About 

Provisioning storage to the host is done by creating a volume on a specific capacity pool and mapping it to the host.  

• Volumes can be provisioned using either Host PowerTools CLI or GUI. 
• It is supported to either map an existing volume, or create a new ones.

InfiniBox pools

InfiniBox pools are virtual buckets for organizing storage workload. Every volume, snapshot, and clone resides in a pool. The storage administrator defines each pool’s physical capacity (portion of system physical capacity available for writes by the pool) and virtual capacity (soft limit on total size of all volumes in the pool). The storage administrator can update a pool’s physical and virtual capacity as well as move volumes between pools at any time.  Pool membership is purely metadata and does not affect data placement.

Creating pools on InfiniBox

Make sure that the InfiniBox user which is used with Host PowerTools has access to at least one pool with available capacity. 

• Host PowerTools does not support creating pools on InfiniBox.
• Creating pools is done via the InfiniBox management consoles. For more information please refer to the InfiniBox user guide documentation. 

Storage provisioning related attributes 

In order to provision storage the following attributes need to be determined:

• Size – the size of the volume.
  • For example, 10TB, 10GiB.
  • The minimal size is 1GB.
  • This attribute is mandatory.
• Name – the name of the volume. 
  • If not specified the name will be auto generated by Host PowerTools.
• File system – the file system that will be created over the volume.
  • If this argument is not used, and the "--no-filesystem" argument is not specified, a file system will be selected and created by InfiniHost.
• Mount - an existing directory on which to mount the file system.
  • If this argument is not used, and the "--no-mount" argument is not specified, a mount point will be selected by InfiniHost.
• Thin – the volume can be set to be thin provisioned.
• Pool – the pool that the volume belongs to.
• System – the InfiniBox system on which the volume is created.
  • You don’t have to specify this argument if the host is connected to a single system only.
• No file system – use this argument to avoid creating a file system for this volume.
• No mount – use this parameter to avoid mounting this parameter.
• Yes – specifies whether to run the command without a preview. See below.

Viewing pools 

Type in the command line:

infinihost pool list

A list of the InfiniBox pools is displayed on screen:

root@host-ci079 (Ubuntu 14.04) ➜  ~  infinihost pool list                                                    17-07-18 11:00
System      Pool       Physical Capacity (GB)    Virtual Capacity (GB)    Physical Free (GB)    Virtual Free (GB)    Volumes
box-ci05    first                       50.00                    50.00                 48.97                47.93          2
box-ci22    pool1                       77.00                    77.00                 74.00                74.00          3

Provisioning using Host PowerTools CLI

Command syntax:

infinihost volume provision 
<size> 
[--yes] 
[--name=NAME] 
[--filesystem=FS] 
[--mount=PATH] 
[--thin=THIN] 
[--pool=POOL] 
[--system=SYSTEM] 
[--no-filesystem] 
[--no-mount]

Previewing the command prior to execution

Example

infinihost volume provision 10GB --pool=REST-pool

Output

This tool is going to:
* Create a thin 10 GB volume "prod-linux1-vol-20140702-1335" of on InfiniBox 1032.
* Map this volume to this host on the next available LUN.
* Create an ext3 filesystem on this volume.
* Mount this volume to /mnt/prod-linux1-vol-20140702-1335.
* Give this volume the label prod-linux1-vol-.
If this is absolutely what you want, pass the --yes flag in the command-line.
aborting.

Notes

• The InfiniBox that is mentioned on the output is the only InfiniBox that is connected to the host, hence it was not mentioned on the command.
• The filesystem and mount point were selected by InfiniHost.

Running the command with using the Yes flag

Syntax

infinihost volume provision 10GB --pool=REST-pool –y

Output

Creating the new 10 GB volume "prod-linux1-vol-20140702-1336" ... OK
Waiting for volume discovery, this might take a while ... OK
Creating filesystem ... OK
Mounting filesystem ... OK
==================================================================== 
All done.
The volume prod-linux1-vol-20140702-1336 is represented by dm-2, and it is mounted to /mnt/prod-linux1-vol-20140702-1336.

No filesystem and no mount

Syntax

infinihost volume provision 10GB --pool=REST-pool --no-filesystem --no-mount –y

Output

Creating the new 10 GB volume "prod-linux1-vol-20140702-1357" ... OK
Waiting for volume discovery, this might take a while ... OK
====================================================================
All done.
The volume prod-linux1-vol-20140702-1357 is represented by dm-4.

Provisioning using Host PowerTools GUI

1. Open Host PowerTools GUI.
2. Locate the desired system and click the New button.
   The Create Volume screen opens, displaying the system's volumes.
   
   
3. A Volume Name is suggested by the Host PowerTools.
   1. Set:
      1. The volume size.
      2. The pool.
      3. Note the capacity indicator. It displays the relevant information for every pool that is selected from the drop-down menu.
      4. Check whether to create a file system.
      5. Select the file system type.
      6. Check whether to mount the file system.
      7. Select a mount path.
   2. Click Continue.
4. An informative message that specifies the volume’s details is displayed on screen.
   1. Click Start.
      The volume is created.
5. Click Done.
   The volume is available on the Volumes screen.

Viewing the volumes

The Host PowerTools GUI displays the InfiniBox systems that the host is connected to.

• A list of volumes that are mapped to the host is available for each connected system.

Mapping an existing volume

Host PowerTools also allows to map an existing volumes to the host. 

Using the CLI

1. Run the command with the following arguments:

• • Volume name

infinihost volume map vol-1 /mnt –y

Output example:

Volume "vol-1" (id 82255) successfully mapped

The volume is visible using:

infinihost volume list

Using the GUI

1. Open Host PowerTools GUI.
2. Located the desired system and click the Map button.
3. Map Volume screen opens, displaying the system's volumes.
4. Select a volume, using either of the following methods:
   • Search
   • Browse
   • Select whether to include clones
5. Click Done.

The volume is mapped and is visible on the Volumes table.

Volume tasks

The available tasks for each volume are listed under More Options icon at the right side of each volume in the Volumes table.

• A description of each of the tasks is available on: Volume related tasks