Primary Storage

  • 1.  Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier

    Posted Tue August 03, 2021 11:41 AM
    Edited by System Wed March 08, 2023 03:57 PM

    Good Day!

    I have a very specific question that someone here maybe knows the answer for. 

    I have to create a 6TB hyperswap volume that will be used for storing logs on a server. The logs itself are important and have to be available even if some of the storage controllers become unavailable, hence the hyperswap. However they do not need to use flash capacity. Nearline SAS is perfectly fine.

    The system is a V9000 cluster with 4 AC3 nodes spread between site A and site B. There are 6 storage pools configured 4 full flash and 2 tierd pool with some flash added to the nearline SAS mdisks. 

    My question is. Is it possible to create the 6TB hyperswap volume in a way that it sits in the tiered pools and only on the Nearline SAS mdisks? No easy tier needed for this specific volume even if the data gets hot.

    I tried to create it with mkvdisk but that command does not support hyperswap features. mkvolume does but you can't specify tiers in that command.

    Thank you for the answers in advance!



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    Balazs Vadasz
    Storage/SAN specialist
    Aegon Hungary
    Budapest
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    #StorageManagementandReporting
    #PrimaryStorage
    #Storage


  • 2.  RE: Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier
    Best Answer

    IBM Champion
    Posted Wed August 04, 2021 05:32 AM
    Edited by System Wed March 08, 2023 03:58 PM
    create your volume on tiered pool and use "chvdisk -easytier off vdiskid" for both vdisk copies. 
    This command will disable easytier only for this volume copies and will not use ssd's. 


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    NEZIH BOYACIOGLU
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  • 3.  RE: Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier

    Posted Wed August 04, 2021 05:53 AM

    I see. I didn't think about this method but it should work. Thank you for the help!

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    Balazs Vadasz
    Storage/SAN specialist
    Aegon Hungary
    Budapest
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    [Balazs] [Vadasz]
    [Storage/SAN specialist]
    [Aegon Hungary]
    [Budapest]
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  • 4.  RE: Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier

    Posted Thu December 02, 2021 07:49 PM

    hello Balazs,

    Since this was asked on the Storage Management and Reporting, in both Spectrum Insights / Spectrum Control we do have a possibility to see the tier distribution on the volume level : 

    So after the vdisk change is done, this has to be showing up properly in the tier distribution column, hopefully this can help.  You will also find valuable performance data information.



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    TIBERIU HAJAS
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  • 5.  RE: Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier

    Posted Fri December 03, 2021 04:39 PM
    Is it possible to force a volume to reside only in the SSD tier if EZ Tier is used?

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    Don Lind
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  • 6.  RE: Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier

    Posted Tue October 12, 2021 04:27 AM
    Edited by System Wed March 08, 2023 03:56 PM
    After you have disabled easytier, you should check the extent distribution with lsvdiskextent command.
    Then If necessary, you can use the migrateexts command to migrate the extents to the desired mdisk.

    Migrating extents using the CLI
    Ibm remove preview
    Migrating extents using the CLI
    To improve performance, you can migrate extents using the command-line interface (CLI).
    View this on Ibm >


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    Istvan Buda
    T-Systems HU
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  • 7.  RE: Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier

    Posted Mon December 06, 2021 09:01 AM
    Thank you Istvan.  Is there a way to control on which tier new writes land if EasyTier is turned off on a volume?

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    Don Lind
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  • 8.  RE: Creating a hyperswap volume that is pinned to a specific tier

    Posted Mon December 06, 2021 09:22 AM
    I think the solution where Istvan is talking about, works only for Thick provisioned vdisks\volumes. With SEV you can not direct new writes to a specific tier.

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    T Masteen
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