Storage Management Overview; Storage Management Process - HP 345646-001 - StorageWorks NAS 2000s External Storage Server Administration Manual

Storage Management Overview

With the HP StorageWorks NAS 2000s the administrator has complete control over all storage
issues. The NAS administrator uses the Array Configuration Utility (ACU) to manage the
hardware storage, Disk Manager to manage the volume level, and Shadow Copies to manage
the shadow copies (snapshots).
The NAS 2000s is configured at the factory with default system settings and with the NAS
operating system installed. Storage, however, is not pre-configured, allowing the NAS
administrator to tailor the organization and configuration of the storage to specific
environmental needs. Refer to the "Storage Management Process" section later in this chapter
for more information.
This chapter defines and discusses physical, logical, and snapshot storage concepts on the HP
StorageWorks NAS 2000s.
Additional storage management information is included in the following chapters:

Storage Management Process

The lowest level of storage management occurs at the physical drive level. Physical drives are
grouped into arrays for better performance and fault tolerance.
The arrays are then configured with RAID fault tolerance and presented to the operating
system as logical drives or units, which are called LUNs.
At the virtual level of storage, Disk Manager is used to take the LUNs and create basic or
dynamic disks, which can then be broken down into partitions or volumes. Folders, subfolders,
and file shares are created on the resulting volumes or partitions to organize, store, and give
access to the data. The Shadow Copies utility is used to create snapshots of the data at specific
times.
For organizational and documentation purposes, this administration guide separates physical
storage from logical storage.
See
NAS 2000s Administration Guide
Chapter 4 discusses disk management procedures
Chapter 5 discusses snapshot (shadow copy) management procedures.
Chapter 7 discusses folder and share management procedures.
Figure 19 for an illustration of these storage management elements.
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