How to commission a server and provision storage on an EMC Symmetrix VMAX array with the autoprovisioning groups

How to create commission a server and provision storage on an EMC  Symmetrix VMAX array with the autoprovisioning groups

With EMC Symmetrix VMAX and Enginuity 5874, autoprovisioning replaces Volume Logix as the way to mask storage. This document explains step by step guide to create and provision storage using autoprovisioning groups.

There are four steps involved in provisioning storage.

1.     Create an initiator group – Intiator group contains the world wide port name of the HBA. Initiator group can be cascaded, that is an initiator group can be created by adding two initiator groups, rather than WWPNs. In this example we have WWPNs 10000000caabab1a and 10000000caabab1b

It is a best practice to create the initiator group with “consistent_lun” option

symaccess create –name server1_ig –type initiator –wwn 10000000caabab1a –consistent_lun –sid XXX

Add the second WWPN to the initiator group

symaccess –name server1_ig –type initiator add –wwn 10000000caabab1b –sid XXX

2.       Create a storage group – storage group contains the logical volumes (hypers and metas). Here we will be using 1001 and 1002 as the logical volumes

symaccess create –name server1_sg –type storage

symaccess –name server1_sg –type storage add devs 1001:1002 –sid XXX

3.       Create a port group – Port group contains the front end ports to which the HBAs are zoned in. For the purposes of this excercise, we assume that the HBAs are zoned in to FEs 6E0 and 7E0.

symaccess create –name portgroup_6e0_7e0 –type port –dirport 6E:0, 7E:0 –sid XXX

4.       Create a masking view, binding the initiator group, storage group and port group

       symaccess create view –name server1_mv –ig server1_ig –sg server1_sg –pg portgroup_6e0_7e0

6.       Verify that the storage is provisioned correctly

symaccess show view server1_mv –sid XXX