
improves response times when using data reduction and snapshots or replication, or both. In order to enable data reduction,
the minimum recommended Flash capacity is at least 10% of the pool capacity. Otherwise, 5% of Flash is the minimum
recommended Flash capacity for improving hybrid performance.
You can improve the performance of a hybrid pool by increasing the amount of capacity in the Flash tier, so that more of the
active dataset resides on and is serviced by the Flash drives.
Hybrid pools can have up to three tiers (Extreme Performance, Performance, and Capacity). It is recommended that you use a
single drive speed, size, and RAID width within a tier of a hybrid pool.

Spare drive policy (physical deployments only)

Traditional Pools
For traditional pools, any unused drive in the system with the appropriate drive technology and size, or larger, can be used to
replace a failed or faulted drive. Most of the drive configurations require the use of hot sparing, except for the following:
● If the system has only 6 drives in total, and they are of the same type, you can configure RAID 10 (3+3) with no hot spare.
● If the system has only 8 drives in total, and they are of the same type, you can configure RAID 6 (6+2) with no hot spare.
● If the system has only 12 drives in total, and they are of the same type, you can configure RAID 6 (10+2) with no hot spare.
NOTE: When you expand traditional pools for a drive configuration, the system prevents you from configuring all available
drives, allowing you to leave some drives as spares.
The spare drive policy follows these rules to determine how many drives are left as spares:
● For traditional pools, in general, the system reserves 1 spare drive for every group of 1 to 31 drives that have the same type,
capacity, and rotational speed (or Flash type). For example, if there are 40 300-GB, 15K-RPM SAS drives in the system, the
system reserves 2 of those drives as spares.
● The system does not reserve a spare drive for:
○ The FAST Cache.
○ A system drive, unless it has user data on it.
● Any unused non-system drive can become a spare drive.
● A system drive that does not contain user data can be a spare drive for a failed system drive that has user data.
● A spare drive can be used to replace a failed or faulted drive in the FAST Cache.
● When a spare drive swaps into a pool, it becomes a permanent member of that pool and cannot be used in another pool.
● When a broken drive is fixed or replaced, it can be a candidate for a spare drive or used in another pool.
Refer to the compatibility and interoperability documentation on the support website for a listing of basic platform and
component support for the storage system, including capacity limits.

Dynamic Pools
For dynamic pools, the hot spare policy follows these rules to determine how much extent pool space is used as dynamic pool
spare space:
● A dynamic pool is created by using a disk partner group (DPG). One DPG contains up to 64 drives. When DPG1 is full, DPG2
will be created. Drives in a DPG should have the same type, capacity, and rotational speed (or Flash type).
● In general, the system reserves 1 drive capacity spare space in a DPG with 1 to 32 drives, and 2 drives capacity spare space
in a DPG of 33 to 64 drives. You also have the option of using 2 drive capacity spare spaces for a dynamic pool. Once
configured, the hot spare capacity configuration is permanent for the life of the dynamic pool, and cannot be changed.
● A dynamic pool can consume all available drives, and does not reserve any hot spare drives outside of the pool.
● Compared to a traditional pool, dynamic pools use spare space inside the pool, instead of a hot spare drive.
● Hot spare space can be used only in dynamic pools with an Extreme Performance tier containing All-Flash drives, because by
default All-Flash drives have mapped RAID enabled.

Introduction to pools 11
Considerations for expanding pools
Dynamic pools
You can usually expand dynamic pools based on desired capacity instead of by adding drives that are multiples of the pool's
RAID stripe width plus one. For example, you can add two drives to a RAID 5 pool instead of six drives. The following exceptions
apply:
● If you add a new drive type when you expand a pool, you must expand the pool with the minimum amount of drives required
for the selected RAID configuration.
● Depending on the RAID configuration and number of drives in the pool, there are certain internal thresholds at which you
must expand the pool with multiples of the pool's RAID stripe width plus one. The system tells you how many drives you need
to add when you try to expand a pool that has reached one of these thresholds.
Expanding a pool by adding multiples of the pool's RAID strip width plus one allows space to be available faster than if you
expand the pool by adding fewer drives. You can see the RAID stripe width for a pool by accessing the RAID tab on the pool's
properties page.

Traditional pools
You expand a traditional pool by adding drives to the pool's existing tiers, adding new tiers that have available drives, or both.
When you add drives, you must add them in multiples of the selected RAID stripe width.
NOTE: You cannot expand an All-Flash pool in a hybrid model by adding SAS or NL-SAS drives if the pool contains:
● SAS Flash 4 drives.

NOTE:

● Prior to Unity OE version 5.2.x, resources with data reduction enabled or were previously enabled and then disabled could
only be expanded with additional flash drives.
● Starting with Unity OE version 5.2.x, expanding and converting an all-flash pool to a hybrid pool is supported. Data
reduction-enabled resources, with or without advanced deduplication enabled, will no longer block pool expansions as long as
the flash capacity is not less than 10% of the pool.
● By expanding a pool, if the additional capacity drops the flash capacity below 10%, a warning is displayed, and you cannot
proceed.

12 Introduction to pools
 2
Configuring pools
Topics:
• Create a dynamic pool
• Create a traditional pool in physical deployments
• Create a pool in virtual deployments
• Enable automatic snapshot deletion for a pool
• Monitor pool space allocation and usage
• View drive information
• Change pool properties
• Expand a pool in physical deployments
• Expand a pool in virtual deployments
• Delete a pool

Create a dynamic pool

Prerequisites
In Unity All-Flash models running OE version 4.2.x or later and Unity HFA models running OE version 5.2.x or later, all new pools
that are created in the Unisphere UI, Unisphere CLI, and REST API are dynamic pools by default.
When you create a dynamic pool with NL-SAS drives, only RAID 6 is allowed when using the Unisphere UI. You can create a
dynamic pool with other RAID types by using the UEMCLI for NL-SAS.
The minimum number of drives to use for a dynamic pool is the selected RAID width plus one drive.
Before you create a dynamic pool:
● If you have a hybrid model, find out whether the storage system is licensed for FAST Cache. To do this, select the Settings
icon, and then select Software and Licenses > License Information. If the storage system is licensed for FAST Cache, it
appears in the License Management table and you can choose whether to use it for the pool.
● If you have a hybrid model, find out whether the storage system is licensed for FAST VP. To do this, select the Settings icon,
and then select Software and Licenses > License Information. If the storage system is licensed for FAST VP, it appears
in the License Management table and you can choose whether to use it for the pool.
● Decide what RAID protection to use for the pool.
● Decide how many hot spare drives you want to use for the pool. The default is 1/32 (reserve 1 drive capacity for every 32
drives as a spare). You can also choose 2/32 (reserve 2 drives capacity for every 32 drives as spares).
● Decide whether to create a capability profile that has capabilities which are based on the pool configuration. To use the
capability profile for VMware vVols, you must assign specific usage tags, which are propagated to the VMware vSphere
environment, and can be used in policy profiles. The virtualization administrator and storage administrator should work
together to define these tags.

About this task

NOTE: Once a dynamic pool is created, you cannot change either the RAID type or hot spare configuration. Also,
you cannot shrink a dynamic pool or change its storage characteristics without deleting the storage resources that are
configured in the pool and the pool itself. However, you can add drives to expand the pool.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the Add icon.
3. Follow the steps in the wizard.

Configuring pools 13
 The number and types of drives you can choose is based on the RAID configuration, which you can optionally update by
clicking Change. You can also set or change the hot spare capacity as part of changing the RAID configuration.
NOTE: For dynamic storage pools, the Unused Drives value in the Tiers tab does not include HDD system drives. For
traditional storage pools, the Unused Drives value in the Tiers tab includes HDD system drives.

Create a traditional pool in physical deployments

Prerequisites
All pools created with All-Flash models running Unity OE version 4.1.x or earlier and hybrid models running Unity OE version 5.1.x
or earlier, support traditional pools only. With newer All-Flash models, you can create a traditional pool using the Unisphere CLI
and REST API.
Before you create a traditional pool:
● If you have a hybrid model, find out whether the storage system is licensed for FAST Cache. To do this, select the Settings
icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST Cache. If the storage system is licensed for FAST Cache, you can
choose whether to use it for the pool.
● If you have a hybrid model, find out whether the storage system is licensed for FAST VP. To do this, select the Settings icon,
and then select Storage Configuration > FAST VP. If the storage system is licensed for FAST VP you can choose which
storage tiers to add to the pool.
● Decide whether to change the suggested RAID type of the tiers.
● Decide whether to create a capability profile that has capabilities based on the pool configuration. To use the capability
profile for VMware vVols, you must assign specific usage tags, which are propagated to the VMware vSphere environment,
and can be used in policy profiles. The virtualization administrator and storage administrator should work together to define
these tags.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the Add icon.
3. Follow the steps in the wizard, taking into account the following considerations:
● On the Tiers screen, you can only select multiple storage tiers if the system is a hybrid model that is licensed to use
FAST VP. The wizard displays a maximum usable capacity for each selected tier, which it calculates based on the default
RAID configuration. You can optionally change the RAID configuration for all selected tiers.
● The number and types of drives you can choose is based on the RAID configuration.

Create a pool in virtual deployments

Prerequisites
All pools created in virtual deployments are traditional pools.
Before you create a traditional pool:
● From the storage administrator, obtain information about the underlying characteristics of the drives to use in the pool.
You will use this information to assign tiers to the virtual disks that do not already have them assigned. You can create a
multi-tier pool if the system has multiple underlying drive types.
● Decide whether to create a capability profile for VMware vVols that has capabilities based on the pool configuration. To use
the capability profile, you must assign specific usage tags, which are propagated to the VMware vSphere environment, and
can be used in policy profiles. The virtualization administrator and storage administrator should work together to define these
tags.

About this task

NOTE: You cannot shrink a pool or change its storage characteristics without deleting the storage resources configured in
the pool and the pool itself. However, you can add drives to expand the pool.

14 Configuring pools
Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the Add icon.
3. Select the tiers and virtual disks to use in the pool. Each virtual disk must have an assigned tier. If the virtual disks you want
to include in the pool do not have assigned tiers, you must assign one. The tier you select for a virtual disk must be based on
the underlying drive characteristics.
4. Optionally create a VMware capability profile for use by vVols, and specify usage tags for that profile.

Enable automatic snapshot deletion for a pool

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the relevant pool, and click the Edit icon.
3. Select the Snapshot Settings tab.
4. In the Automatically delete oldest snapshots section, select whether you want the automatic deletion to occur when the
total pool consumption space reaches a threshold you set, snapshot pool consumption space reaches a threshold you set, or
both. For each option, you can also set the threshold when the automatic snapshot deletion stops.

Monitor pool space allocation and usage

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the relevant pool, and then select the Edit icon.
3. Select Usage > Capacity to view pool space usage with metrics on: current pool capacity, space used, alert threshold, data
reduction savings, and a graph showing the pool's used capacity over time.
Note the following:
● The Non-base Space field displays the space used by all snapshots and thin clones in the pool.
● The Used field displays the percentage of the pool's total space that has been reserved by its associated storage
resources. This total includes the space used by thin clones and snapshots. When this value is over 100%, the pool is
oversubscribed.
● The Preallocated Space displays the amount of remaining space in the pool that is reserved for, but not actively being
used by, a storage resource.
● The Alert Threshold field displays the percentage of storage allocation at which Unisphere generates notifications about
the amount of space remaining in the pool. You can set this value between 50% and 84%.
4. Select Storage Resources to view a list of storage resources in the pool, along with the following metrics: total amount of
pool space used by each resource and amount of pool space used for each resource's snapshots and thin clones.

View drive information

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > Drives to view the information about the drives in the
storage system:
● For physical deployments this table includes the:
○ Drive type
○ Total number of drives
○ Number of unconfigured drives that are available for provisioning, excluding traditional pools. For dynamic storage
pools, this value also excludes HDD system drives.
○ Number of unconfigured drives that are reserved as hot spares for traditional pools
○ Number of configured drives that are provisioned in dynamic pools
○ Number of configured drives that are provisioned in FAST Cache
○ Number of configured drives that are provisioned in traditional pools

Configuring pools 15
 ● For virtual deployments, this table includes the size and WWN of the virtual drives that are available for use in a pool.
Drives that are already used in a pool or that are faulted are not shown in the list.
2. To view information about unconfigured drives for a specific drive type and capacity, select the number in the
Unconfigured Available or Unconfigured Traditional Spare column. The system displays the health status, name, type,
drive size, and rotational speed (for hard drives) of the available drives.

Change pool properties

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the relevant pool, and then select the Edit icon.
3. On the General tab, optionally change the pool name and description.
4. On the Drives tab, review the characteristics of the drives in the pool.
5. On the Usage tab, select Capacity to:
● View the amount of free space in the pool.
● View the subscribed pool capacity.
● View the pool used capacity history.
● View the space saved (if data reduction is enabled on a storage resource which supports it).
● Change the alert threshold.

Note the following:

● The Used field displays the percentage of the pool's total space that its associated storage resources reserves. This total
includes the space that thin clones and snapshots use. When this value is over 100%, the pool is oversubscribed.
● The Non-base Space field displays the space that all snapshots and thin clones use in the pool.
● The Preallocated Space displays the amount of remaining space in the pool that is reserved for a storage resource, but
that the storage resource is not using.
● The Alert Threshold field displays the percentage of storage allocation at which Unisphere generates notifications about
the amount of space remaining in the pool. You can set this value between 50% and 84%.
6. On the Usage tab, select Storage Resources to view a list of storage resources in the pool, along with applicable metrics.
7. On the FAST VP tab (which appears if FAST VP is licensed), view data relocation and tier information for the pool. You can
also exclude the pool from data relocations, manually start or stop data relocations for the pool, and manually move data to
different tiers. Click Manage FAST VP settings to manage system-wide FAST VP settings.
8. On the Snapshot Settings tab, review and optionally change the properties for snapshot automatic deletion.
9. On the RAID tab (dynamic pools only), view the:
● Drive type for each drive in the pool.
● RAID type and stripe width of each drive type.
● Number of drives for each drive type in the pool.
● Configured hot spare capacity.

Expand a pool in physical deployments

About this task
Expand a dynamic or traditional pool by adding drives to the pool tiers.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the pool to expand, and then select Expand Pool.
NOTE: If the Expand Pool button is disabled, a tool tip will display with an explanation.

3. On the Storage Tiers tab, select the storage tiers for the drives you want to add to the pool.

16 Configuring pools
 NOTE: For dynamic storage pools, Unused Drives does not include HDD system drives. For traditional storage pools,
Unused Drives includes HDD system drives.

4. On the Drives tab, select the number of drives to add to each tier. You can select Flash drives by capacity.
NOTE:
● The minimum number of drives to use for a dynamic pool is the selected RAID width plus one drive.
● When expanding a hybrid pool, and data reduction and advanced deduplication are enabled, or were previously
enabled and then disabled, for a storage resource in the pool, the percentage of Flash drives in the pool must be 10%
or higher. Otherwise, an error will occur.

Expand a pool in virtual deployments

About this task
Expand a pool by adding virtual disks to the pool. Before you expand a pool, obtain information from your storage administrator
about the underlying characteristics of the virtual disks to use in the pool.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the pool to expand, and then select Expand Pool.
3. On the Assign Tier to the Virtual Disk page, assign or optionally change the storage tiers to which virtual disks are
assigned. To do this, select the virtual disk, select the Edit icon, and then select the tier.
4. On the Tiers page, select one or more tiers to add to the pool.
5. On the Virtual Disks page, select the virtual disks to add to the pool.

Delete a pool
About this task
You can delete pools if they contain no allocated storage resources, including consistency groups, LUNs, file systems, VMware
datastores, or NAS servers.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the pool to delete, and click the Delete icon.

Configuring pools 17
 3
Introduction to Data Efficiency
Topics:
• Optimizing drive performance using the FAST Cache and FAST VP (supported physical deployments only)
• Automatic snapshot deletion
• About Data Reduction and Advanced Deduplication

Optimizing drive performance using the FAST Cache

and FAST VP (supported physical deployments only)
The FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) Suite includes features that enable you to:
● Leverage SAS Flash 2 drives as additional read/write cache for improved performance (FAST Cache).
● Dynamically tier data across different types of drives (FAST VP). FAST VP can use all supported drive types except SAS
Flash 4.

Comparison of FAST Cache and FAST VP

The following table describes the differences between the FAST Cache and FAST VP features:

Table 2. Differences between the FAST Cache and FAST VP features

FAST Cache FAST VP
Enables SAS Flash 2 drives to be used as an additional read/ Leverages pools to provide sub-LUN and file system tiering,
write cache for the storage system. which moves data to the appropriate tier based on the FAST
VP tiering policy.
Caches 64-KB data chunks for higher performance. Relocates 256-MB data chunks based on the FAST VP tiering
policy and I/O activity.
Copies data from Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) to Flash drives Moves data between different storage tiers based on the
when the data is accessed frequently. FAST VP tiering policy.
Adapts continuously to changes in workload. Uses a data relocation process to periodically make
storage tiering adjustments. The data relocation schedule is
configurable, and the data relocation can take place once a
day or on an ongoing basis throughout the day.

Interoperability considerations
You can use FAST Cache and FAST VP functionality together to yield high performance and improve Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) for the storage system. It is recommended that you:
1. Use available SAS Flash 2 drives for the FAST Cache first, because this can benefit all storage resources in the storage
system.
2. Supplement performance as needed by adding additional SAS Flash 2 drives to pool tiers for use by FAST VP.
For example, in scenarios where limited SAS Flash 2 drives are available, you can use SAS Flash 2 drives to create the FAST
Cache, and you can apply FAST VP on a one- or two-tier pool (SAS and NL-SAS). From a performance point of view, FAST
Cache dynamically provides performance benefits to bursts of data, while FAST VP moves "hotter" data to performance drives
and "colder" data to capacity drives. From a TCO perspective, FAST Cache, with a small number of Flash drives, serves the data
that is accessed most frequently, while FAST VP optimizes drive utilization and efficiency.

18 Introduction to Data Efficiency

The FAST Cache feature is storage-tier-aware and works with FAST VP to make sure that the storage system resources are not
wasted by unnecessarily copying data to FAST Cache, if it is already on a Flash drive. If FAST VP moves a chunk of data to the
Extreme Performance Tier on a pool, the system will not copy that chunk of data into FAST Cache, even if FAST Cache criteria
is met for promotion. This ensures that the storage system resources are not wasted in copying data from one Flash drive to
another.

Automatic snapshot deletion

Automatic snapshot deletion is a space management feature used to automatically manage the number of snapshots in a pool.
This feature is triggered when the total pool consumption or pool consumption by the snapshots reach a high threshold you
define. The system automatically starts deleting old and expired snapshots until the pool space reaches a set threshold.
Expired snapshots are deleted first. If deleting the expired snapshots does not still result in reaching the thresholds, the system
starts deleting the detached oldest snapshots with the automatic deletion option enabled. Automatic deletion does not apply to
snapshots attached to hosts, including attached groups of snapshots on a consistency group. It also does not apply to system
snapshots used for replication.
You can set a snapshot of a storage resource for automatic deletion when the snapshot expires (by setting a snapshot
expiration date) or the associated pool reaches the auto delete threshold settings. The following table explains the automatic
snapshot deletion options:
NOTE: If a snapshot has automatic snapshot deletion enabled, it cannot be used as a source snapshot for creating or
refreshing a thin clone.

Table 3. Automatic snapshot deletion options

Options Description
Pool Applies to snapshots of storage resources and pools. When
the pool reaches a certain threshold, the system automatically
deletes the snapshot.
Expiration time Applies to snapshots of storage resources. This is the time
when the snapshot expires.

About Data Reduction and Advanced Deduplication

A single switch called Data Reduction controls compression and deduplication of the blocks at an individual LUN and file system
level. Adding a subsequent switch called Advanced Deduplication controls a deeper, dynamic ability for deduplicating data blocks
within a given storage resource that do not contain internally-defined data patterns.
Applying data reduction saves space on the system. Data reduction includes savings from deduplicating blocks which contain
internally-defined data patterns, including zero detection and compression. Data reduction is available for thin LUNs, thin file
systems, and thin NFS and VMFS datastores. The thin file system must be created on a Unity system that is running OE version
4.2.x or later.
Data reduction is applied on all new incoming writes. Data that cannot be deduplicated or compressed is detected, and is written
uncompressed.
Data that already exists on a LUN will not have data reduction applied after data reduction is enabled. In order to apply data
reduction to existing LUN data, you must use the LUN Move feature to move the LUN's data to a destination LUN that has data
reduction enabled.
The Advanced Deduplication option helps increase the storage efficiency of systems above what is achieved with data reduction
on a LUN, file system, or datastore. It provides the ability to reduce the amount of storage needed for user data by keeping only
a small number of copies (often just one copy) of a data block with a given content. Advanced deduplication can be enabled only
if data reduction is enabled first.
The Advanced Deduplication switch is available only on:
● Dynamic or Traditional pools in Unity 380F, 480F, 680F, and 880F systems
● Dynamic pools in Unity All-Flash 450F, 550F, and 650F systems
● All-Flash pools and Hybrid Flash pools in Unity Hybrid 380, 480, 680, and 880 systems
Both All-Flash pools and Hybrid Flash pools can contain both data reduction-enabled and non-data reduction enabled LUNs, file
systems, or datastores.

Introduction to Data Efficiency 19

When data reduction and advanced deduplication are enabled, or were previously enabled and then disabled, for a storage
resource in a hybrid pool, the percentage of Flash drives in the pool must be 10% or higher. Otherwise, an error will occur.
For additional information, refer to the Dell Unity: Data Reduction white paper.

20 Introduction to Data Efficiency

 4
Managing the FAST Cache (supported
physical deployments only)
Topics:
• About the FAST Cache
• FAST Cache best practices
• Create the FAST Cache
• Enable or disable the FAST Cache for a pool
• View system-level FAST Cache information
• View pool-level Fast Cache Information
• Expand or shrink the FAST Cache capacity
• Delete the FAST Cache

About the FAST Cache

FAST Cache functionality is supported for use with dynamic or traditional non-All-Flash pools on hybrid Flash arrays.
The FAST Cache is a large capacity secondary cache that uses SAS Flash drives to improve system performance by extending
the existing caching capacity of the storage system. You can configure individual pools to use the FAST Cache. When you do
this, all storage resources which are created in those pools use the FAST Cache.

NOTE: The use of SAS Flash 3 or SAS Flash 4 type drives for the FAST Cache is not supported.

The FAST Cache provides the following benefits:

● Improved Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)—The FAST Cache reduces the number of drive spindles that are needed for a
given level of performance and allows you to replace high-performance drives with more economical options. This is possible
because the load on back-end hard drives is reduced. Because the FAST Cache copies the busy subsets of large storage
capacities in 64 KB data chunks to Flash drives, the busiest areas of many LUNs or file systems use a small set of Flash
drives. This allows a large set of slower, less expensive drives to deliver the performance typically provided by faster, more
expensive drives. Over time, new pools with slower NL-SAS drives can replace pools that have faster SAS drives, while
maintaining the same application performance. This improves the financial (IOPS/dollar) and power (IOPS/KWH) efficiency
of the storage system.
● Reduced complexity—At a system level, the FAST Cache helps make the most efficient use of Flash drive capacity. The
FAST Cache does this by using Flash drives for the most frequently accessed data in the storage system instead of
dedicating Flash drives to a particular application. It adjusts to a hot spot anywhere in the storage system, so that you do not
need to analyze specific application requirements. It provides better performance to all applications in the storage system
while using fewer Flash drives.
● Highly scalable cache capacity—The FAST Cache can scale up to a larger capacity than the maximum DRAM Cache
capacity. This larger cache capacity means that all or a higher percentage of a customer's working set can be promoted into
the better performing FAST Cache. The working set is the most active part of an application.

FAST Cache drive configurations

The FAST Cache uses SAS Flash 2 drives that are configured in RAID 1 pairs. The drive sizes used to configure the FAST Cache
and maximum FAST Cache capacity vary by model. For information, see the compatibility and interoperability documentation. Go
to the support website to locate this documentation.
You cannot mix drive types or sizes in the FAST Cache.

Managing the FAST Cache (supported physical deployments only) 21

FAST Cache actions
You can expand or shrink the FAST Cache by adding or removing drives. You can also delete the FAST Cache, but this can
impact system performance and the performance of pools that are using the FAST Cache. The FAST Cache deletion process
takes time, because the storage system has to flush all the cache data to the pool drives.

FAST Cache best practices

Use the FAST Cache under the following circumstances:
● Large working sets of data must be stored and read, accessed frequently, and readily available.
● The system has enough drives for both data storage and performance improvement.
For example, use the FAST Cache if the system has enough SAS Flash drives, is active with daily read/write transactions of big
blocks of data, and is not used as long term storage for archival purposes that would be accessed on a weekly or monthly basis.
Avoid using the FAST Cache for data that is sequential or that uses large-block I/O. For example, do not use the FAST Cache
for database logs or circular logs, since their data is sequential.

Create the FAST Cache

Prerequisites
To create the FAST Cache, the FAST Cache license must be installed on the system and the system must have available SAS
Flash 2 drives in sizes supported by the model. (See the compatibility and interoperability documentation for this information).

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST Cache.
2. Select Create.
3. Select the size and number of drives to use for the FAST Cache. The available drives are based on the number of available
SAS Flash drives, spare drive policy, and system limits.
4. Optionally, clear Enable FAST Cache for existing pools, if you do not want the FAST Cache enabled for all existing pools.
You can enable the FAST Cache for individual pools at a later time.

Enable or disable the FAST Cache for a pool

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the relevant pool, and then select the Edit icon.
3. On the General tab, select or clear Use FAST Cache.

View system-level FAST Cache information

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST Cache to view the status, total space, and
number of drives in the FAST Cache.
2. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST Cache Disks to view the name and size of each
drive in the FAST Cache.

22 Managing the FAST Cache (supported physical deployments only)

View pool-level Fast Cache Information
About this task
At the pool level, you can verify whether a specific pool is configured to use the FAST Cache.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the pool, and then select the Edit icon.
3. On the General tab, view whether the Use FAST Cache field is enabled.

Expand or shrink the FAST Cache capacity

About this task
If you have a small FAST Cache, and your business's growth requires larger blocks of data to be read and written, you can
expand the FAST Cache capacity by adding SAS Flash 2 drives.
On rare occasions, you might want to shrink the FAST Cache capacity. For example, consider doing so under these
circumstances:
● The FAST Cache is too large for users' applications.
● You need to repurpose some SAS Flash 2 drives to create storage pools with higher performance.
● The storage system does not have enough slots left to be populated with additional drives for storage.
NOTE: Shrinking the FAST Cache can take a long time and can affect the performance of pools currently using the FAST
Cache, because data on the drives being removed from the FAST Cache must be flushed to the pool drives.

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST Cache.
2. To expand the FAST Cache, select Expand. Then select the drives to add to the FAST Cache.
3. To shrink the FAST Cache, select Shrink. Then select the drives to remove from the FAST Cache.

Delete the FAST Cache

About this task
Deleting the FAST Cache frees up drives for other uses. However, it can impact system performance and the performance of
pools currently using the FAST Cache. The FAST Cache deletion process can take a long time, because it has to flush all of the
cache data to the pool drives.

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST Cache.
2. Select Delete.

Managing the FAST Cache (supported physical deployments only) 23

 5
Managing FAST VP (supported physical
deployments only)
Topics:
• About FAST VP
• Data relocation with FAST VP
• FAST VP tiering policy
• Enable or disable scheduled data relocations at the system level
• Stop a pool from participating in scheduled data relocations
• Manually initiate or stop data relocations for a pool
• Pause or resume data relocations for all pools
• Change system-level data relocation information
• Change data relocation information for a pool
• View pool-level FAST VP information

About FAST VP
FAST VP functionality is supported for use with dynamic or traditional multi-tiered pools on hybrid Flash arrays.
Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) enables the system to retain the most frequently accessed
or important data on fast, high-performance drives, and move the less frequently accessed and less important data to lower-
performance, cost-effective drives.
FAST VP does the following:
● Monitors the usage of the data in a tiered pool. Tiered pools are heterogeneous pools that are configured with multiple
classes of drives (SAS Flash 2 and/or SAS Flash 3, plus SAS and/or NL-SAS).
● Depending on the tiering policy, uses the monitoring statistics to automatically relocate data chunks, at 256 MB granularity,
to other tiers within the pool. For example, the Start High then Auto-Tier policy relocates data to the storage tier that is best
suited for that data, based on relative activity.
● Performs load balancing across the drives in tiered and nontiered pools.
FAST VP is an automated feature that optimizes drive utilization. It requires little manual intervention.
NOTE:
● If you want to configure and use the FAST VP feature, the FAST VP license must be installed on the system. All-Flash
models of Unity do not support FAST VP.
● FAST VP can use all supported drive types except for SAS Flash 4.
The data relocation that FAST VP performs can help you achieve the following benefits:
● Increased performance—Sometimes, you can double performance throughput by adding less than 10 percent of a pool's
total capacity in SAS Flash 2 or SAS Flash 3 drives.
● Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)—Using a combination of NL-SAS, SAS, SAS Flash 2, and SAS Flash 3 drives
instead of all SAS drives enables you to address performance requirements and still reduce the drive count. Sometimes, you
can achieve up to a two-thirds reduction in drive count by using FAST VP.

Data relocation with FAST VP

Data relocation (also called auto-tiering) is the process by which the system relocates data to another tier within the same
pool and rebalances data within a tier to achieve maximum pool performance gain. Data relocation can be scheduled or manually
initiated.

24 Managing FAST VP (supported physical deployments only)

The data relocation process does the following:
● Relocates the most active data up to the highest available tier.
● Relocates the least active data to lower tiers, as needed to free up space for more active data in the higher tiers.
● Rebalances data within a tier.

Scheduled data relocation

Scheduled data relocation is enabled for all pools by default when FAST VP is installed on your system. The system performs
scheduled data relocations for pools participating in the automatic data relocation schedule. By default, the data relocation
window is every day from 22:00 to 6:00 (UTC time) the next day. The specified data relocation times provide the window of
time in which data relocations occur on an ongoing basis, if the system determines the relocations are needed.
You can do the following to configure scheduled data relocations:
● Disable or re-enable scheduled data relocations for the system.
● Change the days on which data relocation occurs and the data relocation window start time and end time for each scheduled
day.
● Configure individual pools to participate in scheduled data relocations.
● Pause all scheduled data relocations. (This action also pauses manual data relocations that are currently in progress.)
● Resume all scheduled data relocations (This action also resumes paused manual data relocations whose specified end times
have not expired.)

NOTE: The system rebalances data within a tier automatically when a pool tier is expanded.

Manual data relocation

You can manually initiate data relocations for individual pools. When you start a manual data relocation, you specify a data
relocation rate and an end time for the data relocation operation.
You can do the following to control manual data relocations:
● Start or stop a manual data relocation.
● Pause manual relocations that are currently in progress. This action also pauses all scheduled data relocations.
● Resume paused manual relocations whose end times are not over. This action also resumes all scheduled data relocations.

FAST VP tiering policy

The following table describes the FAST VP tiering policy settings, which are defined at the data-resource level. This policy
defines both the initial tier placement and the ongoing automated tiering of data during data relocation operations.

Table 4. FAST VP tiering policy settings

Tiering policy Corresponding initial tier placement Description
Start High then Auto-Tier (default) Highest available tier Recommended setting. Sets the
initial data placement to the highest-
performing drives with available space,
and then relocates portions of the
storage resource's data based on I/O
activity.
Auto-Tier Optimize for pool performance Sets the initial data placement to an
optimum, system-determined setting,
and then relocates portions of the
storage resource's data based on
the storage resource's performance
statistics such that data is relocated
among tiers according to I/O activity.
Highest Available Tier Highest available tier Sets the initial data placement
and subsequent data relocation (if

Managing FAST VP (supported physical deployments only) 25

Table 4. FAST VP tiering policy settings (continued)
Tiering policy Corresponding initial tier placement Description
applicable) to the highest-performing
drives with available space.
Lowest Available Tier Lowest available tier Sets the initial data placement
and subsequent data relocation (if
applicable) to the most cost-effective
drives with available space.

Enable or disable scheduled data relocations at the

system level
About this task
When you disable scheduled data relocations at the system level, no pools in the system will participate in scheduled data
relocations. If you disable scheduled data relocations at the system level when a data relocation is taking place, the system will
complete the data relocation.
When you enable scheduled data relocations at the system level, pools that have scheduled data relocations enabled at the pool
level will participate in scheduled data relocations.

NOTE: Scheduled data relocations for the storage system are enabled by default.

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST VP.
2. Do either of the following:
● Select Pause to disable data relocations for the storage system.
● Select Resume to enable data relocations for the storage system, and optionally select Modify data relocation
schedule to change the data relocation schedule.

Stop a pool from participating in scheduled data

relocations
About this task
If you stop a pool from participating in scheduled data relocations when a data relocation is taking place, the system will
complete the data relocation.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the relevant pool, and click the Edit icon.
3. Select Fast VP.
4. If the Data relocations scheduled field has a value of No, select the Edit icon, and select Yes on the confirmation
message.

Manually initiate or stop data relocations for a pool

About this task
You can manually initiate or stop data relocations for pools.

26 Managing FAST VP (supported physical deployments only)

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the pool for which you want to initiate or stop data relocations, and then select the Edit icon.
3. Select FAST VP.
4. Do either of the following:
● To start data relocations for the pool, choose Start Relocation, and select the rate and end time for the data relocation.
A data relocation rate of Low has the least impact on system performance, Medium (the default) has a moderate impact
on system performance, and High has the most impact on system performance.
● To stop data relocations, choose Stop Relocation. This stops all data relocations for the pool, including manually
initiated data relocations that are currently in progress and scheduled data relocations.

Pause or resume data relocations for all pools

About this task
Pausing data relocations stops all scheduled data relocations as well as manual data relocations that are in progress. Resuming
data relocations restarts these data relocations.

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST VP.
2. Pause or resume data relocations.

Change system-level data relocation information

About this task
System-level data relocation information includes whether scheduled relocations are enabled for the system. If scheduled data
relocations are enabled, the information includes:
● Total amount of data in the system scheduled to move to higher and lower tiers.
● Total amount of data in the system to be rebalanced within a tier
● Estimated time needed for the scheduled data relocations.

Steps
1. Select the Settings icon, and then select Storage Configuration > FAST VP.
2. Optionally, take one of the following actions:
● Select Pause (if enabled) to pause all scheduled data relocations and manual data relocations that are currently in
progress.
● Select Resume (if enabled) to resume paused data relocations.
● Modify the data relocation rate. A data relocation rate of Low has the least impact on system performance, Medium (the
default) has a moderate impact on system performance, and High has the most impact on system performance.
● Select Modify data relocation schedule to change the data relocation schedule.

Change data relocation information for a pool

About this task
You can specify whether a pool is scheduled to participate in scheduled data relocations. You can also manually start or stop
data relocations on the pool.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the relevant pool, and click Edit.
3. Select FAST VP.

Managing FAST VP (supported physical deployments only) 27

4. Make the appropriate changes.

View pool-level FAST VP information

About this task
If a FAST VP license is installed on the system, you can view the following information for a pool:
● Whether the pool participates in scheduled data relocations.
● Estimated time needed for scheduled data relocations.
● Start and end time for the most recent data relocation.
● Number and type of drives in each tier.
● Amount of data in the pool scheduled to move to higher and lower tiers.
● Amount of data in the pool scheduled to be rebalanced within a tier.

Steps
1. Under Storage, select Pools.
2. Select the relevant pool, and then select the Edit icon.
3. Select the FAST VP tab.
4. Optionally click Manage FAST VP system settings to view the data relocation rate.
● Low has the least impact on system performance.
● Medium (the default) has a moderate impact on system performance.
● High has the most impact on system performance.

28 Managing FAST VP (supported physical deployments only)

 6
Understanding RAID (physical deployments
only)
Topics:
• About RAID
• RAID configurations
• RAID for dynamic pools in Unisphere
• Drive IOPS by RAID type

About RAID
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is a method for providing high levels of storage reliability by arranging drives in
groups, and dividing and replicating data among the drives in a group. You select drive types and RAID configurations (RAID
types and stripe widths) when you create a pool. Once a pool is configured, you cannot change the RAID type of a tier.
However, in hybrid models, you can add a new tier with a different RAID type. (All-Flash models have only one tier.)
RAID usually has the characteristics of parity, striping, or both:
● Parity provides redundancy for blocks of data on the drives. Depending on the RAID type, this provides the ability to
continue to operate with the loss of one or more drives.
● Striping provides a mechanism for processing data that allows the comprehensive read/write performance of a RAID group
to exceed the performance of its component drives.
In hybrid models that are licensed for FAST VP and that have unused drives of different types, you can configure multiple
storage tiers for the pool and can specify a different RAID configuration for each tier.
The system supports RAID 5, 6, and 1/0 (also called RAID 10).

RAID in dynamic pools

In a dynamic pool, drives are partitioned into drive extents. These extents are combined into RAID extents, which are spread
across multiple drives. The number of drive extents within a RAID extent depends on the RAID type and width. For example,
a RAID 5 (4+1) RAID extent contains five drive extents. For redundancy purposes, the system ensures that no RAID extent
contains two drive extents from the same drive. Also, each drive extent can only be part of one RAID extent.
A RAID group in a dynamic pool is a collection of RAID extents. The number and size of RAID groups in a dynamic pool can vary
depending on the number of drives and how the pool was created and expanded. A RAID extent can only be part of one RAID
group.
The following illustration shows a RAID group with a RAID 5 (4 + 1) configuration. This configuration requires six drives to meet
the requirement for spare space. In this illustration, each rectangle represents one drive extent, and each color represents one
RAID extent:

Understanding RAID (physical deployments only) 29

Figure 1. RAID 5 (4+1) group in a dynamic pool

RAID in traditional pools

In a traditional pool, a RAID group contains sets of drives with the same capacity and redundancy on which you create one or
more storage resources. The system creates one or more RAID groups for the pool based on the specified configuration. For
example, when you create a storage resource in a RAID 5 (4 + 1) group, data is distributed equally across the five drives in the
RAID group. If you want to create a pool using more than five drives, you must do so in multiples of the selected RAID stripe
width.
The following illustration shows a RAID 5 (4 + 1) group, along with the required spare drive.

Figure 2. RAID 5 (4 + 1) group plus one spare drive in a traditional pool

RAID configurations
Pool tiers are built using a set of one or more individual drive groups based on the tier's RAID type and stripe width. The RAID
type determines the performance characteristics of each drive group. The stripe width determines the fault characteristics of
each drive group.
For example, a RAID 5 drive group can still operate with the loss of one drive (traditional pools) or it's equivalent (dynamic
pools). A RAID 5 (4+1), 5 drive configuration has less risk of multiple drive faults than a RAID 5 (12+1), 13 drive configuration.
The following table describes the supported RAID types for the intended storage usage:

Table 5. Supported RAID levels

RAID level Description
RAID 1/0 (also called Best suited for applications with fast or high processing requirements, such as enterprise servers
RAID 10) and moderate-sized database systems. Provides both high performance and reliability at medium
cost, while providing lower capacity per drive.
RAID 5 Best suited for transaction processing and often used for general purpose storage, as well as for
relational database and enterprise resource systems. Depending on the drives used, this RAID type
can provide a fairly low cost per MB while still retaining redundancy.

30 Understanding RAID (physical deployments only)

Table 5. Supported RAID levels (continued)
RAID level Description
RAID 6 Best suited for read-biased workloads, such as archiving and backup to drive.

Mixed RAID configurations (traditional pools only)

If FAST VP is installed on the system, you can create a pool with multiple storage tiers. Each tier can have its own RAID type.
Only one RAID type can be used within a tier, but the tier can have different stripe configurations. For example, you can mix
RAID 5 (4+1) and RAID 5 (8+1) in a tier.
To do this:
● Select the Maximum Capacity RAID configuration when you create the pool. This configuration might mix RAID types in the
pool.
● Expand the pool using a different stripe width than currently exists in the pool.

RAID for dynamic pools in Unisphere

Unisphere automatically assigns a RAID width to a dynamic pool based on the selected RAID type and the selected number of
drives. The following table describes how the RAID width gets assigned:

RAID level Number of drives Number of drives (if RAID Width

spare number is 2)
RAID 5 6 to 7 7 to 8 4+1
10 to 13 11 to 14 8+1
14 or more 15 or more 12+1
RAID 6 7 to 8 8 to 9 4+2
9 to 10 10 to 11 6+2
11 to 12 12 to 13 8+2
13 to 14 14 to 15 10+2
15 to 16 16 to 17 12+2
17 or more 18 or more 14+2
RAID 1/0 3 to 4 4 to 5 1+1
5 to 6 6 to 7 2+2
7 to 8 8 to 9 3+3
9 or more 10 or more 4+4

Drive IOPS by RAID type

Front-end application workloads translate into different back-end drive workloads based on the RAID type in use. For front-end
reads, there is no impact by RAID type: 1 front-end read I/O equals 1 back-end read I/O.
The following table shows the impact by RAID type for random front-end writes.

Table 6. IOPS by RAID type for front-end writes

RAID type IOPS per 1 front-end write I/O
RAID 1/0 2 back-end write I/0s
RAID 5 2 back-end reads and 2 back-end writes

Understanding RAID (physical deployments only) 31

Table 6. IOPS by RAID type for front-end writes (continued)
RAID type IOPS per 1 front-end write I/O
RAID 6 3 back-end reads and 3 back-end writes

32 Understanding RAID (physical deployments only)

 7
Configuring pools using the CLI
Topics:
• Configure pools automatically
• Configure custom pools
• Manage pool tiers
• View pool resources
• View storage profiles (physical deployments only)
• Manage drive groups (physical deployments only)
• Manage storage system capacity settings
• Manage system tier capacity settings
• Change disk settings (virtual deployments only)
• Pool use cases
• The show action command

Configure pools automatically

Pools are the groups of physical drives or virtual disks, called disk groups, on which you create storage resources. The system
can automatically configure pools by selecting the appropriate disk groups based on the type and availability of drives in the
system.
In order to automatically create pools, the following criteria must be met:
● A FAST VP/FAST Cache license is not installed
● No other pools have been created
● For virtual deployments, all virtual disks have been assigned a tier type
NOTE: Configure custom pools explains how to configure custom pools. Before you create storage resources (including
NAS servers), you must configure at least one pool.

NOTE: All disks on the system will be used for storage pools.

The following table lists the attributes for automatic pool configuration.

Table 7. Automatic pool configuration attributes

Attribute Description
Target Type of drive configuration. Value is one of the following:
● pool - Drives configured in a pool.
● spares - Drives assigned to pools as spares. The number of spares assigned to a
pool is dependent on the drive type and pool type:
○ For Capacity pools, no spare drives are assigned.
○ For Performance pools, a spare drive is assigned for the first 0-30 drives, and
then another spare drive is assigned for every group of thirty drives after that.
○ For Flash pools, a spare drive is assigned for the first 0-30 drives, and then
another spare drive is assigned for every group of thirty drives after that.
Name Name of the pool. The system allocates drives to one or more of the following pools
based on the types and characteristics of the disks on the system:
● Capacity - Storage allocated from near-line (NL) serial attached SCSI (SAS)
drives. Provides high-capacity storage, but with lower overall performance to
regular SAS and Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD) drives. Use NL SAS drives to provide
extremely economical storage for operations, such as data backup, that do not
require high I/O performance.

Configuring pools using the CLI 33

Table 7. Automatic pool configuration attributes (continued)
Attribute Description
● Performance - Storage allocated from serial attached SCSI (SAS) disks.
Provides medium performance and medium capacity storage for applications that
require balance of performance and capacity.
● Flash - Storage allocated from Flash drives. Extremely high level performance,
but at a relatively high cost per GB of storage. Flash drives are most applicable to
applications that require high I/O performance and energy efficiency.
Depending on the pool type, the system configures the drives into different RAID
groups and assigns drives to pools as spares. The Unisphere online help provides more
details about pools and spares.
Drives (current) List of drives currently in the pool.
Drives (new) List of drives to be added to the pool.
RAID level (physical deployments RAID level applied.
only)
Stripe length (physical Comma-separated list of drives in the stripe.
deployments only)

Initiate automatic pool configuration

Start configuring pools automatically. View configuration settings for automatic pool creation displays the configuration settings
that the system will apply when you run this command.
NOTE: All disks on the system will be used to configure storage pools automatically. You must explicitly confirm this
operation to proceed.

Format
/stor/config/auto set

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run action in asynchronous mode.

Example
The following command initiates automatic pool configuration:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/auto set

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

All disks in the system will be used to configure pools. Do you want to proceed?
yes / no: yes
Operation completed successfully.

View configuration settings for automatic pool creation

View the settings for automatic pool creation that will be applied to the system. Initiate automatic storage pool configuration
explains how to apply these settings to the system.

34 Configuring pools using the CLI

 NOTE: The show action command explains how to change the output format.

Format
/stor/config/auto show

Example (physical deployments only)

The following command shows how pools and spares will be configured automatically on the system:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/auto show -detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: Target = Pool
Name = Performance
Drives (current) = 5 x 600GB SAS; 5 x 300GB SAS
Drives (new) = 5 x 600GB SAS
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5,9

2: Target = Pool
Name = Capacity
Drives (current) = 10 x 1TB NL-SAS
Drives (new) = 2 x 1TB NL SAS
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5,9

3: Target = Pool
Name = Extreme Performance
Drives (current) = 10 x 100GB EFD
Drives (new) = 10 x 100GB EFD
RAID level = 1
Stripe length = 2

4: Target = Spares
Name = Unused / Hot Spare Candidates
Drives (current) = 1 x 600GB SAS; 1 x 300GB SAS; 1 x 1TB NL SAS
Drives (new) = 1 x 100GB EFD
RAID level =
Stripe length =

Configure custom pools

Pools are the groups of drives on which you create storage resources. Configure pools based on the type of storage resource
and usage that will be associated with the pool, such as file system storage optimized for database usage. The storage
characteristics differ according to the following:
● Type of drive used to provide the storage.
● (dual-SP virtual deployments only) RAID level implemented for the storage.
NOTE: Before you create storage resources, you must configure at least one pool.

The following table lists the attributes for pools:

Table 8. Custom pool attributes

Attribute Description
ID ID of the pool.
Name Name of the pool.

Configuring pools using the CLI 35

Table 8. Custom pool attributes (continued)
Attribute Description
Type Pool type. Valid values are:
● Dynamic
● Traditional
Description Brief description of the pool.
Total space Total storage capacity of the pool.
Current allocation Amount of storage in the pool allocated to storage resources.
Preallocated space Amount of storage space reserved in the pool by storage resources for future
needs to make writes more efficient. The pool may be able to reclaim some of
this space if total pool space is running low. This value equals the sum of the
sizePreallocated values of each storage resource in the pool.
Remaining space Amount of storage in the pool not allocated to storage resources.
Subscription For thin provisioning, the total storage space subscribed to the pool. All pools
support both standard and thin provisioned storage resources. For standard
storage resources, the entire requested size is allocated from the pool when
the resource is created, for thin provisioned storage resources only incremental
portions of the size are allocated based on usage. Because thin provisioned
storage resources can subscribe to more storage than is actually allocated to
them, pools can be over provisioned to support more storage capacity than they
actually possess.
NOTE: The system automatically generates an alert when the total pool
usage reaches 85% of the pool's physical capacity. -alertThreshold
specifies the alert threshold value.

Subscription percent For thin provisioning, the percentage of the total space in the pool that is
subscription storage space.
Alert threshold Threshold for the system to send an alert when hosts have consumed a specific
percentage of the subscription space. Value range is 50 to 85.
Drives List of the types of drives on the system, including the number of drives of
each type, in the pool. If FAST VP is installed, you can mix different types of
drives to make a tiered pool. However, SAS Flash 4 drives must be used in a
homogeneous pool.
Number of drives Total number of drives in the pool.
Number of unused drives Number of drives in the pool that are not being used.
RAID level (physical deployments only) RAID level of the drives in the pool.

Stripe length (physical deployments Number of drives the data is striped across.
only)
Rebalancing Indicates whether a pool rebalancing is in progress. Valid values are:
● yes
● no
Rebalancing progress Indicates the progress of the pool rebalancing as a percentage.
System defined pool Indication of whether the system configured the pool automatically. Valid values
are:
● yes
● no
Health state Health state of the pool. The health state code appears in parentheses. Valid
values are:
● Unknown (0)—Health is unknown.
● OK (5)—Operating normally.

36 Configuring pools using the CLI

Table 8. Custom pool attributes (continued)
Attribute Description
● OK BUT (7)—Pool has exceeded its user-specified threshold or the
system specified threshold of 85%.
● Degraded/Warning (10)—Pool is operating, but degraded due to one
or more of the following:
○ Pool has exceeded the user-specified threshold.
○ Pool is nearing capacity.
○ Pool is almost full.
○ Pool performance has degraded.
● Major failure (20)—Dirty cache has made the pool unavailable.
● Critical failure (25)—Pool is full. To avoid data loss, add more
storage to the pool, or create more pools.
● Non-recoverable error (30)—Two or more drives in the pool have
failed, possibly resulting in data loss.
Health details Additional health information. See Appendix A, Reference, for health information
details.
FAST Cache enabled (physical Indicates whether FAST Cache is enabled on the pool. Valid values are:
deployments only) ● yes
● no
Non-base size used Quantity of storage used for thin clone and snapshot data.
Auto-delete state Indicates the state of an auto-delete operation on the pool. Valid values are:
● Idle
● Running
● Could not reach LWM
● Could not reach HWM
NOTE: If the auto-delete operation cannot satisfy the high water mark,
and there are snapshots in the pool, the auto-delete operation sets the
auto-delete state for that watermark to Could not reach HWM, and
generates an alert.
● Failed
Auto-delete paused Indicates whether an auto-delete operation is paused. Valid values are:
● yes
● no
Auto-delete pool full threshold Indicates whether the system will check the pool full high water mark for auto-
enabled delete. Valid values are:
● yes
● no
Auto-delete pool full high The pool full high watermark on the pool.
water mark
Auto-delete pool full low water The pool full low watermark on the pool.
mark
Auto-delete snapshot space used Indicates whether the system will check the snapshot space used high water
threshold enabled mark for auto-delete. Valid values are:
● yes
● no
Auto-delete snapshot space used High watermark for snapshot space used on the pool.
high water mark
Auto-delete snapshot space used Low watermark for snapshot space used on the pool.
low water mark

Configuring pools using the CLI 37

Table 8. Custom pool attributes (continued)
Attribute Description
Data Reduction space saved Storage size saved on the pool by using data reduction.
(physical deployments only) NOTE: Data reduction is available for thin LUNs and thin file systems. The
thin file systems must be created on Unity systems running version 4.2.x or
later.

Data Reduction percent (physical Storage percentage saved on the pool by using data reduction.
deployments only) NOTE: Data reduction is available for thin LUNs and thin file systems. The
thin file systems must be created on Unity systems running version 4.2.x or
later.

Data Reduction ratio (physical Ratio between data without data reduction and data after data reduction
deployments only) savings.
NOTE: Data reduction is available for thin LUNs and thin file systems. The
thin file systems must be created on Unity systems running version 4.2.x or
later.

All flash pool Indicates whether the pool contains only Flash drives. Valid values are:
● yes
● no

Create pools
Create a dynamic or traditional pool.
● When creating a dynamic pool with NL-SAS drives, RAID 5, 6, and 10 are allowed.
● Both traditional pools and dynamic pools are supported in the CLI and REST API for Unity All-Flash models running OE
version 4.2.x or later, and for Unity hybrid models running OE version 5.2.x or later. The default pool type is dynamic.
● Traditional pools are supported in all Unity hybrid and virtual models. They are also supported in Unity All-Flash models
running OE version 4.1.x or earlier.
● The minimum number of drives to use for a dynamic pool is the selected RAID width plus one drive.

Format
/stor/config/pool create [-async] -name <value> [-type {dynamic [-hotSpareCapacity
<value>] | traditional}] [-descr <value>] {-diskGroup <value> -drivesNumber <value>
[-storProfile <value>] | -disk <value>} [-tier <value>] [-alertThreshold <value>]
[-snapPoolFullThresholdEnabled {yes|no}] [-snapPoolFullHWM <value>] [-snapPoolFullLWM
<value>] [-snapSpaceUsedThresholdEnabled {yes|no}] [-snapSpaceUsedHWM <value>] [-
snapSpaceUsedLWM <value>]

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
NOTE: Simultaneous commands, asynchronous or synchronous, may fail if
they conflict in trying to manage the same system elements.

-name Type a name for the pool.

-type (Available only for systems that support dynamic pools) Specify the type of pool
to create. Value is one of the following:
● dynamic
○ -hotSpareCapacity Specifies the hot spare capacity for every 32
drives of dynamic pools. Valid values are 1 (reserve 1 drive capacity for

38 Configuring pools using the CLI

Qualifier Description
every 32 drives as a spare) or 2 (reserve 2 drives capacity for every 32
drives as a spare).
NOTE: The -hotSpareCapacity setting is used for a tier. This
means that all disk groups in the same tier share the same
-hotSpareCapacity value.
● traditional
Default value is dynamic.

-descr Type a brief description of the pool.

-storProfile (physical deployments Type the ID of the storage profiles, separated by commas, to apply to the pool,
only) based on the type of storage resource that will use the pool and the intended
usage of the pool. View storage profiles (physical deployments only) explains
how to view the IDs of available storage profiles on the system. If this option is
not specified, a default RAID configuration is selected for each particular drive
type in the selected drive group: NL-SAS (RAID 6 with a stripe length of 8),
SAS (RAID 5 with a stripe length of 5), or Flash (RAID 5 with a stripe length of
5).
-diskGroup (physical deployments only) Type a comma-separated list of IDs of the drive groups to use in the pool.
Specifying drive groups with different drive types causes the creation of a
multi-tier pool. View drive groups explains how to view the IDs of the drive
groups on the system.
-drivesNumber (physical deployments Specify the drive numbers, separated by commas, from the selected drive
only) groups to use in the pool. If this option is specified when -storProfile is
not specified, the operation may fail when the -drivesNumber value does not
match the default RAID configuration for each drive type in the selected drive
group.
NOTE: When creating a dynamic pool on a hybrid Flash array, you cannot
specify HDD system drives. When creating a traditional pool, you can
specify HDD system drives.

-disk (virtual deployments only) Specify the list of drive IDs, separated by commas, to use in the pool. Specified
drives must be reliable storage objects that do not require additional protection.
-tier (virtual deployments only) Specify the comma-separated list of tiers to which the drives are assigned.
If the tier is omitted, it is assigned automatically if tiering information for the
associated drive is available. Value is one of the following:
● capacity
● performance
● extreme
-alertThreshold For thin provisioning, specify the threshold, as a percentage, when the system
will alert on the amount of subscription space used. When hosts consume the
specified percentage of subscription space, the system sends an alert. Value
range is 50% to 85%.
-FASTCacheEnabled (physical Specify whether to enable FAST Cache on the pool. Value is one of the
deployments only) following:
● yes
● no
Default value is yes.
-snapPoolFullThresholdEnabled Indicate whether the system should check the pool full high water mark for
auto-delete. Value is one of the following:
● yes
● no
Default value is yes.

Configuring pools using the CLI 39

Qualifier Description
-snapPoolFullHWM Specify the pool full high watermark for the pool. Valid values are 1-99. Default
value is 95.
-snapPoolFullLWM Specify the pool full low watermark for the pool. Valid values are 0-98. Default
value is 85.
-snapSpaceUsedThresholdEnabled Indicate whether the system should check the snapshot space used high water
mark for auto-delete. Value is one of the following:
● yes
● no
Default value is yes.
-snapSpaceUsedHWM Specify the snapshot space used high watermark to trigger auto-delete on the
pool. Valid values are 1-99. Default value is 95.
-snapSpaceUsedLWM Specify the snapshot space used low watermark to trigger auto-delete on the
pool. Valid values are 0-98. Default value is 20.

NOTE: Use the Change disk settings (virtual deployments only) command to change the assigned tiers for specific drives.

Example 1 (physical deployments only)

The following command creates a dynamic pool. This example uses storage profiles profile_1 and profile_2, six drives from drive
group dg_2, and ten drives from drive group dg_28. The configured pool receives ID pool_2.
NOTE: Before using the stor/config/pool create command, use the /stor/config/profile show command
to display the dynamic pool profiles and the /stor/config/dg show command to display the drive groups.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! uemcli /stor/config/pool create
-name MyPool -descr "dynamic pool" -diskGroup dg_2,dg_28 -drivesNumber 6,10 -storProfile
profile_1,profile_2

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_2
Operation completed successfully.

Example 2 (physical deployments only)

The following command creates a traditional pool in models that support dynamic pools. This example uses storage profiles
tprofile_1 and tprofile_2, five drives from drive group dg_3, and nine drives from drive group dg_28. The configured pool
receives ID pool_6.
NOTE: Before using the stor/config/pool create command, use the /stor/config/profile -traditional
show command to display the traditional pool profiles (which start with "t") and the /stor/config/dg show command
to display the drive groups.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool create -name
MyPool -descr "traditional pool" -diskGroup dg_3,dg_28 -drivesNumber 5,9 -storProfile
tprofile_1,tprofile_2 -type traditional

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_6
Operation completed successfully.

40 Configuring pools using the CLI

Example 3 (physical deployments only)
The following command creates a traditional pool in models that do not support dynamic pools. This example uses storage
profiles profile_19 and profile_20, five drives from drive group dg_15, and nine drives from drive group dg_16. The configured
pool receives ID pool_5.
NOTE: Before using the stor/config/pool create command, use the /stor/config/profile show command
to display the traditional pool profiles and the /stor/config/dg show command to display the drive groups.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool create -name
MyPool -descr "my big pool" -storProfile profile_19,profile_20 -diskGroup dg_15,dg_16
-drivesNumber 5,9 -FASTCacheEnabled yes

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_5
Operation completed successfully.

Example 4 (virtual deployments only)

The following command creates a traditional pool with two virtual drives, vdisk_0 and vdisk_2 in the Extreme Performance tier.
The configured pool receives ID pool_4.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool create -name vPool
-descr "my virtual pool" -disk vdisk_0,vdisk_2

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_4
Operation completed successfully.

Example 5 (physical deployments only)

The following command creates a dynamic pool, using 7 drives from disk group dg_21 with a hot spare capacity of 1 drive;
6 drives from disk group dg_31 with a hot spare capacity of 2 drives; and 7 drives from drive group dg_18 with a hot spare
capacity of 2 drives:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool create -name pool
-diskGroup dg_21,dg_31,dg_18 -drivesNumber 7,6,7 -type dynamic -hotSpareCapacity 1,2,2

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_1
Operation completed successfully.

NOTE: The -hotSpareCapacity setting is used for a tier. This means that all disk groups in the same tier share the
same -hotSpareCapacity value. In this example, drive groups dg_31 and dg_18 belong to the same tier, and share the
same -hotSpareCapacity setting of 2.

Change pool settings

Change the subscription alert threshold, FAST Cache, and snapshot threshold settings for a pool.

Configuring pools using the CLI 41

Format
/stor/config/pool {-id <value> | -name <value>} set [-async] –name <value> [-
descr <value>] [-alertThreshold <value>] [-snapPoolFullThresholdEnabled {yes|no}] [-
snapPoolFullHWM <value>] [-snapPoolFullLWM <value>] [-snapSpaceUsedThresholdEnabled {yes|
no}] [-snapSpaceUsedHWM <value>] [-snapSpaceUsedLWM <value>] [-snapAutoDeletePaused no]

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-id Type the ID of the pool to change.
-name Type the name of the pool to change.

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
NOTE: Simultaneous commands, asynchronous or synchronous, may fail if
they conflict in trying to manage the same system elements.

-name Type a name for the pool.

-descr Type a brief description of the pool.
-alertThreshold For thin provisioning, specify the threshold, as a percentage, when the system
will alert on the amount of subscription space used. When hosts consume the
specified percentage of subscription space, the system sends an alert. Value
range is 50% to 84%.
-FASTCacheEnabled (physical Specify whether to enable FAST Cache on the pool. Value is one of the
deployments only) following:
● yes
● no
-snapPoolFullThresholdEnabled Indicate whether the system should check the pool full high water mark for
auto-delete. Value is one of the following:
● yes
● no
-snapPoolFullHWM Specify the pool full high watermark for the pool. Valid values are 1-99.
Default value is 95.
-snapPoolFullLWM Specify the pool full low watermark for the pool. Valid values are 0-98. Default
value is 85.
-snapSpaceUsedThresholdEnabled Indicate whether the system should check the snapshot space used high water
mark for auto-delete. Value is one of the following:
● yes
● no
-snapSpaceUsedHWM Specify the snapshot space used high watermark to trigger auto-delete on the
pool. Valid values are 1-99. Default value is 95.
-snapSpaceUsedLWM Specify the snapshot space used low watermark to trigger auto-delete on the
pool. Valid values are 0-98. Default value is 20.
-snapAutoDeletePaused Specify whether to pause snapshot auto-delete. Typing no resumes the auto-
delete operation.

42 Configuring pools using the CLI

Example
The following command sets the subscription alert threshold for pool pool_1 to 70%:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool -id pool_1 -set
-alertThreshold 70 -FASTCacheEnabled no

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_1
Operation completed successfully.

Add drives to pools

Add new drives to a pool to increase its storage capacity.
NOTE:
● The minimum number of drives to use for a dynamic pool is the selected RAID width plus one drive.
● To extend a hybrid pool when data reduction and advanced deduplication are enabled for a storage resource in the pool,
the percentage of Flash drives in the pool must be 10% or higher.

Format
/stor/config/pool {-id <value> | -name <value>} extend [-async] {-diskGroup <value>
-drivesNumber <value> [-storProfile <value>] | -disk <value> [-tier <value>]}

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-id Type the ID of the pool to extend.
-name Type the name of the pool to extend.

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
-diskGroup (physical Type the IDs of the drive groups, separated by commas, to add to the pool.
deployments only)
-drivesNumber Type the number of drives from the specified drive groups, separated by commas, to add to the
(physical deployments pool. If this option is specified when -storProfile is not specified, the operation may fail when
only) the -drivesNumber value does not match the default RAID configuration for each drive type in
the selected drive group.
NOTE: When creating a dynamic pool on a hybrid Flash array, you cannot specify HDD system
drives. When creating a traditional pool, you can specify HDD system drives.

-storProfile Type the IDs of the storage profiles, separated by commas, to apply to the pool. If this option is
(physical deployments not specified, a default RAID configuration is selected for each particular drive type in the selected
only) drive group:
● NL-SAS (RAID 6 with a stripe length of 8)
● SAS (RAID 5 with a stripe length of 5)
● Flash (RAID 5 with a stripe length of 5)

Configuring pools using the CLI 43

Qualifier Description
-disk (virtual Specify the list of drives, separated by commas, to add to the pool. Specified drives must be
deployments only) reliable storage objects that do not require additional protection.

-tier (virtual Specify the comma-separate list of tiers to which the added drives will be assigned. If a tier is not
deployments only) specified in this list, it will be assigned automatically if tiering information for the associated drive is
available. Valid values are:
● capacity
● performance
● extreme

Example 1 (physical deployments only)

The following command extends pool pool_1 with seven drives from drive group DG_1:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool –id pool_1 extend –
diskGroup dg_1 –drivesNumber 7 -storProfile profile_12

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_1
Operation completed successfully.

Example 2 (virtual deployments only)

The following command extends pool pool_1 by adding two virtual disks, vdisk_1 and vdisk_5.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.2 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool –id pool_1 extend –disk
vdisk_1,vdisk_5

Storage system address: 10.0.0.2

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_1
Operation completed successfully.

View pools
View a list of pools. You can filter on the pool ID.

NOTE: The show action command explains how to change the output format.

Format
/stor/config/pool {-id <value> | -name <value>}] show

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-id Type the ID of a pool.
-name Type the name of a pool.

44 Configuring pools using the CLI

Example 1 (physical deployments only)
The following command shows details about all pools on a hybrid system:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool show -detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = pool_13
Type = Dynamic
Name = Dynamic
Description =
Total space = 3815810007040 (3.4T)
Current allocation = 940921012224 (876.3G)
Preallocated = 97118896128 (90.4G)
Remaining space = 2777770098688 (2.5T)
Subscription = 1194021912576 (1.0T)
Flash percent = 39%
Subscription percent = 31%
Alert threshold = 70%
Drives = 6 x 600.0G SAS; 6 x 400.0G SAS
Flash 3
Number of drives = 12
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5
Rebalancing = no
Rebalancing progress =
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating
normally. No action is required."
FAST Cache enabled = yes
Protection size used = 21474836480 (20.0G)
Non-base size used = 21474836480 (20.0G)
Auto-delete state = Idle
Auto-delete paused = no
Auto-delete pool full threshold enabled = yes
Auto-delete pool full high water mark = 95%
Auto-delete pool full low water mark = 85%
Auto-delete snapshot space used threshold enabled = no
Auto-delete snapshot space used high water mark = 25%
Auto-delete snapshot space used low water mark = 20%
Data Reduction space saved = 18790481920 (17.5G)
Data Reduction Percent = 2%
Data Reduction Ratio = 1.0:1
All flash pool = no

2: ID = pool_14
Type = Traditional
Name = Traditional
Description =
Total space = 15750450380800 (14.3T)
Current allocation = 3999290327040 (3.6T)
Preallocated = 2376320188416 (2.1T)
Remaining space = 9374839865344 (8.5T)
Subscription = 14190303510528 (12.9T)
Flash percent = 0%
Subscription percent = 90%
Alert threshold = 70%
Drives = 5 x 4.0T NL-SAS
Number of drives = 5
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5
Rebalancing = no
Rebalancing progress =
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating
normally. No action is required."
FAST Cache enabled = yes
Protection size used = 0
Non-base size used = 0

Configuring pools using the CLI 45

 Auto-delete state = Idle
Auto-delete paused = no
Auto-delete pool full threshold enabled = yes
Auto-delete pool full high water mark = 95%
Auto-delete pool full low water mark = 85%
Auto-delete snapshot space used threshold enabled = no
Auto-delete snapshot space used high water mark = 25%
Auto-delete snapshot space used low water mark = 20%
Data Reduction space saved = 0
Data Reduction Percent = 0%
Data Reduction Ratio = 1.0:1
All flash pool = no

Example 2 (physical deployments only)

The following example shows all pools for a model that supports dynamic pools.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.2 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool show -detail

[Response]
Storage system address: 10.0.0.2
Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = pool_3
Type = Traditional
Name = MyPool
Description = traditional pool
Total space = 14177955479552 (12.8T)
Current allocation = 0
Preallocated space = 38310387712 (35.6G)
Remaining space = 14177955479552 (12.8T)
Subscription = 0
Subscription percent = 0%
Alert threshold = 70%
Drives = 9 x 1.6T SAS Flash 3; 5 x
400.0G SAS Flash 2
Number of drives = 14
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = Mixed
Rebalancing = no
Rebalancing progress =
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating
normally. No action is required."
FAST Cache enabled = no
Protection size used = 0
Non-base size used = 0
Auto-delete state = Idle
Auto-delete paused = no
Auto-delete pool full threshold enabled = yes
Auto-delete pool full high water mark = 95%
Auto-delete pool full low water mark = 85%
Auto-delete snapshot space used threshold enabled = no
Auto-delete snapshot space used high water mark = 25%
Auto-delete snapshot space used low water mark = 20%
Data Reduction space saved = 0
Data Reduction percent = 0%
Data Reduction ratio = 1:1
All flash pool = yes

2: ID = pool_4
Type = Dynamic
Name = dynamicPool
Description =
Total space = 1544309178368 (1.4T)
Current allocation = 0
Preallocated space = 38310387712 (35.6G)
Remaining space = 1544309178368 (1.4T)
Subscription = 0
Subscription percent = 0%

46 Configuring pools using the CLI

 Alert threshold = 70%
Drives = 6 x 400.0G SAS Flash 2
Number of drives = 6
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5
Rebalancing = no
Rebalancing progress =
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating
normally. No action is required."
Protection size used = 0
Non-base size used = 0
Auto-delete state = Idle
Auto-delete paused = no
Auto-delete pool full threshold enabled = yes
Auto-delete pool full high water mark = 95%
Auto-delete pool full low water mark = 85%
Auto-delete snapshot space used threshold enabled = no
Auto-delete snapshot space used high water mark = 25%
Auto-delete snapshot space used low water mark = 20%
Data Reduction space saved = 0
Data Reduction percent = 0%
Data Reduction ratio = 1:1
All flash pool = yes

Example 3 (virtual deployments only)

The following command shows details for all pools on a virtual system.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.3 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool show -detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.3

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = pool_1
Name = Capacity
Description =
Total space = 4947802324992 (4.5T)
Current allocation = 3298534883328 (3T)
Preallocated space = 38310387712 (35.6G)
Remaining space = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Subscription = 10995116277760 (10T)
Subscription percent = 222%
Alert threshold = 70%
Drives = 1 x 120GB Virtual; 1 x 300GB
Virtual
Number of drives = 2
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating
normally. No action is required."
Non-base size used = 1099511625 (1G)
Auto-delete state = Running
Auto-delete paused = no
Auto-delete pool full threshold enabled = yes
Auto-delete pool full high water mark = 95%
Auto-delete pool full low water mark = 85%
Auto-delete snapshot space used threshold enabled = yes
Auto-delete snapshot space used high water mark = 25%
Auto-delete snapshot space used low water mark = 20%

Delete pools
Delete a pool.

Configuring pools using the CLI 47

Format
/stor/config/pool {-id <value> | -name <value>} delete [-async]

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-id Type the ID of the pool to delete.
-name Type the name of the pool to delete.

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
NOTE: Simultaneous commands, asynchronous or synchronous, may fail if they conflict in trying to manage the
same system elements.

Example
The following deletes pool pool_1:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool –id pool_1 delete

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

Manage pool tiers

Storage tiers allow users to move data between different types of drives in a pool to maximize storage efficiency. Storage tiers
are defined by the following characteristics:
● Drive performance.
● Drive capacity.
The following table lists the attributes for storage profiles:

Table 9. Storage tier attributes

Attribute Description
Name Storage tier name.
Drives The list of drive types, and the number of drives of each type
in the storage tier.
RAID level (physical deployments only) RAID level of the storage tier.

Stripe length (physical deployments only) Comma-separated list of the stripe length of the drives in the
storage tier.
Total space Total capacity in the storage tier.
Current allocation Currently allocated space.
Remaining space Remaining space.

48 Configuring pools using the CLI

View storage tiers
View a list of storage tiers. You can filter on the pool ID.

NOTE: The show action command explains how to change the output format.

Format
/stor/config/pool/tier {-pool <value> | -poolName <value>} show

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-pool Type the ID of a pool.
-poolName Type the name of a pool.

Example 1 (physical deployments only)

The following command shows tier details about the specified pool:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool/tier -pool pool_1 show
-detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: Name = Extreme Performance

Drives = 6 x 800.0G SAS Flash 2
Drive type = SAS Flash
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5
Total space = 3111972241408 (2.8T)
Current allocation = 0
Remaining space = 3111972241408 (2.8T)
Spare space configuration = 1

2: Name = Performance
Drives = 6 x 600.0G SAS
Drive type = SAS
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5
Total space = 2317671727104 (2.1T)
Current allocation = 0
Remaining space = 2317671727104 (2.1T)
Spare space configuration = 2

Example 2 (virtual deployments only)

The following command shows details about the specified pool on a virtual system.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.2 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool/tier –pool pool_1 show
-detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.2

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: Name = Extreme Performance

Drives =
Total space = 0

Configuring pools using the CLI 49

 Current allocation = 0
Remaining space = 0

2: Name = Performance
Drives = 1 x 500GB Virtual
Total space = 631242752000 (500.0G)
Current allocation = 12624855040 (10.0G)
Remaining space = 618617896960 (490.0G)

3: Name = Capacity
Drives =
Total space = 0
Current allocation = 0
Remaining space = 0

View pool resources

This command displays a list of storage resources allocated in a pool. This can be storage resources provisioned on the specified
pool and NAS servers that have file systems allocated in the pool.
The following table lists the attributes for pool resources.

Table 10. Pool resources

Attribute Description
ID Storage resource identifier.
Name Name of the storage resource.
Resource type Type of the resource. Valid values are:
● LUN
● File system
● LUN group
● VMware NFS
● VMware VMFS
● NAS server
Pool Name of the pool.
Total pool space used Total space in the pool used by a storage resource. This
includes primary data used size, snapshot used size, and
metadata size. Space in the pool can be freed if snapshots
and thin clones for storage resources are deleted, or have
expired.
Total pool space preallocated Total space reserved from the pool by the storage resource
for future needs to make writes more efficient. The pool
may be able to reclaim some of this if space is running low.
Additional pool space can be freed if snapshots or thin clones
are deleted or expire, and also if Data Reduction is applied.
Total pool non-base space used Total pool space used by snapshots and thin clones.
Health state Health state of the file system. The health state code appears
in parentheses.
Health details Additional health information. See Appendix A, Reference, for
health information details.

Format
/stor/config/pool/sr [{-pool <value> | -poolName <value>}] show

50 Configuring pools using the CLI

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-pool Type the ID of the pool.
-poolName Type the name of the pool.

Example
The following command shows details for all storage resources associated with the pool pool_1:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool/sr -pool pool_1 show
-detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = res_1
Name = File_System_1
Resource type = File System
Pool = pool_1
Total pool space used = 53024473088 (49.3G)
Total pool preallocated = 15695003648 (14.6G)
Total pool snapshot space used = 7179124736 (6.6G)
Total pool non-base space used = 7179124736 (6.6G)
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating normally. No
action is required."

2: ID = sv_1
Name = AF LUN 1
Resource type = LUN
Pool = pool_1
Total pool space used = 14448566272 (13.4G)
Total pool preallocated = 4610351104 (4.2G)
Total pool snapshot space used = 4593991680 (4.2G)
Total pool non-base space used = 4593991680 (4.2G)
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The LUN is operating normally. No action is
required."

3: ID = res_2
Name = File_System_2
Resource type = File System
Pool = pool_1
Total pool space used = 117361025024 (109.3G)
Total pool preallocated = 3166494720 (2.9G)
Total pool snapshot space used = 41022308352 (38.2G)
Total pool non-base space used = 41022308352 (38.2G)
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating normally. No
action is required."

4: ID = sv_2
Name = AF LUN 2
Resource type = LUN
Pool = pool_1
Total pool space used = 9500246016 (8.8G)
Total pool preallocated = 2579349504 (2.4G)
Total pool snapshot space used = 0
Total pool non-base space used = 0
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The LUN is operating normally. No action is
required."

5: ID = res_3
Name = CG1

Configuring pools using the CLI 51

 Resource type = LUN group
Pool = pool_1
Total pool space used = 892542287872 (831.2G)
Total pool preallocated = 8863973376 (8.2G)
Total pool snapshot space used = 231799308288 (215.8G)
Total pool non-base space used = 231799308288 (215.8G)
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating normally. No
action is required."

View storage profiles (physical deployments only)

Storage profiles are preconfigured settings for configuring pools based on the following:
● Types of storage resources that will use the pools.
● Intended usage of the pool.
For example, create a pool for file system storage resources intended for general use. When configuring a pool, specify the ID of
the storage profile to apply to the pool.
NOTE: Storage profiles are not restrictive with regard to storage provisioning. For example, you can provision file systems
from an FC or iSCSI database pool. However, the characteristics of the storage will be best suited to the indicated storage
resource type and use.
Each storage profile is identified by an ID.
The following table lists the attributes for storage profiles.

Table 11. Storage profile attributes

Attribute Description
ID ID of the storage profile.
Type (Available only for systems that support dynamic pools) Type of pool the profile can
create. Value is one of the following:
● Dynamic
● Traditional
Description Brief description of the storage profile.
Drive type Types of drives for the storage profile.
RAID level RAID level number for the storage profile. Value is one of the following:
● 1 - RAID level 1.
● 5 - RAID level 5.
● 6 - RAID level 6.
● 10 - RAID level 1+0.
Maximum capacity Maximum storage capacity for the storage profile.
Stripe length Number of drives the data is striped across.
NOTE: For best fit profiles, this value is Best fit.

Disk group List of drive groups recommended for the storage pool configurations of the specified
storage profile. This is calculated only when the -configurable option is specified.
Maximum drives to List of the maximum number of drives allowed for the specified storage profile in the
configure recommended drive groups. This is calculated only when the -configurable option is
specified.
Maximum capacity to List of the maximum number of free capacity of the drives available to configure for
configure the storage profile in the recommended drive groups. This is calculated only when the
-configurable option is specified.

NOTE: The show action command explains how to change the output format.

52 Configuring pools using the CLI

Format
/stor/config/profile [-id <value> | -driveType <value> [-raidLevel <value>] | -traditional]
[-configurable] show

Object qualifier
Qualifier Description
-id Type the ID of a storage profile.
-driveType Specify the type of drive.
-raidLevel Specify the RAID type of the profile.
-traditional (Available only for systems that support dynamic pools) Specify this option to view the profiles that you
can use for creating traditional pools. To view the profiles you can use for creating dynamic pools, omit
this option.
-configurable Show only profiles that can be configured, that is, those with non-empty drive group information. If
specified, calculates the following drive group information for each profile:
● Disk group
● Maximum drives to configure
● Maximum capacity to configure
If the profile is for a dynamic pool, the calculated information indicates whether the drive group has
enough drives for pool creation. The calculation assumes that the pool will be created with the drives in
the specified drive group only.

Example 1
The following command shows details for storage profiles that can be used to create dynamic pools:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/profile -configurable show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = profile_22
Type = Dynamic
Description = SAS Flash 2 RAID5 (4+1)
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
RAID level = 5
Maximum capacity = 4611148087296 (4.1T)
Stripe length = Maximum capacity
Disk group =
Maximum drives to configure =
Maximum capacity to configure =

2: ID = profile_30
Type = Dynamic
Description = SAS Flash 2 RAID10 (1+1)
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
RAID level = 10
Maximum capacity = 9749818597376 (8.8T)
Stripe length = 2
Disk group =
Maximum drives to configure =
Maximum capacity to configure =

3: ID = profile_31
Type = Dynamic
Description = SAS Flash 2 RAID10 (2+2)
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
RAID level = 10

Configuring pools using the CLI 53

 Maximum capacity = 9749818597376 (8.8T)
Stripe length = 4
Disk group =
Maximum drives to configure =
Maximum capacity to configure =

Example 2
The following command shows details for storage profiles that can be used to create traditional pools in models that support
dynamic pools:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/profile -traditional
-configurable show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = tprofile_22
Type = Traditional
Description = SAS Flash 3 RAID5 (4+1)
Drive type = SAS Flash 3
RAID level = 5
Maximum capacity = 4611148087296 (4.1T)
Stripe length = Maximum capacity
Disk group = dg_16
Maximum drives to configure = 5
Maximum capacity to configure = 1884243623936 (1.7T)

2: ID = tprofile_30
Type = Traditional
Description = SAS Flash 3 RAID10 (1+1)
Drive type = SAS Flash 3
RAID level = 10
Maximum capacity = 9749818597376 (8.8T)
Stripe length = 2
Disk group = dg_13, dg_15
Maximum drives to configure = 10, 10
Maximum capacity to configure = 1247522127872 (1.1T), 2954304921600 (2.6T)

3: ID = tprofile_31
Type = Traditional
Description = SAS Flash 3 RAID10 (2+2)
Drive type = SAS Flsh 3
RAID level = 10
Maximum capacity = 9749818597376 (8.8T)
Stripe length = 4
Disk group = dg_13, dg_15
Maximum drives to configure = 8, 8
Maximum capacity to configure = 2363443937280 (2.1T), 952103075840 (886.7G)

Manage drive groups (physical deployments only)

Drive groups are the groups of drives on the system with similar characteristics, including type, capacity, and spindle speed.
When configuring pools, you select the drove group to use and the number of drives from the group to add to the pool.
Each drive group is identified by an ID.
The following table lists the attributes for drive groups.

Table 12. Drive group attributes

Attribute Description
ID ID of the drive group.
Drive type Type of drives in the drive group.

54 Configuring pools using the CLI

Table 12. Drive group attributes (continued)
Attribute Description
FAST Cache Indicates whether the drive group's drives can be added to
FAST Cache.
Drive size Capacity of one drive in the drive group.
Rotational speed Rotational speed of the drives in the group.
Number of drives Total number of drives in the drive group.
Unconfigured drives Total number of drives in the drive group that are not in a
pool.
Capacity Total capacity of all drives in the drive group.
Recommended number of spares Number of spares recommended for the drive group.
Drives past EOL Number of drives past EOL (End of Life) in the group.
Drives approaching EOL Number of drives that will reach EOL in 0-30 days, 0-60 days,
0-90 days and 0-180 days.

View drive groups

View details about drive groups on the system. You can filter on the drive group ID.

NOTE: The show action command explains how to change the output format.

Format
/stor/config/dg [-id <value>] [-traditional] show

Object qualifier
Qualifier Description
-id Type the ID of a drive group.
-traditional (Available only for systems that support dynamic pools) Specify this qualifier to have the system assume
that the pools to be created are traditional pools.

Example 1
The following command shows details about all drive groups that can be used to configure dynamic pools:

NOTE: For dynamic pools, the Unconfigured drives value does not include HDD system drives.

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/dg show -detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = dg_11
Drive type = SAS
FAST Cache = no
Drive size = 1181778411520 (1.0T)
Vendor size = 1.2T
Rotational speed = 10000 rpm
Number of drives = 44
Unconfigured drives = 40

Configuring pools using the CLI 55

 Capacity = 51998250106880 (47.2T)
Recommended number of spares = 0
Drives past EOL = 0
Drives approaching EOL = 0 (0-30 days), 0 (0-60 days), 0 (0-90 days), 0
(0-180 days)

2: ID = dg_40
Drive type = SAS Flash 4
FAST Cache = no
Drive size = 1881195675648 (1.7T)
Vendor size = 1.9T
Rotational speed = 0 rpm
Number of drives = 18
Unconfigured drives = 18
Capacity = 33861522161664 (30.7T)
Recommended number of spares = 0
Drives past EOL = 0
Drives approaching EOL = 1 (0-30 days), 2 (0-60 days), 2 (0-90 days), 3
(0-180 days)

Example 2
The following command shows details about all drive groups that can be used to configure traditional pools in models that
support dynamic pools:
NOTE: For dynamic pools, the Unconfigured drives value does not include HDD system drives. For traditional pools, the
Unconfigured drives value includes HDD system drives.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/dg -traditional show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = dg_11
Drive type = SAS
FAST Cache = no
Drive size = 1181778411520 (1.0T)
Vendor size = 1.2T
Rotational speed = 10000 rpm
Number of drives = 44
Unconfigured drives = 44
Capacity = 51998250106880 (47.2T)
Recommended number of spares = 2

2: ID = dg_40
Drive type = SAS Flash 4
FAST Cache = no
Drive size = 1881195675648 (1.7T)
Vendor size = 1.9T
Rotational speed = 0 rpm
Number of drives = 18
Unconfigured drives = 18
Capacity = 33861522161664 (30.7T)
Recommended number of spares = 1

View recommended drive group configurations

View the recommended drive groups from which to add drives to a pool based on a specified storage profile or pool type.

NOTE: The show action command explains how to change the output format.

Format
/stor/config/dg recom {–profile <value>| -pool <value> | -poolName <value>}

56 Configuring pools using the CLI

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-profile Type the ID of a storage profile. The output will include the list of drive groups recommended for the specified
storage profile.
-pool Type the ID of a pool. The output will include the list of drive groups recommended for the specified pool.
-poolName Type the name of a pool. The output will include the list of drive groups recommended for the specified pool.

Example 1
The following command shows the recommended drive groups for pool pool_1:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/dg recom -pool pool_1

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = DG_1
Drive type = SAS
Drive size = 536870912000 (500GB)
Number of drives = 8
Allowed numbers of drives = 4,8
Capacity = 4398046511104 (4TB)

2: ID = DG_2
Drive type = SAS
Drive size = 268435456000 (250GB)
Number of drives = 4
Allowed numbers of drives = 4
Capacity = 1099511627776 (1TB)

Manage storage system capacity settings

The following table lists the general storage system capacity attributes:

Table 13. General storage system capacity attributes

Attributes Description
Free space Specifies the amount of space that is free (available to be used) in all storage
pools on the storage system.
Used space Specifies the amount of space that is used in all storage pools on the storage
system.
Preallocated space Space reserved across all of the pools on the storage system. This space is
reserved for future needs of storage resources, which can make writes more
efficient. Each pool may be able to reclaim preallocated space from storage
resources if the storage resources are not using the space, and the pool space is
running low.
Total space Specifies the total amount of space, both free and used, in all storage pools on
the storage system.
Data Reduction space saved Specifies the storage size saved on the entire system when using data reduction.
NOTE: Data reduction is available for thin LUNs and thin file systems. The
thin file systems must be created on Unity systems running version 4.2.x or
later.

Data Reduction percent Specifies the storage percentage saved on the entire system when using data
reduction.

Configuring pools using the CLI 57

Table 13. General storage system capacity attributes (continued)
Attributes Description

NOTE: Data reduction is available for thin LUNs and thin file systems. The
thin file systems must be created on Unity systems running version 4.2.x or
later.

Data Reduction ratio Specifies the ratio between data without data reduction and data after data
reduction savings.
NOTE: Data reduction is available for thin LUNs and thin file systems. The
thin file systems must be created on Unity systems running version 4.2.x or
later.

View system capacity settings

View the current storage system capacity settings.

Format
/stor/general/system show

Example
The following command displays details about the storage capacity on the system:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/general/system show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: Free space = 4947802324992 (1.5T)

Used space = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Total space = 9895604649984 (3.0T)
Preallocated space = 60505210880 (56.3G)
Data Reduction space saved = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Data Reduction percent = 50%
Data Reduction ratio = 1

Manage system tier capacity settings

The following table lists the general system tier capacity attributes:

Table 14. General system tier capacity attributes

Attributes Description
Name Name of the tier. One of the following:
● Extreme Performance
● Performance
● Capacity
Free space Specifies the amount of space that is free (available to be used) in the tier.
Used space Specifies the amount of space that is used in the tier.
Total space Specifies the total amount of space, both free and used, in the tier.

58 Configuring pools using the CLI

View system tier capacity
View the current system tier capacity settings.

Format
/stor/general/tier show

Example
The following command displays details about the storage tier capacity on the system:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/general/tier show -detail

1: Name = Extreme Performance Tier

Free space = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Used space = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Total space = 9895604649984 (3.0T)

2: Name = Performance Tier

Free space = 0
Used space = 0
Total space = 0

3: Name = Capacity Tier

Free space = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Used space = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Total space = 9895604649984 (3.0T)

Change disk settings (virtual deployments only)

Change settings of an existing disk.

Format
/env/disk -id <value> set [-async] [-name <value>] [-tier <value>]

Object qualifier
Qualifier Description
-id Disk identifier.

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
-name Specify the new name for the disk.
-tier Specify the new tier. Valid values are:
● capacity
● performance
● extreme

Configuring pools using the CLI 59

Qualifier Description

NOTE: Disks without a tier cannot be used for pool provisioning.

Example
The following command changes the name of the virtual disk with the ID "vdisk_1".
uemcli -d 10.0.0.2 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /env/disk -id vdisk_1 set -name "High-
performance storage"

Storage system address: 10.0.0.2

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

Pool use cases

This section describes different CLI use cases for pools.

Create a pool using drives with specific characteristics

This example applies to hybrid Flash arrays, which only support traditional pools.

Retrieve the list of storage profiles

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/profile -configurable show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = profile_22
Description = SAS RAID5
Drive type = SAS
RAID level = 5
Maximum capacity = 4611148087296 (4.1T)
Stripe length = Maximum capacity
Disk group = dg_16
Maximum drives to configure = 5
Maximum capacity to configure = 1884243623936 (1.7T)

2: ID = profile_30
Description = SAS RAID10 (1+1)
Drive type = SAS
RAID level = 10
Maximum capacity = 9749818597376 (8.8T)
Stripe length = 2
Disk group = dg_13, dg_15
Maximum drives to configure = 10, 10
Maximum capacity to configure = 1247522127872 (1.1T), 2954304921600 (2.6T)

3: ID = profile_31
Description = SAS RAID10 (2+2)
Drive type = SAS
RAID level = 10
Maximum capacity = 9749818597376 (8.8T)
Stripe length = 4
Disk group = dg_13, dg_15

60 Configuring pools using the CLI

 Maximum drives to configure = 8, 8
Maximum capacity to configure = 2363443937280 (2.1T), 952103075840 (886.7G)

Configure a new pool

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool create -name MyPool
-description "My custom pool" -storProfile profile_22 -diskGroup dg_16 -drivesNumber 5

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = GP_4
Operation completed successfully.

Configure a dynamic pool

You can configure dynamic pools for all-Flash models of Unity running OE version 4.2.x or later. New pools created for these
models are dynamic pools by default. Dynamic pools implement advanced RAID technology. In dynamic pools, a RAID group is
spread across drive extents in multiple drives. The required spare space is also spread across drive extents in multiple drives.
When a drive fails, the extents on the failed drive are rebuilt to spare space extents within the pool.
When you configure dynamic pools, you can select different capacity drives from different drive groups with the same Flash
drive types to create a tier. The total drive count of the drive type must be at least the stripe width plus one. For example, the
total drive count for a RAID 4 + 1 group must be at least 6.

Step 1: View the list of available drive groups

View the list of available drive groups, as shown in the following example:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/dg show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = dg_2
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
FAST Cache = yes
Drive size = 196971960832 (183.4G)
Vendor size = 200.0G
Rotational speed = 0 rpm
Number of drives = 12
Unconfigured drives = 12
Capacity = 2363663529984 (2.1T)
Recommended number of spares = 0

2: ID = dg_3
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
FAST Cache = yes
Drive size = 393846128640 (366.7G)
Vendor size = 400.0G
Rotational speed = 0 rpm
Number of drives = 12
Unconfigured drives = 6
Capacity = 4726153543680 (4.2T)
Recommended number of spares = 0

Step 2: View the list of storage profiles

View the list of storage profiles, as shown in the following example:

Configuring pools using the CLI 61

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/profile show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = profile_1
Type = Dynamic
Description = SAS Flash 2 RAID5 (4+1)
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
RAID level = 5
Maximum capacity = 97373737844736 (88.5T)
Stripe length = 5
Disk group =
Maximum drives to configure =
Maximum capacity to configure =

Step 3: Configure the dynamic pool

Configure the dynamic pool with the specified drive groups and profiles. Optionally set -type to dynamic and make sure that
the -drivesNumber value for each drive type is not less than the drive group's RAID group width plus one:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool create –name mypool
-diskGroup dg_2,dg_3 -drivesNumber 4,2 -storProfile profile_1 -type dynamic

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_13
Operation completed successfully.

Configure a traditional pool for an all-Flash model

You can configure traditional pools for all-Flash models of Unity running OE version 4.2.x and later by explicitly setting the Type
attribute to traditional. If you do not set Type to traditional when you create a pool in the Unisphere CLI, a dynamic
pool is created.

Step 1: View the list of storage profiles

View the list of storage profiles, as shown in the following example:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/profile -traditional
-configurable show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = tprofile_2
Type = Traditional
Description = SAS Flash 2 RAID5 (8+1)
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
RAID level = 5
Maximum capacity = 95010661072896 (86.4T)
Stripe length = 9
Disk group = dg_34, dg_26
Maximum drives to configure = 9, 9
Maximum capacity to configure = 60189403250688 (54.7T), 2232208064512 (2.0T)

2: ID = tprofile_4
Type = Traditional
Description = SAS Flash 2 RAID5
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
RAID level = 5

62 Configuring pools using the CLI

 Maximum capacity = 95010661072896 (86.4T)
Stripe length = Maximum capacity
Disk group = dg_34, dg_26
Maximum drives to configure = 9, 10
Maximum capacity to configure = 60189403250688 (54.7T), 2691354329088 (2.4T)

Step 2: Configure the traditional pool

Configure a traditional pool with the specified profile. Make sure you set -type to traditional and that the
-drivesNumber is a multiple of the RAID group width.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool create -name test
-diskGroup dg_34 -drivesNumber 9 -storProfile tprofile_2 -type traditional

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = pool_6
Operation completed successfully.

Add drives to an existing pool

Retrieve the list of existing pools

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /store/config/pool show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = SPL_1
Name = Performance
Description =
Free space = 408944640 (390G)
Capacity = 1099511627776 (1T)
Drives = 6 x 250GB SAS
Number of drives = 6
Unused drives = 1
RAID level = 5
System pool = yes

2: ID = SPL_2
Name = Capacity
Description =
Free space = 1319413953331 (1.2T)
Capacity = 13194139533312 (12T)
Drives = 8 x 2GB NL-SAS
Number of drives = 8
Unused drives = 0
RAID level = 6
System pool = yes

3: ID = SPL_3
Name = Extreme Performance
Description =
Free space = 209715200 (200M)
Capacity = 322122547200 (300G)
Drive type = EFD
Number of drives = 4
Unused drives = 0
RAID level = 5
System pool = yes

Configuring pools using the CLI 63

Retrieve the list of recommended disk groups for the selected pool
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/dg recom –pool SPL_3

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = DG_4
Drive type = EFD
Drive size = 107374182400 (100G)
Number of drives = 4
Allowed numbers of drives = 4
Capacity = 419430400 (400G)

Extend the existing pool

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool –id SPL_3 extend –
diskGroup DG_4 –drivesNumber 4

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

ID = SPL_3
Operation completed successfully.

The show action command

The show action command displays a list of objects that exist on the system and the attributes of those objects. You can
specify an object qualifier to view the attributes for a single object. The show action command provides qualifiers for changing
the display of the output, including the format and the attributes to include. The available output formats are name-value pair
(NVP), table, and comma-separated values (CSV).

Format
uemcli [<switches>] <object> [<object qualifier>] show [{-detail | -brief | -filter
<value>] [-output {nvp | table [-wrap] | csv}]

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-output|-o Specify the output format. Value is one of the following:
● nvp — The name-value pair (NVP) format displays output as name=value. Name-value pair format
provides an example of the NVP format.
● table — The table format displays output as a table, with column headers and rows. By default, values
that are too long to fit in a column are cut off. Add -wrap after the table qualifier, separated by a space,
so that the values wrap. Table format provides an example of the table format.
● csv — The comma-separated values (CSV) format is similar to the table format, but the names and values
are separated by commas. Comma-separated values format provides an example of the CSV format.
-detail Display all attributes.
-brief Display only the basic attributes (default).
-filter Comma-separated list of attributes which are included into the command output.

64 Configuring pools using the CLI

Name-value pair format
1: ID = la0_SPA
SP = SPA
Ports = eth0_SPA,eth1_SPA
Health state = OK (5)

2: ID = la0_SPB
SP = SPB
Ports = eth0_SPB,eth1_SPB
Health state = OK (5)

Table format
ID | SP | Ports | Health state
--------+-----+-------------------+--------------
la0_SPA | SPA | eth0_SPA,eth1_SPA | OK (5)
la0_SPB | SPB | eth0_SPB,eth1_SPB | OK (5)

Comma-separated values format

ID,SP,Ports,Health state
la0_SPA,SPA,”eth0_SPA,eth1_SPA”,OK (5)
la0_SPB,SPB,”eth0_SPB,eth1_SPB”,OK (5)

Example
The following command modifies the set of attributes in the show action output. For example, if you add -filter "ID,ID,ID,ID"
to the command, in the output you will see four lines with the "ID" attribute for each listed instance:

1: ID = la_0
ID = la_0
ID = la_0
ID = la_0

uemcli /net/nas/server show -filter “ID, SP, Health state, ID, Name”

Filter format
Storage system address: 10.0.0.1
Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = nas_1
SP = SPA
Health state = OK (5)
ID = nas_1
Name = Mynas1

2: ID = nas_2
SP = SPA
Health state = OK (5)
ID = nas_2
Name = Mynas2

Configuring pools using the CLI 65

 8
Managing the FAST Cache using the CLI
(supported physical deployments only)
Topics:
• Manage FAST Cache
• Manage FAST Cache storage objects (physical deployments only)

Manage FAST Cache

FAST Cache is a storage efficiency technology that uses disks to expand the cache capability of the storage system to provide
improved performance.
The following table lists the attributes for FAST Cache:

Table 15. FAST Cache attributes

Attribute Description
Capacity Capacity of the FAST Cache.
Drives The list of disk types, and the number of disks of each type in
the FAST Cache.
Number of drives Total number of disks in the FAST Cache.
RAID level RAID level applied to the FAST Cache disks. This value is
always RAID 1.
Health state Health state of the FAST Cache. The health state code
appears in parentheses.
Health details Additional health information. See Appendix A, Reference, for
health information details.

Create FAST Cache

Configure FAST Cache. The storage system generates an error if FAST Cache is already configured.

Format
/stor/config/fastcache create [-async] -diskGroup <value> -drivesNumber <value> [-
enableOnExistingPools {yes | no}]

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
-diskGroup Specify the drive group to include in the FAST Cache.
NOTE: Only SAS Flash 2 drives can be used in the FAST Cache.

66 Managing the FAST Cache using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)
Qualifier Description
-drivesNumber Specify the number of drives to include in the FAST Cache.
-enableOnExistingPools Specify whether FAST Cache is enabled on all existing pools. Valid values are:
● yes
● no

Example
The following command configures FAST Cache with six drives from drive group dg_2, and enables FAST Cache on existing
pools:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastcache create -diskGroup
dg_2 -drivesNumber 6 -enableOnExistingPools yes

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

View FAST Cache settings

View the FAST Cache parameters.

Format
/stor/config/fastcache show

Example
The following command displays the FAST Cache parameters for a medium endurance Flash drive:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastcache show -detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: Total space = 536870912000 (500G)

Drives = 6 x 200GB SAS Flash 2
Number of drives = 6
RAID level = 1
Health state = OK (5)
Health details = "The component is operating normally. No action is
required."

Extend FAST Cache

Extend the FAST Cache by adding more drives.

Format
/stor/config/fastcache extend [-async] -diskGroup <value> -drivesNumber <value>

Managing the FAST Cache using the CLI (supported physical deployments only) 67
Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
-diskGroup Specify the comma-separated list of SAS Flash drives to add to the FAST Cache. Any added
drives must have the same drive type and drive size as the existing drives.
-drivesNumber Specify the number of drives for each corresponding drive group to be added to the FAST
Cache.

Example
The following command adds six drives from drive group "dg_2" to FAST cache.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastcache extend -diskGroup
dg_2 -drivesNumber 6

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

Shrink FAST Cache

Shrink the FAST Cache by removing storage objects.

Format
/stor/config/fastcache shrink [-async] -so <value>

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
-so Specify the comma-separated list of storage objects to remove from the FAST
Cache. Run the /stor/config/fastcache/so show command to obtain a list
of all storage objects currently in the FAST Cache.

Example
The following command removes Raid Group RG_1 from the FAST Cache.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastcache shrink –so rg_1

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

Delete FAST Cache

Delete the FAST Cache configuration. The storage system generates an error if FAST Cache is not configured on the system.

68 Managing the FAST Cache using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)
Format
/stor/config/fastcache delete [-async]

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.

Example
The following command deletes the FAST Cache configuration:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastcache delete

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

Manage FAST Cache storage objects (physical

deployments only)
FAST Cache storage objects include the RAID groups and drives that are in the FAST Cache.

Table 16. FAST Cache storage object attributes

Attribute Description
ID Identifier of the storage object.
Type Type of storage object.
RAID level RAID level applied to the storage object.
Drive type Type of drive.
Number of drives Number of drives in the storage object.
Drives Comma-separated list of the drive IDs for each storage object.
Total space Total space used by the storage object.
Device state The status of the FAST Cache device. Values are:
● OK - This cache device is operating normally.
● Degraded - One drive of this cache device is faulted.
● Faulted - This cache device cannot operate normally.
● Expanding - This cache device is expanding.
● Expansion Ready - This cache device finished expanding.
● Expansion Failure - This cache device failed to expand.
● Shrinking - This cache device is shrinking.
● Shrink Done - This cache device has flushed pages and is removed from FAST
Cache.

View FAST Cache storage objects

View a list of all storage objects, including RAID groups and drives, that are in the FAST Cache.

Managing the FAST Cache using the CLI (supported physical deployments only) 69
Format
/stor/config/fastcache/so [-id <value> ] show

Object qualifier
Qualifier Description
-id Type the ID of the storage object in the FAST Cache.

Example 1
The following example shows FAST Cache storage objects on the system.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastcache/so show

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: ID = rg_6
Type = RAID group
Stripe length = 2
RAID level = 1
Number of drives = 2
Drive type = SAS Flash 2
Drives = dae_0_1_disk_1, dae_0_1_disk_2
Total space = 195400433664 (181.9G)
Device state = OK

70 Managing the FAST Cache using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)
 9
Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported
physical deployments only)
Topics:
• Manage FAST VP pool settings
• Manage FAST VP general settings

Manage FAST VP pool settings

Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) is a storage efficiency technology that automatically moves data
between storage tiers within a pool based on data access patterns.
The following table lists the attributes for FAST VP pool settings.

Table 17. FAST VP pool attributes

Attribute Description
Pool Identifies the pool.
Status Identifies the status of data relocation on the pool. Value is one of the following:
● Not started - Data relocation has not started.
● Paused - Data relocation is paused.
● Completed - Data relocation is complete.
● Stopped by user - Data relocation was stopped by the user.
● Active - Data relocation is in progress.
● Failed - Data relocation failed.
Relocation type Type of data relocation. Value is one of the following:
● Manual - Data relocation was initiated by the user.
● Scheduled or rebalancing - Data relocation was initiated by the system
because it was scheduled, or because the system rebalanced the data.
Schedule enabled Identifies whether the pool is rebalanced according to the system FAST VP
schedule. Value is one of the following:
● yes
● no
Start time Indicates the time the current data relocation started.
End time Indicates the time the current data relocation is scheduled to end.
Data relocated The amount of data relocated during an ongoing relocation, or the previous
relocation if a data relocation is not occurring. The format is:
<value> [suffix]
where:
● value - Identifies the size of the data relocated.
● suffix - Identifies that the value relates to the previous relocation session.
Rate Identifies the transfer rate for the data relocation. Value is one of the following:
● Low - Least impact on system performance.
● Medium - Moderate impact on system performance.
● High - Most impact on system performance.

Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only) 71

Table 17. FAST VP pool attributes (continued)
Attribute Description
Default value is medium.
NOTE: This field is blank if data relocation is not in progress.

Data to move up The amount of data in the pool scheduled to be moved to a higher storage tier.
Data to move down The amount of data in the pool scheduled to be moved to a lower storage tier.
Data to move within The amount of data in the pool scheduled to be moved within the same storage
tiers for rebalancing.
Data to move up per tier The amount of data per tier that is scheduled to be moved to a higher tier. The
format is:
<tier_name>:[value]
where:
● tier_name - Identifies the storage tier.
● value - Identifies the amount of data in that tier to be move up.
Data to move down per tier The amount of data per tier that is scheduled to be moved to a lower tier. The
format is:
<tier_name>:[value]
where:
● tier_name - Identifies the storage tier.
● value - Identifies the amount of data in that tier to be moved down.
Data to move within per tier The amount of data per tier that is scheduled to be moved to within the same
tier for rebalancing. The format is:
<tier_name>:[value]
where:
● tier_name - Identifies the storage tier.
● value - Identifies the amount of data in that tier to be rebalanced.
Estimated relocation time Identifies the estimated time required to perform the next data relocation.

View FAST VP pool settings

View FAST VP settings on a pool.

Format
/stor/config/pool/fastvp [{-pool <value> | -poolName <value>}] show

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-pool Type the ID of the pool.
-poolName Type the name of the pool.

Example
The following command lists the FAST VP settings on the storage system:

72 Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool/fastvp –show -detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: Pool = pool_1
Relocation type = manual
Status = Active
Schedule enabled = no
Start time = 2013-09-20 12:55:32
End time = 2013-09-20 21:10:17
Data relocated = 100111454324 (100G)
Rate = high
Data to move up = 4947802324992 (4.9T)
Data to move down = 4947802324992 (4.9T)
Data to move within = 4947802324992 (4.9T)
Data to move up per tier = Performance: 500182324992 (500G), Capacity:
1000114543245 (1.0T)
Data to move down per tier = Extreme Performance: 1000114543245 (1.0T),
Performance: 500182324992 (500G)
Data to move within per tier = Extreme Performance: 500182324992 (500G),
Performance: 500182324992 (500G), Capacity: 500182324992 (500G)
Estimated relocation time = 7h 30m

Change FAST VP pool settings

Modify FAST VP settings on an existing pool.

Format
/stor/config/pool/fastvp {-pool <value> | -poolName <value>} set [-async] -schedEnabled
{yes | no}

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-pool Type the ID of the pool.
-poolName Type the name of the pool.

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
NOTE: Simultaneous commands, asynchronous or synchronous, may fail if they conflict in trying to
manage the same system elements.

-schedEnabled Specify whether the pool is rebalanced according to the system FAST VP schedule. Value is one of the
following:
● yes
● no

Example
The following example enables the rebalancing schedule on pool pool_1:

Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only) 73

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool/fastvp -pool pool_1 set
-schedEnabled yes

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Pool ID = pool_1
Operation completed successfully.

Start data relocation

Start data relocation on a pool.

Format
/stor/config/pool/fastvp {-pool <value> | -poolName <value>} start [-async] [-rate {low |
medium | high}] [-endTime <value>]

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-pool Type the ID of the pool to resume data relocation.
-poolName Type the name of the pool to resume data relocation.

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
NOTE: Simultaneous commands, asynchronous or synchronous, may fail if they conflict in trying to manage
the same system elements.

-pool Type the ID of the pool.

-endTime Specify the time to stop the data relocation. The format is:

[HH:MM]
where:
● HH — Hour.
● MM — Minute.
Default value is eight hours from the current time.
-rate Specify the transfer rate for the data relocation. Value is one of the following:
● Low — Least impact on system performance.
● Medium — Moderate impact on system performance.
● High — Most impact on system performance.
Default value is the value set at the system level.

Example
The following command starts data relocation on pool pool_1, and directs it to end at 04:00:

74 Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool/fastvp -pool pool_1
start -endTime 04:00

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

Stop data relocation

Stop data relocation on a pool.

Format
/stor/config/pool/fastvp {-pool <value> | -poolName <value>} stop [-async]

Object qualifiers
Qualifier Description
-pool Type the ID of the pool.
-poolName Type the name of the pool.

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.

Example
The following command stops data relocation on pool pool_1:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/pool/fastvp –pool pool_1
stop

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

Manage FAST VP general settings

Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) is a storage efficiency technology that automatically moves data
between storage tiers within a pool based on data access patterns.
The following table lists the attributes for FAST VP general settings.

Table 18. FAST VP general attributes

Attribute Description
Paused Identifies whether the data relocation is paused. Value is one of the following:
● yes

Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only) 75

Table 18. FAST VP general attributes (continued)
Attribute Description
● no
Schedule-enabled Identifies whether the pool is rebalanced according to the system FAST VP schedule.
Value is one of the following:
● yes
● no
Frequency Data relocation schedule. The format is:
Every <days_of_the_week> at <start_time> until <end_time>
where:
● <days_of_the_week> - List of the days of the week that data relocation will run.
● <start_time> - Time the data relocation starts.
● <end_time> - Time the data relocation finishes.
Rate Identifies the transfer rate for the data relocation. Value is one of the following:
● Low - Least impact on system performance.
● Medium - Moderate impact on system performance.
● High - Most impact on system performance.
Default value is medium.
NOTE: This field is blank if data relocation is not in progress.

Data to move up The amount of data in the pool scheduled to be moved to a higher storage tier.
Data to move down The amount of data in the pool scheduled to be moved to a lower storage tier.
Data to move within The amount of data in the pool scheduled to be moved within the same storage tiers
for rebalancing.
Estimated scheduled Identifies the estimated time required to perform the next data relocation.
relocation time

Change FAST VP general settings

Change FAST VP general settings.

Format
/stor/config/fastvp set [-async] [-schedEnabled {yes | no}] [-days <value>] [-at <value>]
[-until <value>] [-rate {low | medium | high}] [-paused {yes | no}]

Action qualifier
Qualifier Description
-async Run the operation in asynchronous mode.
-paused Specify whether to pause data relocation on the storage system. Valid values are:
● yes
● no
-schedEnabled Specify whether the pool is rebalanced according to the system FAST VP schedule. Valid values are:
● yes
● no
-days Specify a comma-separated list of the days of the week to schedule data relocation. Valid values are:
● mon – Monday

76 Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)

Qualifier Description
● tue – Tuesday
● wed – Wednesday
● thu – Thursday
● fri – Friday
● sat – Saturday
● sun – Sunday
-at Specify the time to start the data relocation. The format is:
[HH:MM]
where:
● HH – Hour
● MM – Minute
Valid values are between 00:00 and 23:59. Default value is 00:00.
-until Specify the time to stop the data relocation. The format is:
[HH:MM]
where:
● HH – Hour
● MM – Minute
Valid values are between 00:00 and 23:59. Default value is eight hours after the time specified with the
-at parameter.
-rate Specify the transfer rate for the data relocation. Value is one of the following:
● low – Least impact on system performance.
● medium – Moderate impact on system performance.
● high – Most impact on system performance.
Default value is medium.

Example
The following command changes the data relocation schedule to run on Mondays and Fridays from 23:00 to 07:00:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastvp set -schedEnabled yes
-days "Mon,Fri" -at 23:00 -until 07:00

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

Operation completed successfully.

View FAST VP general settings

View the FAST VP general settings.

Format
/stor/config/fastvp show -detail

Example
The following command displays the FAST VP general settings:

Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only) 77

uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/joe -p MyPassword456! /stor/config/fastvp show -detail

Storage system address: 10.0.0.1

Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection

1: Paused = no
Schedule enabled = yes
Frequency = Every Mon, Fri at 22:30 until 8:00
Rate = high
Data to move up = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Data to move down = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Data to move within = 4947802324992 (1.5T)
Estimated scheduled relocation time = 7h 30m

78 Managing FAST VP using the CLI (supported physical deployments only)