Pure Storage Video Series — Creating Hosts, Host Groups, Volumes and Protection Groups

Pure Storage Quick Tutorials Video 1

This is video 1 in a series I’m planning on putting together that will demonstrate how easy the Pure Storage products are to setup and manage.

All Pure Storage products run on top of our Purity Operating System. Purity has a very sleek and simple UI for managing your arrays.

In the video, I will demonstrate the following:

1. Adding a new host to the FlashArray, well, in fact I’ll show you how to quickly add multiple hosts.
2. Next, we’ll setup a Host Group to contain these new hosts to make management even easier!
3. We’ll then move into creating a new Volume and attaching it to this Host Group.
4. Finally we’ll create a new Protection Group, add a snapshot schedule to the Protection Group, and then connect it to the Host Group.

Glossary of Terms

Host: A server or desktop computer connected to a FlashArray system via a storage network that makes use of the array’s data storage services. Hosts may be physical or virtual, and are identified to Purity//FA by the port names used to connect them to the FlashArray system.

Volume: A disk-like random access virtual storage device that a FlashArray system exports to hosts via a logical unit number (LUN). To a host, a FlashArray volume contains a number of 512-byte sectors in which data can be written and from which it can be read.

Purity: The browser-based graphical user interface used to administer FlashArray systems.

Host Port: An I/O port in a host used to connect to a FlashArray system, usually via a storage network.

Groups: A Purity//FA construct for managing collections of basic objects (hosts and volumes). Administrators can create group objects for management convenience, particularly in arrays that support large numbers of volumes or hosts.

Protection Group: A protection group represents a collection of members (volumes, hosts, or host groups) on the FlashArray that are protected together through snapshots. The members within the protection group have common data protection requirements and the same snapshot, replication, and retention schedules.