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Creating and editing storage capability profiles

You have several options for using VASA Provider for ONTAP to create new storage capability profiles. You can create a profile manually, you can automatically generate a profile based on the capabilities of a datastore, or you can modify the profile to meet your requirements. After setting up a profile, you can edit the profile as required.

Before you begin

You must have registered your VASA Provider instance with Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere.

Steps

  1. From the Virtual Storage Console (VSC) Home page, click VASA Provider for ONTAP to navigate to the VASA Provider section of the VSC GUI.
  2. Select Storage Capability Profiles.
  3. Create a profile or edit an existing profile, as required:
    If you want to… Do this…
    Create a profile Click the icon.
    Edit an existing profile Select the profile that you want to modify on the Objects page, and then either choose the icon or click Edit from the Actions menu.
    Note:
    • To view the values that are associated with an existing profile, you can click the profile name in the Storage Capabilities Profile page. VASA Provider then displays the Summary page for that profile.
    • Any existing storage capability profiles that were created before the 7.2 version of the virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA cannot be modified.
  4. Complete the pages in the Create Storage Capability Profile wizard to set up a profile or to edit values to modify an existing profile.
    Most of the fields in this wizard are self-explanatory. The following table describes some of the fields for which you might require guidance.
    Consideration Explanation
    Identifying multiple profiles You can use the Description field on the Name and Description tab to describe the purpose of the storage capability profile.

    Having a good description is useful because it is a good practice to set up different profiles based on the applications that are being used.

    For example, a business-critical application requires a profile with capabilities that support higher performance, such as an AFF platform. A datastore that is used for testing or training might use a profile with a lower performance FAS platform and enable all of the storage efficiency capabilities and tiering to control costs.

    If you have enabled linked mode for your vCenter Servers, then you must select the vCenter Server for which you are creating the storage capability profile.

    Personality You can select your storage system to have either the AFF or FAS platform type.

    The options on the subsequent screens are updated based on your selection of the type of storage system.

    Performance You can select whether you want to set traditional QoS policies or adaptive QoS policies for your storage system by using the Performance tab.
    • When you select None and your version of ONTAP is 9.4, then the adaptive QoS policy type "Value" of ONTAP is applied to a data virtual volume (VVol).

      If your version of ONTAP is prior to version 9.4, then traditional QoS policies are created and assigned to a data VVol.

    • When you select QoS Policy Group, then a traditional QoS policy is applied to a VVol.

      You can set the value for Max IOPS, which enables you to use the QoS functionality. When applied for a traditional datastore, a QoS policy with "MAX IOPS" value is created and assigned to a FlexVol volume. When applied for a virtual datastore, a QoS policy with "MAX IOPS" value is created for each data VVol.

    • When you select ONTAP Service Level, then the existing adaptive QoS policies of ONTAP are applied to a data VVol.

      This is applicable only for ONTAP 9.4 and later. You can select one of three service levels: Extreme, Performance, or Value.

      Note: The ONTAP service level is applicable only to VVol datastores.

      You can use only the adaptive QoS policy type "Value" for a FAS storage type.

    Note: You must ensure that the performance metrics for VVol management are not set separately at an storage virtual machine (SVM) level, an aggregate level, or a FlexVol volume level.
    Storage Attributes You can configure the space reserve to be either Thin or Thick. The other storage attributes that you can enable in this tab depend on the storage type that you select in the Personality tab.
    • If you select FAS storage, you can enable deduplication, compression, and encryption.

      The tiering attribute is disabled because this attribute is not applicable to FAS storage.

    • If you select AFF storage, you can enable encryption and tiering.

      Deduplication and compression are enabled by default for AFF storage and cannot be disabled.

    The tiering attribute enables the use of volumes that are part of a FabricPool-enabled aggregate (supported by VASA Provider for AFF systems with ONTAP 9.4). You can configure one of the following policies for the tiering attribute:

    • None: Prevents volume data from being moved to the capacity tier
    • Snapshot-Only: Moves user data blocks of volume Snapshot copies that are not associated with the active file system to the capacity tier
    • Auto: Moves cold user data blocks in the Snapshot copies and the active file system to the capacity tier

  5. After selecting the required features, click OK.

After you finish

After you create a profile, you can return to the VASA Provider for ONTAP page, and select Storage Mapping to view which profiles match which datastores.