Creating a FlexVol volume

You create FlexVol volumes to provide resizeable, flexible file systems that can be mounted and accessed using all data access protocols supported by Data ONTAP.

Before You Begin

Before creating a FlexVol volume, you must first determine the following items:

The name of the volume
The volume name must conform to the following requirements:
- Begin with either a letter or an underscore (_)
- Contain only letters, digits, and underscores
- Contain no more than 250 characters
- Be different from all other volume names on the storage system
The size of the volume
The volume can be between 20 MB and 16 TB in size (your system configuration might limit the largest size).
The language used for the volume (optional)
The default language is the language of the root volume.
The space guarantee setting for the new volume (optional)
The default space guarantee is volume.
The CIFS oplocks setting for the new volume.
The security style setting for the new volume.

Steps

If you have not already done so, create the aggregate that will contain the FlexVol volume that you want to create.
Enter the following command:vol create vol_name [-l language_code] [-s {volume|file|none}] aggr_name size{k|m|g|t}
vol_name is the name for the new FlexVol volume (without the /vol/ prefix)

language_code specifies a language other than that of the root volume.

-s {volume|file|none} specifies the space guarantee setting that is enabled for the specified FlexVol volume. If no value is specified, the default value is volume

aggr_name is the name of the containing aggregate for the new FlexVol volume.

size {k | m | g | t} specifies the volume size in kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or terabytes. For example, you would enter 20m to indicate twenty megabytes. If you do not specify a unit, size is taken as bytes and rounded up to the nearest multiple of 4 KB.

Example
The following command creates a 200-MB volume called newvol, in the aggregate called aggr1, using the French character set:vol create newvol -l fr aggr1 200M

The new volume is created and, if NFS is in use, an entry is added to the /etc/export file for the new volume. The default automatic snapshot schedule is applied to the new volume.
If you access the storage system using CIFS, update the share information for the new volume.
If you access the storage system using NFS, complete the following steps:
1. Verify that the line added to the /etc/exports file for the new volume is correct for your security model.
2. Add the appropriate mount point information to the /etc/fstab or /etc/vfstab file on clients that mount volumes from the storage system.

After You Finish

Verify that the CIFS oplocks and security style settings are correct, and modify them as needed.

Note: You should set these values as soon as possible after creating the volume. If you change these values after files are in the volume, the files might become inaccessible to users because of conflicts between the old and new values. For example, UNIX files available under mixed security might not be available after you change to NTFS security.

If the default automatic snapshot schedule does not match your data protection strategies, update the snapshot schedule for the newly created volume with a more appropriate schedule. For more information, see the Data ONTAP Data Protection Online Backup and Recovery Guide.

Parent topic: FlexVol volume operations

Related concepts

How volumes use the language attribute

What space guarantees are

About the CIFS oplocks setting

How security styles affect access to your data

How volumes work

Related tasks

Creating an aggregate

Related reference

Maximum and default RAID group sizes