Arranging Storage by Attributes

You can use storage attributes to control how ISP assigns storage to application volumes. For example, you can use confinement rules to restrict some volumes to a subset of LUNs which share common attributes, such as caching to enhance I/O performance, or hardware RAID to provide redundancy and/or enhance performance.

As described in Policy, not all attributes of LUNs are capable of being discovered automatically. You can use the annotation service, provided in the VEA graphical user interface, to manually attach such attributes to storage. An example of using attached attributes is shown in Example Usage of Attached Attributes,where the templates can use the value of the Building attribute to provide the availability capability of mirroring volumes between different locations at a site.

Example Usage of Attached Attributes

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Alternatively, you could specify appropriate separation rules to instruct ISP to mirror volumes between buildings.

Another example of using attached attributes would be to tag certain LUNs within a storage pool as having the best performance. You could then use confinement rules to ensure that certain volumes are only configured from this storage, while the remaining storage is used for other volumes with less critical performance requirements.