Managing Disk Pools

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Overview

This section describes how to manage disk pools, including adding physical disks to expand capacity, configuring disk mirroring for high availability, and deleting pools when they are no longer required. These tasks help maintain efficient storage utilization, ensure data protection, and support ongoing storage operations.

Adding Disks to Pools

Additional disks can be added later to pools as required. To create a new disk pool before adding disks, see Creating Disk Pools.

To add one or more disks to an existing disk pool:

  1. In DataCore Servers panel, right-click the pool to add the disks to and select Add Physical Disks.
  2. In the Add Physical Disks to Pool page, select the physical disks to add from the list.
  3. In the Tier for added disks box, keep the current value (last selection) or change the tier if required.
  4. Click Add.

Disks added to pools go into reclamation to purge existing data. The amount of available free space will increase as reclamation progresses. Only the available free space in disks added to pools can be used. Reclamation can be monitored in the Info tab on Disk Pool Details page. (See Disk Pool Details and List.). Adding a large number of physical disks to a pool may create a significant overhead while the disks perform reclamation. It is recommended to perform this action in batches of 10 or less. If this number negatively affects the performance of the server or pool, add the disks in smaller batches.

Disks in disk pools can be mirrored to provide another level of high availability for the disk pool, see Mirroring Pool Disks.

Mirroring Pool Disks

Fault tolerant pools can be created to add another dimension of high availability by mirroring the physical disks in pools. Mirroring pool disks is also useful when a disk needs to be replaced for a reason other than disk failure, such as when migrating data to new storage. If a disk is mirrored, then one of the disks can be removed even if virtual disks have been created from that pool.

  • The size of the mirror disk must be equal to or larger than the physical disk. We recommend using a disk of equal size for a mirror because any additional space will not be usable unless the smaller mirror disk is later removed from the disk pool, such as when migrating data to new storage. The menu option will be greyed out if there are no qualified candidates.
  • Adding a pool mirror does not consume capacity unless the mirror added is larger than the physical disk it is mirroring. In which case, capacity will be increased by the difference in size.
  • The sector size of mirrored pool disks must be the same. For more information about 4 KiB sector support and sector size compatibility, see Sector Size Support.
  • Pool mirrors will prevent the pool from being authorized as an SMPA pool. See Shared Multi-port Array Support.
  • See Removing Physical Disks from Pools for instructions to remove a pool mirror.

To add mirrors to pool disks:

  1. In DataCore Servers panel, expand the disk pool containing the disk to mirror.

    (Alternatively, pool mirror disks can also be added from the Disk Pools details page > Physical Disks tab.)

  2. Right-click on the disk and select Add Mirror Disk, then select an available disk from the list. The disk will be listed under the same pool in the panel.
  3. A full synchronization of the pool disk mirror begins.

    A computer restart or stopping the DataCore Server which owns the disk pool will interrupt the process and cause the full mirror synchronization to restart.

    To safely remove a mirrored disk pair from a pool in a single operation, refer to Removing Mirrored Physical Disk Sets from Disk Pools for more information.

Viewing Information About Pool Mirrors

To view information about disk pool mirrors:

Disk pool mirrors can be identified in Disk Pool Details page > Physical Disks tab, both disks will be listed under the Name column in this format: "Pool Member | Pool Mirror". Mirror state and status are displayed in the tab. Recovery of the mirror can be monitored under the Mirror State column and by clicking on the disks listed and viewing the information in the Physical Disks Summary at the bottom of the tab. (The estimated time for recovery will fluctuate because it is continuous recalculated and based on the network traffic at the time of calculation.)

In the DataCore Servers panel, under the disk pools, all physical disks and associated pool mirrors are also listed in this format: "Pool Member | Pool Mirror".

To view details for a pool disk mirror:

  1. Open the DataCore Server Details page.
  2. In the Physical Disks tab, each disk is listed separately. Double-click the mirror to open the details page for the mirror.

Deleting Pools

In order to delete a pool, that pool cannot be used as a storage source in any virtual disks.

Pools cannot be removed if used as a storage source in a virtual disk template. The templates must be removed or changed first.

To delete a pool:

  • In DataCore Servers panel, right-click the pool to delete and select Delete.

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