Chapter 1 Storage Overview
(2) Logical configuration of a disk array
In a disk array, put multiple physical disks together to set up a virtual medium to compose RAID,
and partition the space in the virtual medium to make logical disks. Data on the logical disks is
stored into the areas of physical disk associated with the partitions on the virtual medium in which
the logical disks are composed.
The virtual medium is called a pool or RANK, and it supports different logical disk configurations
depending on the disk array.
• Pool
Disk arrays with pool
*The disk arrays with pool are the following:
S400/S1400/S2400/S2800
In the disk array indicated above, multiple physical disks put together to make up a virtual
medium for RAID is called a pool. The logical disks usually belong to one pool, and the
required amount of space is assigned from the pool.
There are two types of pool available as described below. They function in different manners.
Basic pool
The basic pool is a virtual medium, which manages the space on the pool using a continuous
address space.
As you handle logical disks on RANK, assign the continuous space on the pool to the logical
disks. In addition, like a multi-RANK configuration, the basic pool supports a striping
configuration for distributing and storing data into multiple RAID configurations.
For the practical configurations of physical disks that bind a basic pool, refer to C.3 “List of
Pool-Configurable RAID Types”.
Note that the basic pool does not allow using any additional features such as pool capacity
expansion or logical disk capacity expansion.