The Import Settings feature is a batch operation that loads configurations from one storage array to multiple storage arrays.

The settings that are imported during this operation depend on how the source storage array is configured in System Manager. The following settings can be imported to multiple storage arrays:

During the Import Settings operation, some of your storage arrays might not be available in the target selection dialog box.

Storage arrays might not appear for the following reasons:

Volumes are not associated with a workload if they have been created using the command line interface (CLI) or if they have been migrated (imported/exported) from a different storage array.

During volume creation, you are prompted for information about a workload’s use. The system uses this information to create an optimal volume configuration for you, which can be edited as needed. Optionally, you can skip this step in the volume creation sequence.

A workload is a storage object that supports an application. You can define one or more workloads, or instances, per application. For some applications, the system configures the workload to contain volumes with similar underlying volume characteristics. These volume characteristics are optimized based on the type of application the workload supports. For example, if you create a workload that supports a Microsoft SQL Server application and then subsequently create volumes for that workload, the underlying volume characteristics are optimized to support Microsoft SQL Server.

Snapshot volumes with a DA-enabled base volume are not eligible to be assigned to a host that is not Data Assurance (DA) capable. You must disable DA on the base volume before a snapshot volume can be assigned to a host that is not DA capable.

Consider the following guidelines for the host to which you are assigning the snapshot volume:

This workload consists of a group of volumes that were created using the command line interface (CLI) or migrated (imported/exported) from a different storage array. As a result, the volumes in this workload are not associated with an application-specific workload, so the workload cannot be deleted.

The volume characteristics of your application-specific workload dictate how the workload interacts with the components of your storage array and helps determine the performance of your environment under a given configuration.

An application is software such as SQL Server or Exchange. You define one or more workloads to support each application. For some applications, the system automatically recommends a volume configuration that optimizes storage. Characteristics such as I/O type, segment size, controller ownership, and read and write cache are included in the volume configuration.

If you increase the capacity for a volume, the host might not immediately recognize the increase in volume capacity.

Most operating systems recognize the expanded volume capacity and automatically expand after the volume expansion is initiated. However, some might not. If your OS does not automatically recognize the expanded volume capacity, you might need to perform a disk rescan or reboot.

After you have expanded the volume capacity, you must manually increase the file system size to match. How you do this depends on the file system you are using.

Refer to your host operating system documentation for additional details.

If you want to speed the process for creating volumes, you can skip the host assignment step so that newly created volumes are initialized offline.

Newly created volumes must be initialized. The system can initialize them using one of two modes – either an Immediate Available Format (IAF) background initialization process or an offline process.

When you map a volume to a host, it forces any initializing volumes in that group to transition to background initialization. This background initialization process allows for concurrent host I/O, which can sometimes be time-consuming.

When none of the volumes in a volume group are mapped, offline initialization is performed. The offline process is much faster than the background process.

For EF300 and EF600 systems, a volume can be set to support a 512-byte or a 4KiB block size (also called "sector size"). You must set the correct value during volume creation. If possible, the system suggests the appropriate default value.

Before setting the volume block size, read the following limitations and guidelines.

You need to create a host cluster if you want to have two or more hosts share access to the same set of volumes. Normally, the individual hosts have clustering software installed on them to coordinate volume access.

The Host Operating System Type field contains the operating system of the host. You can select the recommended host type from the drop-down list.

The host types that appear in the drop-down list depend on the storage array model and the firmware version. The most recent versions display the most common options first, which are the most likely to be appropriate. Appearance on this list does not imply the option is fully supported.

Some of the following host types might appear in the list:

If you are manually creating a host, you first must use the appropriate host bus adapter (HBA) utility available on the host to determine the host port identifiers associated with each HBA installed in the host.

When you have this information, select the host port identifiers that have logged into the storage array from the list provided in the Create Host dialog.

The default cluster is a system-defined entity that allows any unassociated host port identifier that has logged into the storage array to gain access to volumes assigned to the default cluster.

An unassociated host port identifier is a host port that is not logically associated with a particular host but is physically installed in a host and logged into the storage array.

You should only use the default cluster in special situations where your external storage environment is conducive to allowing all the hosts and all the logged-in host port identifiers connected to the storage array have access to all of the volumes (all-access mode) without specifically making the hosts known to the storage array or the user interface.

Initially, you can assign volumes only to the default cluster through the command line interface (CLI). However, after you assign at least one volume to the default cluster, this entity (called Default Cluster) is displayed in the user interface where you can then manage this entity.

A redundancy check determines whether the data on a volume in a pool or volume group is consistent. Redundancy data is used to quickly reconstruct information on a replacement drive if one of the drives in the pool or volume group fails.

You can perform this check only on one pool or volume group at a time. A volume redundancy check performs the following actions:

Preservation capacity is the amount of capacity (number of drives) that is reserved in a pool to support potential drive failures.

When a pool is created, the system automatically reserves a default amount of preservation capacity depending on the number of drives in the pool.

Pools use preservation capacity during reconstruction, whereas volume groups use hot spare drives for the same purpose. The preservation capacity method is an improvement over hot spare drives because it allows reconstruction to happen faster. Preservation capacity is spread over a number of drives in the pool instead of on one drive in the case of a hot spare drive, so you are not limited by the speed or availability of one drive.

To maximize the performance of a volume group, you must select the appropriate RAID level.

You can determine the appropriate RAID level by knowing the read and write percentages for the applications that are accessing the volume group. Use the Performance page to obtain these percentages.

In the Add Capacity dialog, not all drives are available for adding capacity to an existing pool or volume group.

Drives are not eligible for any of the following reasons:

If you have created volumes on all available usable capacity, you might not be able to increase preservation capacity.

Preservation capacity is the amount of capacity (number of drives) that is reserved on a pool to support potential drive failures. When a pool is created, the system automatically reserves a default amount of preservation capacity depending on the number of drives in the pool. If you have created volumes on all available usable capacity, you cannot increase preservation capacity without adding capacity to the pool by either adding drives or deleting volumes.

You can change the preservation capacity from Pools & Volume Groups. Select the pool that you want to edit. Click View/Edit Settings, and then select the Settings tab.

Data Assurance (DA) implements the T10 Protection Information (PI) standard, which increases data integrity by checking for and correcting errors that might occur as data is transferred along the I/O path.

The typical use of the Data Assurance feature will check the portion of the I/O path between the controllers and drives. DA capabilities are presented at the pool and volume group level.

When this feature is enabled, the storage array appends error-checking codes (also known as cyclic redundancy checks or CRCs) to each block of data in the volume. After a data block is moved, the storage array uses these CRC codes to determine if any errors occurred during transmission. Potentially corrupted data is neither written to disk nor returned to the host. If you want to use the DA feature, select a pool or volume group that is DA capable when you create a new volume (look for Yes next to DA in the pool and volume group candidates table).

Make sure you assign these DA-enabled volumes to a host using an I/O interface that is capable of DA. I/O interfaces that are capable of DA include Fibre Channel, SAS, iSCSI over TCP/IP, NVMe/FC, NVMe/IB, NVME/RoCE and iSER over InfiniBand (iSCSI Extensions for RDMA/ IB). DA is not supported by SRP over InfiniBand.

FDE/FIPS security refers to secure-capable drives that encrypt data during writes and decrypt data during reads using a unique encryption key.

These secure-capable drives prevent unauthorized access to the data on a drive that is physically removed from the storage array. Secure-capable drives can be either Full Disk Encryption (FDE) drives or Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) drives. FIPS drives have undergone certification testing.

Drive Security is a feature that prevents unauthorized access to data on secure-enabled drives when removed from the storage array.

These drives can be either Full Disk Encryption (FDE) drives or Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) drives.

You can view nominal statistics and detailed statistics for SSD Cache.

Nominal statistics are a subset of the detailed statistics. The detailed statistics can be viewed only when you export all SSD statistics to a .csv file. As you review and interpret the statistics, keep in mind that some interpretations are derived by looking at a combination of statistics.

Shelf loss protection and drawer loss protection are attributes of pools and volume groups that allow you to maintain data access in the event of a single shelf or drawer failure.

To maintain shelf and drawer loss protection for a pool or volume group, use the criteria specified in the following table.

SSD drives will have longer life and better maximum write performance when a portion of their capacity is unallocated.

For drives associated with a pool, unallocated capacity is comprised of a pool’s preservation capacity, the free capacity (capacity not used by volumes), and a portion of the usable capacity set aside as additional optimization capacity. The additional optimization capacity ensures a minimum level of optimization capacity by reducing the usable capacity, and as such, is not available for volume creation.

When a pool is created, a recommended optimization capacity is generated that provides a balance of performance, drive wear life, and available capacity. The Additional Optimization Capacity slider located in the Pool Settings dialog allows adjustments to the pool’s optimization capacity. Adjusting the slider provides for better performance and drive wear life at the expense of available capacity, or additional available capacity at the expense of performance and drive wear life.

SSD drives will have longer life and better maximum write performance when a portion of their capacity is unallocated.

For drives associated with a volume group, unallocated capacity is comprised of a volume group’s free capacity (capacity not used by volumes), and a portion of the usable capacity set aside as optimization capacity. The additional optimization capacity ensures a minimum level of optimization capacity by reducing the usable capacity, and as such, is not available for volume creation.

When a volume group is created, a recommended optimization capacity is generated that provides a balance of performance, drive wear life, and available capacity. The Additional Optimization Capacity slider in the Volume Group Settings dialog allows adjustments to a volume group's optimization capacity. Adjusting the slider provides for better performance and drive wear life at the expense of available capacity, or additional available capacity at the expense of performance and drive wear life.

Resource Provisioning is a feature available in the EF300 and EF600 storage arrays, which allows volumes to be put in use immediately with no background initialization process.

A resource-provisioned volume is a thick volume in an SSD volume group or pool, where drive capacity is allocated (assigned to the volume) when the volume is created, but the drive blocks are deallocated (unmapped). By comparison, in a traditional thick volume, all drive blocks are mapped or allocated during a background volume initialization operation in order to initialize the Data Assurance protection information fields and to make data and RAID parity consistent in each RAID stripe. With a resource provisioned volume, there is no time-bound background initialization. Instead, each RAID stripe is initialized upon the first write to a volume block in the stripe.

Resource-provisioned volumes are supported only on SSD volume groups and pools, where all drives in the group or pool support the NVMe Deallocated or Unwritten Logical Block Error Enable (DULBE) error recovery capability. When a resource-provisioned volume is created, all drive blocks assigned to the volume are deallocated (unmapped). In addition, hosts can deallocate logical blocks in the volume using the NVMe Dataset Management command. Deallocating blocks can improve SSD wear life and increase maximum write performance. The improvement varies with each drive model and capacity.

Resource Provisioning is a feature available in the EF300 and EF600 storage arrays, which allows volumes to be put in use immediately with no background initialization process.

When you implement the Drive Security feature, you can use an internal security key or an external security key to lock down data when a secure-enabled drive is removed from the storage array.

A security key is a string of characters, which is shared between the secure-enabled drives and controllers in a storage array. Internal keys are maintained on the controller's persistent memory. External keys are maintained on a separate key management server, using a Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP).

A security key is shared by controllers and secure-enabled drives within a storage array. If a secure-enabled drive is removed from the storage array, the security key protects the data from unauthorized access.

You can create and manage security keys using one of the following methods:

Internal keys are maintained and “hidden” in a non-accessible location on the controller's persistent memory. Before creating an internal security key, you must do the following:

You can then create an internal security key, which involves defining an identifier and a pass phrase. The identifier is a string that is associated with the security key, and is stored on the controller and on all drives associated with the key. The pass phrase is used to encrypt the security key for backup purposes. When you are finished, the security key is stored on the controller in a non-accessible location. You can then create secure-enabled volume groups or pools, or you can enable security on existing volume groups and pools.

The pass phrase is used to encrypt and decrypt the security key file stored on the local management client. Without the pass phrase, the security key cannot be decrypted and used to unlock data from a secure-enabled drive if it is re-installed in another storage array.