Dell EMC PowerVault MD 34XX/38XX Series Storage Arrays Administrator's Guide

• The AMW is opened to manage a storage array, disk pools do not exist in the storage array, and there are enough similar physical disks to create a disk pool.
• New physical disks are added to a storage array that has at least one disk pool. If there are enough eligible physical disks available, you can create a disk pool of different physical disk types than the existing disk pool.
  NOTE: If you do not want the Automatic Configuration dialog to be displayed again when unconfigured capacity is detected, you can select Do not display again. If you later want this dialog to be displayed again when unconfigured capacity is detected, you can select Storage Array > Preferences in the AMW to reset your preferences. If you do not want to reset the preferences, but do want to invoke the Automatic Configuration dialog, select Storage Array > Configuration > Disk Pools.

Each physical disk in a disk pool must be of the same physical disk type and physical disk media type and have similar capacity. If there are enough of physical disks of those types, the MD Storage Manager prompts you to create a single disk pool. If the unconfigured capacity consists of different physical disk types, the MD Storage Manager prompts you to create multiple disk pools.

If a disk pool is already defined in the storage array, and you add new physical disks of the same physical disk type as the disk pool, the MD Storage Manager prompts you to add the physical disks to the existing disk pool. If the new physical disks are of different physical disk types, the MD Storage Manager prompts you to add the physical disks of the same physical disk type to the existing disk pool, and to use the other physical disk types to create different disk pools.

If more physical disks are added to the storage array when the Automatic Configuration dialog is open, you can click Update to detect the additional physical disks. As a best practice, add all the physical disks to a storage array at the same time. This action enables the MD Storage Manager to recommend the best options for using the unconfigured capacity.

You can review the options, and click Yes in the Automatic Configuration dialog to create one or more disk pools, or to add the unconfigured capacity to an existing disk pool, or both. If you click Yes, you also can create multiple equal-capacity virtual disks after the disk pool is created.

If you choose not to create the recommended disk pools, or not to add the unconfigured capacity to a disk pool, click No to close the Automatic Configuration dialog. You can then manually configure the disk pools by selecting Storage Array > Disk Pool > Create from the AMW.