Config Guide
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8.2.
RealStor
RealStor gives users access to several new key features including thin provisioning with UNMAP, SSD read cache,
storage pooling, fast rebuilds and virtual pool provisioning. The new features will be accessed via a new User
Interface, referred to as Storage Management Console V3. This new management GUI brings a new modern look and
feel to array management. Existing customers can choose to use the new V3 or to continue to use the previous
generation V2 if new virtualization features are not required.
8.2.1.
New User Interface:
RealStor introduces advanced storage software for hybrid arrays, built for easy to use storage management, and
optimizing performance and capacity needs to address today’s dynamically changing workloads. The new .v3 Storage
Management Console for RealStor provides all the capabilities of the prior interface with an updated look and feel that
scales well for managing large numbers of volumes and hosts. New systems default to the new .v3 interface.
v3: Specifies to use the new WBI interface to manage virtual and linear storage, and to use terminology in CLI output
and system messages that is oriented to managing a hybrid (linear and virtual) system, such as “disk group” for disk
groups and “pool” for pools. This is the default for a new installation.
8.3.
Storage Pools/Virtual Disk Groups/Volumes:
Storage Pools allow data on a given LUN to span across all drives in a pool. When capacity is added to a system, the
user is also getting a performance benefit of the additional spindles –hence the term Wide Striping. Storage Pools are
available with GL200 firmware or newer.
Virtual Disk Groups
When creating a Virtual Disk Group, the user can specify the RAID level (RAID 1, 5, 6, 10) and which Pool the Disk
Group belongs to. Disk Groups must contain like disk types: SSD, Enterprise SAS, NL SAS. The user must select a
valid group of available HDDs or SSDs for the chosen RAID type. These configuration rules are the same as creating
a VDisk with the prior V2 interface. Unlike creating VDisks in the V2 interface, the chunk size is automatically set to
512KB and does not need to be modified by the user. An example of the V3 Add Disk Group Screen is shown in
Figure 1 below:
Figure 1 – Add Disk Group Screen
Volumes in Virtual Disk Pools:
To further explain the virtual disk pool concept, we will first look at how volumes are treated in the virtual disk pool.
One of the key concepts of the RealStor firmware is the addition of a virtualization layer which allows a volume’s data
to be segmented into discrete 4MB entities called pages. These 4MB pages are managed individually, and can allow a
volume’s data to be spread over potentially multiple underlying storage pool Virtual Disk Groups and potentially
multiple tiers (SSD, Enterprise SAS, NL SAS) of disks.
