Storage Pools for Block Test

A Storage Pool for Block is a group of drives for configuring pool LUNs (thick and thin). There may be zero or more pools in a storage system. Disks can only be a member of one pool, and they cannot also be in a separate user-defined RAID group.

It is good practice to track the state of the individual pools and the usage of pool capacity by the pool LUNs, so that pools that are not ready for usage yet and pools that do not have adequate space to support the storage needs of their pool LUNs can be accurately identified. This knowledge will enable administrators to right-size their storage pools to cater to the storage requirements of the environment. The Storage Pools for Block test provides administrators with this knowledge. This test auto-discovers the storage pools for block, and for each pool reports its total capacity, reveals the storage configuration of the LUNs created from that pool, and points to those pools where LUNs have over-subscribed to the pool capacity. In addition, the test measures how well the LUNs have been using the total pool capacity, thus highlighting those pools that have been over-utilized and could hence require more space.

Target of the test : An EMC VNX Unified Storage system

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each block storage pool in the EMC VNX Unified Storage system.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the storage device for which this test is to be configured.
Controller Station IP	The Control Station is the management station for the VNX for File system, and enables control and configuration of the system. The eG agent uses the CLI that runs on the Control Station to monitor and manage the performance of the VNX for File system. To enable the eG agent to use this CLI, specify the IP address of the Control Station in the Controller Station IP text box. By default, the IP address of the host will be displayed here.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
State	Indicates the current operational state of this block storage pool.		The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values have been discussed below Measure Value Numeric Value Unknown 0 Ready 1 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the current status of a pool. The graph of this measure however, represents the same using the numeric equivalents only.
Status	Indicates the current health state of this block storage pool.		The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values have been discussed below Measure Value Numeric Value Unknown 0 OK 1 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the current status of a pool. The graph of this measure however, represents the same using the numeric equivalents only.
Total capacity	Indicates the total capacity of this storage pool.	GB	The total amount of physical storage capacity in the pool that isavailable for pool LUNs. This is also referred to as “usable capacity.” It is measured as raw disk capacity minus overhead (RAID overhead and mapping overhead). For a pool LUN, this is the size of the LUN as it appears to the host. For pool LUNs, this is sometimes called host visible capacity.
Allocated capacity	Indicates the amount of space currently used by the LUNs in this pool.	GB	For a thin LUN, this is the physical space used by the LUN. For a thick LUN, this is the host-visible capacity used by the LUN. Allocated capacity is slightly larger than the capacity used by the host because metadata exists at the pool LUN level.
Allocated	Indicates the percentage of total pool capacity that is used by the LUNs in this pool.	Percent	A value close to 100% indicates that the pool is running out of usable capacity.