6 Posts
0
1204
Defragmenter
Hi All,
Has anyone implemented defragmenter on PowerScale cluster on a backup workload? I have gone through the white papers but did not get much details
6 Posts
0
1204
Hi All,
Has anyone implemented defragmenter on PowerScale cluster on a backup workload? I have gone through the white papers but did not get much details
Top
Peter_Sero
1.2K Posts
1
September 6th, 2021 00:00
AFAIK there is a defragmentation feature within Commvault, have you checked that out?
Apart from that, the Isilon-Commvault Whitepaper https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/storage/industry-market/h13077-wp-isilon-backup-using-commvault-bestpractices.pdf
has this advice on page 21:
"There is an option to remove the remaining aged data sooner by running a Data Verification job under the Deduplication Engine with the Reclaim Idle Space on Mountpaths option, though the job will consume resources on the Commvault servers and Isilon storage to consolidate backup container files into new files without holes and reclaim the old files."
This obviously refers to the Commvault software, and maybe support wanted to point you here (possibly with a confusing use of the word "Defragmentation" where it should be "Deduplication").
hth
-- Peter
Peter_Sero
1.2K Posts
0
August 31st, 2021 09:00
There is no way for a customer to implement a low-level defragmenter for OneFS. What are you aiming at, why are to refering to a "backup workload"?
In general, files in OneFS can appear more fragmented than with other systems, because of the way OneFS tries to utilize the I/O of many disks at the same time. What you CAN do is, choose an "access pattern" for your data, or for specific parts of your data. This will influence across how many disks a file's blocks will be spread. Data will then be online re-layouted or "restriped" with the SmartPools (or FlexProtect) job according to that access pattern. This in addition MIGHT reduce fragmentation if some space has been made available after a filled-cluster, fragmentation-prone situation.
Makes sense?
-- Peter
not_a_lone_wolf
6 Posts
0
September 5th, 2021 23:00
Thanks for the reply Peter and sorry for the late reply, I was sick.
The issue is that the cluster is utilized by Commvault device. I had enabled sparse file features on the SMB shares (and not on global level), however, the space reclamation on Commvault did not appear as expected. Commvault support suggested to enable Defragmenter in order to reclaim space. I went through the white paper but could not figure out if it's enabled, apart from the data used by Commvault, how the other data would be affected.
not_a_lone_wolf
6 Posts
0
September 10th, 2021 00:00
Thanks a lot Peter. I would follow up with Commvault and run Dedupe on Isilon