Pool Considerations
In appropriate environments, you can add or remove group members from a storage pool or you can combine storage pools.
A single-array storage pool provides fault isolation. Volumes whose pools are on one array keep data placement simple and snapshots truly local. All host operating systems identified in the Validated Configuration Matrix and array data protocols support single-array pools.
A multi-array pool lets you consolidate capacity and scale performance. Volumes striped across multiple array pools can have larger capacity, pool-wide resources, and more even growth with less rebalancing later. Some host operating systems support multi-array pools.
- Operating system on host
machines
Windows, ESX, and Linux hosts for which a supported Nimble Connection Manager (NCM) is available can use multi-array storage pools. Any hosts for which a supported NCM is unavailable require single-array pools.
- Disk speed
- Disk capacity
- Network bandwidth
- Application using the storage pool
- Load balancing requirements
- Volumes that will reside on the storage pool
- Coupling a lower performance model array with a higher performance model could degrade the performance of the pooled system.
- Performance can be affected when you merge arrays into a single pool when the arrays have different performance caps, cache configurations, and storage capacity.
- Consider using a multi-array pool to migrate data from an older array to a newer array, as this method can be less disruptive than using replication to migrate data.
Storage pools can include some or all of the arrays in a group. When you add an array to a group, you must also add this array to one of the existing storage pools for that group or you can create a new storage pool and add the array to the new pool.
- Array 1
- Array 2
- Array 3
- Default pool
- Multi-array group that includes arrays 1, 2, and 3
- Array 1
- Exchange pool
- Array 3
- Default pool
- Array 5
- Multi-array group that includes arrays 1, 3, and 5
- Array 1
- Exchange pool
- Array 3
- Default pool
- Array 5
- Array 6
- Multi-array group that includes arrays 1, 3, 5, and 6
- Array 1
- Exchange pool
- Array 3
- Default pool
- Array 5
- SQL Server pool
- Array 7
- VDI pool
- Multi-array group that includes arrays 1, 3, 5, and 7