An image mode volume provides a direct block-for-block translation from the managed disk (MDisk) to the volume with no virtualization.
This mode is intended to provide virtualization of MDisks that already contain data that was written directly, not through a Lenovo Storage V7000 node. Image mode volumes have a minimum size of 1 block (512 bytes) and always occupy at least one extent.
Image mode MDisks are members of a storage pool, but they do not contribute to free extents. Image mode volumes are not affected by the state of the storage pool because the storage pool controls image mode volumes through the association of the volume to an MDisk. Therefore, if an MDisk that is associated with an image mode volume is online and the storage pool of which they are members goes offline, the image mode volume remains online. Conversely, the state of a storage pool is not affected by the state of the image mode volumes in the storage pool.