Creating dynamic volumes for campus clusters

This section will guide you through the process of creating a volume on a dynamic disk group for a campus cluster.

For creating volumes for other types of clusters, see the following:

See Creating dynamic volumes for high availability clusters.

Before you begin, review the following topics:

See Adding disks to campus cluster sites.

Note:

When assigning drive letters to volumes, ensure that the drive letters that you assign are available on all nodes.

To create dynamic volumes

  1. Launch VEA from Start > All Programs > Veritas > Veritas Storage Foundation > Veritas Enterprise Administrator or, on Windows 2012 operating systems, from the Apps menu in the Start screen.

    Select a profile if prompted.

    (Skip to step 4 if VEA is already connected to the appropriate host)

  2. Click Connect to a Host or Domain.
  3. In the Connect dialog box select the host name from the pull-down menu and click Connect. To connect to the local system, select localhost. Provide the user name, password, and domain if prompted.
  4. To start the New Volume wizard, expand the tree view under the host node to display all the disk groups. Right click a disk group and select New Volume from the context menu.

    You can right-click the disk group you have just created, for example INST1_DG.

  5. At the New Volume wizard opening screen, click Next.
  6. Select the disks for the volume as follows.

    Group name

    Make sure the appropriate disk group is selected.

    Site preference

    Select the Site Separated option.

    Select site from

    Select the campus cluster sites. Press CTRL to select multiple sites.

    Note:

    If no sites are listed, the disks have not yet been added to a site.

    Auto select disks

    Automatic disk selection is recommended for campus clusters. SFW automatically selects the disks based on the following criteria:

    • Their port assignment (disks with two different ports are selected). Note that in the list of available disks, the entry after each disk name starts with the port number. For example, the "P3" in the entry P3C0T2L1 refers to port 3.

    • Amount of available space on the disks. SFW will pick two disks (one from each array) with the most space.

    Manually select disks

    If you manually select disks, use the Add and Remove buttons to move the appropriate disks to the Selected disks list.

    Disable Track Alignment

    You may also check Disable Track Alignment to disable track alignment for the volume. Disabling Track Alignment means that the volume does not store blocks of data in alignment with the boundaries of the physical track of the disk.

    Click Next.

  7. Specify the volume attributes as follows.

    Volume name

    Specify a name for the volume.

    Note:

    A volume name is limited to 18 ASCII characters. It cannot contain spaces, slash mark (/), backslash (\), exclamation point (!), angle brackets (< >), or equal sign (=). Also, a period cannot be the first character in the name.

    Size

    Specify a size for the volume. If you click Max Size, the Size box shows the maximum possible volume size for that layout in the dynamic disk group.

    Layout

    Ensure that the Mirrored checkbox is selected.

    Select a layout type as follows:

    Select either Concatenated or Striped.

    If you are creating a striped volume, the Columns and Stripe unit size boxes need to have entries. Defaults are provided. In addition, click the Stripe across checkbox and select Ports from the drop-down list.

    Mirror Info

    Click Mirror across and select Enclosures from the drop-down list.

    When creating a site separated volume, as required for campus clusters, the number of mirrors must correspond to the number of sites. If needed, you can add more mirrors after creating the volume.

    Enable logging

    Verify that this option is not selected.

    Click Next.

  8. In the Add Drive Letter and Path dialog box, assign a drive letter or mount point to the volume. You must use the same drive letter or mount point on all systems in the cluster. Make sure to verify the availability of the drive letter before assigning it.
    • To assign a drive letter, select Assign a Drive Letter, and choose a drive letter.

    • To mount the volume as a folder, select Mount as an empty NTFS folder, and click Browse to locate an empty folder on the shared disk.

  9. Click Next.
  10. Create an NTFS file system as follows.
    • Make sure the Format this volume checkbox is checked and click NTFS.

    • Select an allocation size or accept the default.

    • The file system label is optional. SFW makes the volume name the file system label.

    • Select Perform a quick format if you want to save time.

    • Select Enable file and folder compression to save disk space. Note that compression consumes system resources and performs encryption and decryption, which may result in reduced system performance.

    • Click Next.

  11. Click Finish to create the new volume.
  12. Repeat these steps to create additional volumes.

    Create the cluster disk group and volumes on the first node of the cluster only.

More Information

Considerations when creating disk groups and volumes for a campus cluster