PS4100 In-use volume space exceeds the warning limit

Question

Could someone please tell me what is the "In-use volume space" and why does it always consume almost 100% of the space within the voulme?

I'm constantly getting the "In-use volume space exceeds the warning" on my PS4100 array, when I got the warning for the first time I simply increase

the volume the warning went away for a while, today I got the same warning message again, I look at the vcenter I still have almost 1TB of free space

but when I look at the Equalogic Datastore Manager it tells me the voulme reserve is at 98.7%

What is a voulme reserve?

If I increase the volume again it will eventually consume the new allocated space and issue the same warning again

should I just ignore the warning meaasge?

Joe S586 · Accepted Answer

To see why the space is different, first take a look at the KB on "support.equalLogic.com" (login req.). Once logged in, go to the Resources> Knowledgebase> search for “ARRAY: GUI space usage differs from what the OS shows”.

Simply, the array is Block level storage, and as such it cannot differentiate between a write and a delete, they all are the same to the array.

On Server 2012 or Linux with SCSI UNMAP enabled storage, the reclaim is automatic. This is a manual process with ESX 5.0/5.1

See this VMware KB:

kb.vmware.com/.../search.do

Volume reserve is the amount of pool space that the group allocates for a volume. This depends if Thin Provision is enabled or not:

Thin enabled: it’s the space allocated based on volume usage (plus snapshot reserve, local replication reserve)

Thin disabled: It’s the reported volume size (plus snapshot reserve, local replication reserve).

The Group Administration Guide has a much better description than I can give, again this is available on the support.equallogic.com site, look under: Downloads> PS Series Firmware> select your firmware version> then click the link to the fw download page> then look in the documentation section.

-joe

anunnthorn · Answer

The method of manually running unmapped command that Joe suggest work, 60% of the volume is now free, however the snapshot space suddenly reach 100%, I believe that's because the unmapped command has created a snapshot file to handle the unmapped, do the snapshot space gets free up automatically or do I have to free it up manually?

rkotowski · Answer

I am running into this with one of my volumes now too. I have a 550GB volume. The SAN says I am using 468.46 (roughly 86%) of my space. I've got a snapshot reserve of 119 GB (25%) of which 70 GB is being used. I have 4 servers and 2 templates of servers on that volume...totally roughly 200 GB only.

We have only been running virtual for 3 months so at this rate my SAN will think I am using up the entire array within a year when in actuality these 4 servers really don't gain space. 2 of them are for our terminals and one of them just runs our report software. And the fourth one is vCenter itself.

Anyway, if I read this correctly, I need to create a new volume from scratch and move these servers over that volume to regain the space. Is that the best and only option? Or, is there something with thin and thick provisioning that should be done?

If I don't do anything, and it runs past 100% how bad is that? What actually happens?

Thanks,

Ryan

anunnthorn · Answer

Hi Ryan, if you use thin provisioning then you can safely ignore the warning, you need to only concern yourself volume space that vcenter is telling you, however if you can run the unmapped command on the Eql host and that would free ip space immediately

rkotowski · Answer

Hey Don,

We just went up with the system in January and we have a 9.2 TB system and we still have 5+ TB free overall so space isn't an issue yet at all.

To this point, I haven't over-provisioned anything on the volume so that shouldn't be a concern. Still learning the system at this point. I just thought it would be nice to see more accurate numbers when I looked at the SAN. But, continually increasing the space to satisfy the warnings didn't seem to be the most efficient method.

Thanks,

Ryan Kotowski

Origin3k · Answer

Login into the Groupmanager, select the volume -> Modify Settings -> Space and adjust the orange marker by moving it to the right. Regards, Joerg

cminias · Answer

How do I increase the threshold level?

EqualLogic

PS4100 In-use volume space exceeds the warning limit

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