Can anyone explain CPGs to me? I mean the Dummies version. I've read a ton on various websites and blogs, but I'm still not quite sure. After that, I'll have some questions, I'm sure. I think that's the only way I'm going to wrap my head around this.
Thanks in advance!!!
In short, HP 3PAR 7000 series with twenty disks at at around 800 GB each.
A CPG is a policy that determines how your disks will get carved up. Basically the 3Par chops your disk up into lots of little disks and then lets you apply policy across them to create virtual raid sets that then get used to provide space to your hosts through vvols (luns). These raid sets have properties like raid type, whether they need to be separated onto different disk shelves (cage redundancy), etc. CGP's also determine which disks are used for your vvol, so if you have multiple types of drives (fast disks, nearline, ssd, etc) you can assign specific types to specific data.
Beyond basic CPG's you have adaptive optimization which allows data to move between CPG's based or some fairly crude performance metrics, so hot data can automatically move up to faster CPG's and cold data can be moved down to slower CPG's.
With only 20 disks you probably only have one type of disk, so the only way you're likely to use CPG's is to have a few raid levels available, RAID10 or RAID 5 3+1 for performance workloads and RAID5 4+1 for capacity (RAID6 8+2 would also work, but would be the same usable capacity and worse performance, since you don't have NL drives or enough shelves to support HA Cage I'd probably stick with 4+1, also if you don't have any really demanding workloads you can probably do everything using 4+1 which will make life simpler)
And you are correct....we have only one type of disk here....SAS drives showing a total of 819 GB in the 3PAR MC.
I have two CPGs that were already set up. One using RAID1 and the other using RAID5 (3+1). The RAID5 is where the majority of the VVs are. The RAID1 is where some SQL Temp DBs are stored on a VV. I'm not quite sure why it was set up that way. Any one have any ideas on that?
There was 12 disk recently added, but aren't utilized, so there's a ton of free space sitting around and I need to move data that's stored on a LeftHand arrary to the 3PAR. What I'm looking for is a clear image in my head of how space is currently being used and how I can start carving up the free space so I can use it. I see the graphs of the space used, space provisioned, but I'm not quite sure how to interpret it.
As for my environment....we have about 150 users total utilizing Microsoft CRM in a virtual environment plus some development servers and then some network infrastructure servers as well (AV, print server, etc). Performance has been pretty good with some occasional slowdowns, but I think there could be some optimization done and maybe a better distribution of data, especially the SQL data.
Also, I use VMWare ESX 5.5 to do all the virtualization.
Any help is appreciated!!! I want to use and learn this 3PAR and participate around here. Pay it forward!
Below are the CPG paramenters depends on which data will be shared across the Drives. 1. Availability (By Default -- Cage) 2. Set Sixe and Step Size 3. Preferred chunklets
