The disk drives in your provide the physical storage capacity for your data. Before you can begin storing data, you must configure the physical capacity
into logical components known as and. You use these components to configure, store, maintain, and preserve data on your storage subsystem.
An array is a set of disk drives that the controller logically groups together to provide one or more logical drives to a
. When you create a logical drive from , you can create an array and the logical drive at the same time. When you create a logical drive from , you are creating an additional logical drive on an already existing array.
With the advent of higher capacity disk drives and the ability to distribute logical drives across controllers, creating more
than one logical drive per array is a good way to make use of your storage capacity and to protect your data.
Tips for Allocating Capacity
Keep these tips in mind when you configure your storage subsystem capacity:
When you configure the capacity in your storage subsystem, make sure that you leave some unconfigured capacity remaining in
the form of . This action lets you have enough capacity available should you decide to create or .
A limit on the number of disk drives that you can assign to an array exists and is based on your total number of disk drives.
If you attempt to overallocate the number of unassigned disk drives, you are prompted by the storage management software to
reduce the number of disk drives per array that you are attempting to create or increase the number of arrays being created.
You cannot mix different within a single array or logical drive.
The operating system of your host might have specific limits on how many logical drives it can access. Keep these limits in
mind when you create logical drives for use by a particular host. For information about host limitations, refer to the initial
setup guide for your controller module.