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Use Case: Storage Provisioning

The following scenario represents a common business issue and the solutions available to administrators using the CA Server Automation Storage Provisioning Manager.

Business Issue

An administrator is managing a VMware vCenter ESX environment using CA Server Automation. The administrator realizes additional storage is necessary based on the free space indicated for the datastores on multiple servers being monitored.

Storage Provisioning Manager Solutions

To save time, the administrator uses CA Server Automation to create an enhanced storage policy and associates it with the monitored servers. Enhanced storage policies also support provisioning across multiple, diverse platforms. The administrator chooses from the following options:

• Provisioning method (NetApp Storage Service or NetApp Provisioning Policy)
• Protocol (NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, FCP)
• Storage server (NetApp DataFabric Manager)
• Policy attributes (provisioning-specific settings; including protocol export settings)
• Servers for association with the policy

The administrator assigns a meaningful name to the enhanced storage policy; facilitating reuse of the predefined set of options during the storage provisioning process.

During storage provisioning, the administrator selects from available enhanced storage policies, storage services, or provisioning policies. After the administrator makes the required choices, CA Server Automation orchestrates the storage provisioning with NetApp Provisioning Manager and indicates that the operation is complete.

The administrator also has the option of using CA Process Automation connectors to automate the storage provisioning process. CA Process Automation provides a graphical user interface that lets administrators configure and manage processes that CA Server Automation can activate. The following examples provide specific scenarios for using the Storage Provisioning Manager with an enhanced storage policy or CA Process Automation connector.

Example: Provision a new NFS datastore to VMware vCenter ESX using an enhanced storage policy

The following steps show how the administrator can provision a new NFS datastore during VMware vCenter ESX provisioning using an enhanced storage policy.

1. Provisions a VMware vCenter ESX server using Resource, Provisioning, Provision Storage.
2. Verifies that the storage available for the datastore in the Free field does not meet the requirements.
3. Uses the Provision Datastore wizard to verify and change storage requirements:
   • Views the Free field and sees that storage does not meet requirements
   • Selects the NFS enhanced storage policy that meets requirements on the Select Enhanced Storage Policy pane
4. Verifies that the VC Datastore field is updated with the new datastore and continues VMware vCenter ESX server provisioning.