Decrease the size of a Virtual Volume

[SEENIVASANP]

Hi,

My customer needs to decrease the zise of a virtual volume on HP 3PAR 7400c from 3TB -> 1TB. Can they do that using any of the replication or snapshot or peer motion etc... storage related technologies?

Regards,

Srihari

[Sheldon Smith]

No. All 3PAR "...storage related technologies..." are block-oriented. The target volume needs to be (at least) as big as the source volume.

You need a host-based, file-oriented transfer technology.  Something that can reposition the data from the 3TB volume into the 1TB volume. For example, VMware's Storage vMotion, or Windows' Robocopy.

[SEENIVASANP]

if you see on our PC windows has options to shrink but Why the HPE does not have such solution shrink as options.

If they create shrink option what would be issue?

Regards,

Srihari

[sbhat09]

Hi Srihari,

In Windows basically volumes are thick provisioned. 'Shrink' is the option that brings some elements of 'thin provisioning' and allows you to eliminate some portion of unused space from a volume and lets you allocate that to a new volume.

3PAR already has 'thin provision' feature inbuilt. It always lets you allocate unutilized space to other volumes.

Regards,

Srini