There are two ways to create logical units (LUNs) on the Dell™ PowerVault™ NX1950. For most users the automated, wizard-based method creates LUNs that will be perfectly satisfactory. For those users who need more control over the placement of the LUNs on disk, there is a manual method that requires a few more steps but is definitely straightforward. This article documents both methods.

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Using the PowerVault NX Console Wizard

To demonstrate, a new LUN will be created and added to the NX1950 Internet SCSI (iSCSI) Target:

PowerVault NX1950 Console→Share and Storage Management→Storage Manager of SANs→LUN Management:



Select Create LUN on right. This brings up the Create LUN Wizard:



Create LUN Wizard. Subsystem and Type: select r1md3000. The four RAID types (none), 0, 1, and 5 are referred to in the Wizard as Simple, Striped, Mirrored, and Striped with parity, respectively. In this test Mirrored or RAID 1 was used:




Create LUN Wizard. Size and Name: a 10 GB LUN named “Wizard1” was created in this test. The maximum LUN size shown, 136 GB, reflects the fact that the largest disks in the MD3000 were 146 GB drives, which have 136 GB usable space. Therefore, the largest RAID 1 LUN that can be made from two disks is 136 GB:




Create LUN Wizard. Server Access: Select R1NXCLUSTER. Note: the second port on the R1NX1950B is not shown in this view.



Create LUN Wizard. Create Volume: Select drive letter and Format parameters:



Create LUN Wizard. Summary: Select Create LUN.



When finished, the new LUN (Wizard1) appears in LUN Management:



Note that the wizard has created the virtual disk file:



If using the High Availability NX1950 add LUN to iSCSI service using Cluster Administrator (right click on Groups->Cluster Group, select New Resource, Physical Disk).



Import the virtual disk and add to iSCSI target:

PowerVault NX1950 Management Console→Microsoft iSCSI Software Target(R1NXCLUSTER)
→Devices→(right click) Import Virtual Disk→Welcome to the Import Virtual Disk Wizard

Add virtual disk corresponding to new LUN:



Add virtual disk to iSCSI target: iSCSI Targets→R1NXISCSI→(right click) Add Existing Virtual Disk to iSCSI Target



The LUN will now be visible to hosts using an iSCSI initiator to connect to the NX1950.

Using the Modular Disk Storage Manager

Manual LUN creation using Modular Disk Storage Manager (MDSM) provides finer-grained control over which disks the LUNs will be placed on. Additionally, free space on an existing Disk Group can be used for new LUNs with this method. In this section a new LUN will be created and added as an NFS share.

Start with MDSM.



MDSM. Configure Tab, select Create Virtual Disks:



MDSM. Create Virtual Disks – Select Capacity Type: The capacity can be selected using free disks or disks that already have an existing disk group configured upon them.



MDSM. Create Virtual Disks – Manual Physical Disk Selection: Select to choose disks Manually, choose RAID type and disks, and then calculate capacity:



MDSM. Create Virtual Disks – Specify Virtual Disk: in this example a 136 GB RAID 1 LUN named “NFS_LUN” will be created. After this step, the LUN needs to be mapped to a host group, and then it is created.



The LUN will show up in the PowerVault NX1950 console:




With Disk Management add the drive letter, name, and partition (N:, NFSShare).

With Cluster Administrator add to NFSShare: