Manage a pool

Create a pool

It is advised to read the About pools section prior to creating a pool. The pool configuration cannot be changed later without migrating data.

To create a new pool, follow the steps below:

  1. Navigate to the Pools - Inventory page.

  2. Click Create pool.

    The Create pool button is only available when 1 or more unused/available disk devices are present. An unused or available disk device is a device which does not belong to any other pools.

  3. Enter a name for the pool (ex: p01).

  4. Select a VDEV type.

  5. Select a Drive Type.

  6. Provide the number of VDEVs the pool will contain (not applicable to disk VDEV type).

  7. Provide the number of Drives per VDEV (not applicable to disk/mirror VDEV type).

  8. Provide the number of Drives (only applicable to disk VDEV type).

  9. Provide the number of Spare Drives to be reserved for the pool.

  10. Click Create pool to confirm.

Destroy a pool

To destroy a pool on the BrickStor SP, follow the steps below:

  1. Navigate to the Pools - Inventory page.

  2. Click on the name of the desired pool.

  3. Export the pool.

    1. Click Export.

    2. Click Yes to confirm.

  4. Click Destroy.

  5. Enter the specified confirmation text.

  6. Click Destroy Pool to confirm.

Pool configuration wizard

The Pool Configuration Wizard is designed to improve understanding of the different components when creating a pool.

Total Drives in Drive Type = VDEV Count * Drives per VDEV + Spares.

Drive type

A summary of all available/unused drives present on the system. Drives are grouped by their unique configurations.

Configuration Syntax: [size] [type] ([speed]) [vendor] [quantity]

  • Size - The capacity of a disk device in bytes

  • Type - The kind of disk device such as:

    • SED - Self-Encrypting Drive

    • Virtual - A logical drive that exists within virtualization solutions

    • SSD - Solid-State Drive

    • USB - Universal Series Bus

    • NVMe - Nonvolatile Memory Express

    • RAID - RAID Volume

    • Fabric - iSCSI or FibreChannel LUN

  • Speed - RPM speed of a disk; applies only to mechanical drives

  • Vendor - Device manufacturer

  • Quantity - Total number of devices of this type

VDEV count

VDEV Count is the number of RAID drive groups, providing increased performance and higher storage capacity. However, VDEV Count does not offer fault tolerance and should be configured with a pool type offering parity.

Drives per VDEV

Drives per VDEV are used to quantify the amount of disk devices within each VDEV. Increasing the Drives per VDEV provides an increase in availability/parity to every VDEV at the cost of performance and storage.

Drives

Exclusively for pools with the disk VDEV Type, each drive that is added will act as its own VDEV for maximum performance and storage.