Implementing the IBM Storwize V5000

312 Implementing the IBM Storwize V5000

7.2.4 Using the recommended configuration

As shown in Figure 7-25, when you click Use the recommended configuration, the wizard

offers a recommended storage configuration at the bottom of the window.

Figure 7-25 The recommended configuration

The following recommended RAID presets for different drive classes are available:

򐂰 SSD EasyTier or RAID 1 for SSDs

򐂰 Basic RAID 5 for SAS drives

򐂰 Basic RAID 6 for Nearline SAS drives

Figure 7-25 shows a sample configuration with 1x SSD and 14x SAS drives. The

Configuration Summary shows a warning that there are insufficient SSDs installed to satisfy

the RAID 1 SSD preset (two drives are required to do this), plus a third drive for a hot spare.

By using the recommended configuration, spare drives are also automatically created to meet

the spare goals according to the preset chosen; one spare drive is created out of every 24

disk drives of the same drive class on a single chain. Spares are not created if sufficient

spares are already configured.

Spare drives in the IBM Storwize V5000 are

global spares, which means that any spare drive

that has at least the same capacity as the drive to be replaced can be used in any array. Thus,

an SSD array with no SSD spare available uses an HDD spare instead.

If the proposed configuration meets your requirements, click Finish, and the system

automatically creates the array MDisks with a size according to the chosen RAID level.

Storage pools also are automatically created to contain the MDisks with similar performance

characteristics, including the consideration of RAID level, number of member drives, and drive

class.

Chapter 7. Storage pools 313

After an array is created, the Array MDisk members are synchronized with each other through

a background initialization process. The progress of the initialization process can be

monitored by clicking the icon at the left of the Running Tasks status bar and selecting the

initialization task to view the status, as shown in Figure 7-26.

Figure 7-26 Running task panel

Important: This option adds new MDisks to an existing storage pool when the

characteristics match. If this is not what is required, the Select a different configuration

option should be used.