VMAX: Newly created datadevs not immediately available for allocations ???

There is a background process PHCO/IVTOC that runs on the new devices and before that process is finished, they are not available for allocations.

There is a fix# 68779 available for 5876.268.174  that will give high priority for PHCO over normal IVTOC.

PHCO  is mainly a security feature introduced in 5876.229 that will make the ucode run a scan on all newly added TDATs to check if they degraded due to a disk failure in the RAID group or so. DAs should scan the devices and once the scan is complete, It clears the PHCO flag and then devices will be eligable for new extents allocation.

To be honest with you, The scan takes some time. There is a way to disable it (Senior PSE is needed for this) but ususally PSE lab discourages doing so, however after adding the fix mentioned above, PHCO is giving very high priority so the scan should take less time.

Hope this helps!