HP XP P9500 Storage - Manual (Page 19)

up to 1024 LDEVs may be assigned to a single pool, this represents a considerable amount of
I/O power that is possibly made available to just a few THP volumes.
Thin Provisioning work flow
The following illustrates the Thin Provisioning workflow.
Thin Provisioning
After using Thin Provisioning software to virtualize LUs and pool storage into a thin provisioning
strategy, the array now has all the elements in place to offer automatic self-optimizing storage tiers
provided by Smart Tiers (Smart). Using Smart Tiers, you can configure a storage system with multiple
storage tiers using different kinds of data drives, including SSD, SAS, SATA, and external volumes.
This helps improve the speed and cost of performance.Smart Tiers extends and improves the
functionality and value of Thin Provisioning. Both use pools of physical storage against which
virtual disk capacity, or V-VOLs, is defined. Each thin provisioning pool can be configured to
operate either as a THP pool or a Smart Tiers pool.
Automated tiering of physical storage is the logical next step for thin provisioned enterprise arrays.
Automated tiering is the ability of the array to dynamically monitor and relocate data on the
optimum tier of storage. It focuses on data segments rather than whole LUs. The functionality is
entirely within the array without any mandated host level involvement. Smart Tiers adds another
layer to the thin provisioned environment.
Using Smart Tiers you can:
•
Configure physical storage into tiers consisting of multiple kinds of data drives, including SSD,
SAS, and SATA. Although host volumes are conventionally configured from a common pool,
the pool is efficiently configured using multiple kinds of data drives. This configuration delivers
high performance for data that needs it, while reducing storage costs by storing infrequently
accessed data on lower cost physical storage.
•
Automatically migrate small portions of host volumes to the most suitable data drive according
to access frequency. Frequently accessed data is migrated to higher speed hard disk drives
(for example SSD), and infrequently accessed data is migrated to lower cost and lower speed
hard disk drives (for example, SATA) to use the storage efficiently.
Smart Tiers simplifies storage administration by automating and eliminating the complexities of
efficiently using tiered storage. It automatically moves data on pages in Thin Provisioning virtual
volumes to the most appropriate storage media, according to workload, to maximize service levels
and minimize total cost of storage.
Smart Tiers gives you:
•
Improved storage resource usage
•
Improved return on costly storage tiers
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