HP XP Racks - Manual (Page 61)

5 Configuring thin provisioning
Thin provisioning technology allows you to allocate virtual storage capacity based on anticipated
future capacity needs, using virtual volumes instead of physical disks.
Thin provisioning is an optional provisioning strategy for both open and mainframe systems. Thin
provisioning is implemented by creating one or more Thin Provisioning pools (THP pools) of physical
storage space.
Thin Provisioning overview
Thin Provisioning is an advanced thin-provisioning software product that allows you to save money
on storage purchases and reduce storage management expenses.
You can operate Thin Provisioning using both Remote Web Console software and the RAID
Manager.
Smart Tiers overview
Smart Tiers is a software product that helps you reduce storage costs and increase storage
performance by supporting a volume configured with different storage media of different cost and
performance capabilities. This support allows you to allocate data areas with heavy I/O loads to
higher-speed media and to allocate data areas with low I/O loads to lower-speed media. In this
way, you can make the best use of the capabilities of installed storage media. Up to three storage
tiers consisting of different types of data drives are supported in a single pool of storage.
Thin provisioning requirements
License requirements
Before you operate Smart Tiers, the Thin Provisioning and the Smart Tiers program products must
have been installed. For this, you will need to purchase the Smart Tiers license as well as the Thin
Provisioning Software license.
You will need the Smart Tiers license for the total capacity of the pool for which the tier function
is enabled.
If the THP-VOLs of Thin Provisioning or Smart Tiers are used for the primary volumes and secondary
volumes of Business Copy, Continuous Access Synchronous, Continuous Access Journal, Auto LUN,
or Fast Snap, you will need the Business Copy, Continuous Access Synchronous, Continuous Access
Journal, Auto LUN, and Fast Snap license for the total pool capacity in use.
If you exceed the licensed capacity, you will be able to use the additional unlicensed capacity for
30 days.
For more information about temporary license capacity, see the HP XP7 Remote Web Console
User Guide.
Pool requirements
A pool is a set of volumes reserved for storing Thin Provisioning write data.
Requirements Items
Calculate pool capacity using the following formula: Pool capacity
The capacity of the pool (MB) = Total number of pages * 42 - 4200 .
4200 in the formula is the management area size of the pool-VOL with System Area.
Total Number of pages =
Σ(floor(floor(pool-VOL number of blocks ч
512) ч 168)) for each pool-VOL.
floor( ): Truncates the value calculated from the formula in parentheses after the decimal point.
Thin Provisioning overview 61