HPE Storage Users Group

I was hoping someone might give me a quick tutorial on AO...I've been reading the manuals all day (and watching blurry YouTube videos) and I feel like I'm missing something. Here's what I've done to this point:

1. Create CPGs (1 FC, 1 NL) for use with AO configuration.
2. Create AO configuration with Tier 1 FC and Tier 2 NL CPGs.
3. Set schedule.
4. Create a VV using the NL CPG from #1 above.

I understand the system will want to analyze usage for a bit and then potentially move some data around...but are the 4 steps above all there is to it? Without having created a VV from the FC CPG I feel like the system wouldn't know where I want the data migrated to. But perhaps this is just my n00bness still lingering.

TIA,
Matt

One thing to keep in mind when setting the schedule is you tell AO how far back to look and then at how long before the schedule runs to stop looking at metrics to make its determination. So for example, we consider our business day to be 7am to 7pm and do nto want AO acting on any usage outside that window. We setup AO to run at 9pm and tell it to go back 14 hours and only through 2 hours before the schedule runs. AO is a slow process and keep in mind that you also can tell it how long it can run for. We tell it the max runtime is 8 hours so that it finishes up by 5am. Also keep in mind the maxrun time is not exact because AO may determine to run a compactcpg when done, so that may take hours and may bleed into the business day.

We have been running our array for almost 3 years and find AO to be mediocre at best. Also keep in mind that AO by nature wants to push data down to lowest tiers and that the "Performance", "Balanced" and "Cost" setting only throttle how aggressive it will be at moving block down. This is an area we are very disappointed in. The array does nto care how much free top tier space you have it will not try to leverage it unless it thinks the data is outside the calculation of the bottom tiers. My concern with this approach is NL gets crushed and performs badly while I have over 50% of my 10K and 15K drives unused. I find AO is better in a 2 tier scenario than a 3 tier, unless you have SSD in the 3 tier config.