The metadata servers process requests from administrators (issued from
the SAN File System console or administrative command-line interface) to perform
the following types of tasks:
- Create and manage filesets, which are subsets of the entire global namespace
and serve as the units of workload assigned to specific metadata servers.
- Create and manage volumes, which are LUNs labeled for SAN File System's
use in storage pools.
Data-volume
operations are initiated from and coordinated by the metadata servers but
are actually performed by one or more clients. These operations are serial
and I/O bound, and most have no effect on processing; however, some operations
(such as volume drain) are more processor-intensive and might effect client
performance. The metadata servers perform metadata-volume operations.
- Create and maintain
storage pools. For example, an administrator can create a storage pool that
consists of Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)
or striped storage devices to meet reliability requirements, or create a storage
pool that consists of random-access or low-latency storage devices to meet
high performance requirements.
- Create FlashCopy® images of filesets in the global namespace that
can be used to make file-based backups easier to perform.
- Define policy sets that contain rules that determine in which storage
pools specific files are stored.