Using Volumes, Shares, and Quotas 93
Usage Considerations
Choosing to define multiple NAS volumes enables administrators to apply
different management policies such as, Backup, Snapshots, Quotas, and
Security Style to their data. Without regard to the strategy used, the storage is
managed as one storage pool and free space can easily be migrated between
NAS volumes, by changing the NAS volume's allocated space.
Consider the following factors before choosing a strategy:
• General requirements
– NAS volumes are logical; they can be easily created, deleted or
modified (increased or decreased) based on the system capacity.
– The NAS volume name should not contain more than 230 characters.
It should contain only letters, digits and underscores (_) and should
begin with either a letter or an underscore.
– You can create as many virtual volumes as you want, but the total
capacity cannot exceed the total storage capacity.
– A single volume can occupy data of various types, by defining multiple
shares on the volumes.
– You can resize a virtual volume after creating it.
– The minimum size of a NAS volume is 20MB (or if the volume has
already been used, the minimum size is the stored data).
– The maximum size of a NAS volume is the remaining unallocated space.
• Business requirements—A company or application requirement for
separation or for using a single volume should be considered. NAS volumes
can be used to allocate storage for departments on demand, using the
threshold mechanism to notify departments when they approach the end
of their allocated free space.
• Snapshots—Each NAS volume can have a dedicated snapshot scheduling
policy to best protect the type of data it stores.
• Security style—In multiple protocol environments, it may be beneficial to
separate the data and define NAS volumes with UNIX security style for
UNIX-based clients, and NTFS for Windows-based clients. This enables
the administrator to match the security style with business requirements
and various data access patterns.