The NetApp Management Console provisioning capability simplifies and automates the tasks of provisioning and managing storage for the data in datasets of physical objects.
The NetApp Management Console provisioning capability provisions volumes and qtrees (in NAS environments) or volumes and LUNs (in SAN environments) for a dataset using the resource pool assigned to the dataset. In SAN environments, a provisioned volume can be delegated to SDx applications and used to create qtrees or LUNs.
The NetApp Management Console provisioning capability can provision volumes, qtrees, or LUNs on the backup and mirror dataset nodes.
When you create a dataset for provisioning, you can assign a provisioning policy that provides settings for automatically configuring storage for the dataset.
You can manually add additional volumes, qtrees, or LUNs, at any time, to a dataset that has a provisioning policy assigned.
Protocols for exporting data are automatically handled by the dataset.
You can also assign a vFiler template to a vFiler host. When a vFiler host is created, the vFiler template provides default settings for automatically configuring the vFiler host.
The NetApp Management Console provisioning capability periodically checks that the dataset conforms to its provisioning policy. For example, if the data in a dataset reaches a specified threshold level, the NetApp Management Console provisioning capability tries to create additional space according to the provisioning policy, either by increasing the storage container size or deleting old Snapshot copies, or both. If it cannot bring the dataset back into conformance, it notifies you that the conformance status changed to nonconformant.
NetApp Management Console provides manual controls for viewing and resizing individual volumes or qtrees and modifying volume data and Snapshot copy space allocations.