Dell PowerFlex 4.5.x Administration Guide

Add storage pools

A storage pool is a group of storage devices within a protection domain. Each time that you add devices to the system, you must map them to either storage pools or to acceleration pools. Create storage pools before you start adding SDSs and storage devices to the system.

1. On the menu bar, click Block > Storage Pools.
2. Click + Create Storage Pool.
3. In the Create Storage Pool dialog box, define the following settings:
   1. Define the storage pool name according to the following rules:
      • Contains less than 32 characters
      • Contains only alphanumeric and punctuation characters
      • Is unique within the object type
   2. Select the relevant protection domain.
   3. Select the media type of the devices in the storage pool: HDD or SSD.
      All devices for this storage pool must be of the same media type.
   4. If you select SSD, choose a Data Layout - Granularity type: Medium or Fine.
   5. For a fine granularity storage pool, select the relevant Acceleration Pool.
4. To use RMcache for caching, select Use Read RAM Cache.
   1. If you are using RMcache, select the Write Handling Mode: Cached or PassThrough.
      This defines whether the system stores the data of this storage pool's writes in the SDS RMcache, or not. The default is to store the write data in cache (cached).
   NOTE:The RMcache features are advanced features, and it is usually recommended to accept the default values. You can configure these features later, if necessary, by clicking Modify > Cache.
5. To enable validation of the checksum value of in-flight data reads and writes, select Use Inflight Checksum.
6. By default, the Use Persistent Checksum is selected to ensure persistent checksum data validation.
   NOTE:This option is enabled only when HDD or SSD with medium granularity is selected.
7. Click Create Storage Pool.
8. Verify that the operation has finished successfully, and click Dismiss.