Defining storage pool volumes

You can use defined volumes to control precisely which volumes are used in the storage pool. Using defined volumes can also be useful when you want to establish a naming scheme for volumes.

Before you begin

Before you define storage pool volumes, estimate how much client data you want to store. Consider defining at least enough volumes to hold one day of client backups.

About this task

Task	Required Privilege Class
Define volumes in any storage pool	System or unrestricted storage
Define volumes in specific storage pools	System, unrestricted storage, or restricted storage for those pools

When you define a storage pool volume, you inform the server that the volume is available for storing backup, archive, or space-managed data.

Each volume that is used by a server for any purpose must have a unique name. This requirement applies to all volumes, whether the volumes are used for storage pools, or used for operations such as database backup or export. The requirement also applies to volumes that are in different libraries but that are used by the same server.

For a sequential-access storage pool, the server can use dynamically acquired scratch volumes, volumes that you define, or a combination.

To format and define storage pool volumes, use the DEFINE VOLUME command. For example, to define a volume that is named VOL1 in the ENGBACK3 tape storage pool, enter:

define volume engback3 vol1

For storage pools associated with FILE device classes, you can define private volumes in a single step by using the DEFINE VOLUME command. For example, to define 10, 5000 MB volumes, in a sequential-access storage pool that uses a FILE device class, you would enter the following command.

define volume filepool filevol numberofvolumes=10 formatsize=5000

For storage pools associated with the FILE device class, you can also use the DEFINE SPACETRIGGER and UPDATE SPACETRIGGER commands to have the server create volumes and assign them to a specified storage pool when predetermined space-utilization thresholds are exceeded. One volume must be predefined.