306 Implementing the IBM Storwize V5000 Gen2 with IBM Spectrum Virtualize V8.1
6.3.2 Creating Mirrored volumes using Volume Creation
IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers the capability to mirror volumes, which means a single
volume, presented to a host, can have two physical copies. Each volume copy can belong to
a different pool, and each copy has the same virtual capacity as the volume. When a server
writes to a mirrored volume, the system writes the data to both copies. When a server reads a
mirrored volume, the system picks one of the copies to read.
Normally this is the primary copy (as indicated in the management GUI by an asterisk (*)). If
one of the mirrored volume copies is temporarily unavailable (for example, because the
storage system that provides the pool is unavailable), the volume remains accessible to
servers. The system remembers which areas of the volume are written and resynchronizes
these areas when both copies are available.
The use of mirrored volumes results in the following outcomes:
Improves availability of volumes by protecting them from a single storage system failure
Provides concurrent maintenance of a storage system that does not natively support
concurrent maintenance
Provides an alternative method of data migration with better availability characteristics
Converts between fully allocated volumes and thin-provisioned volumes
To create a mirrored volume, complete the following steps:
1. In the Create Volumes window, click Mirrored and in the Mirrored copies subsection,
choose the Pool of Copy1 and Copy2 by using the drop-down menu. Although the
mirrored volume can be created in the same pool, this setup is not typical. Next, in the
Volume Details, enter Quantity, Capacity, Capacity savings, and Name.
Note: Volume mirroring is not a true disaster recovery (DR) solution, because both copies
are accessed by the same node pair and addressable by only a single cluster, but it can
improve availability.
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