Storage Types vs Available

Question

I am very new to san management. I am concerned with my storage environment. I have what appears to be ~194TB of available storage in the form of 24 7.28TB hdds and 15 1.75TB ssds. Only ~74TB is being used by what I imagine are the volumes and snapshots leaving ~119TB unused. If I go into storage types I can see that my tier 1 and 3 are both basically full. However the capacity is set to 82.46TB. Can someone explain to me what is happening? Is the 82.46 the maximum allowed for usable space and that leaves the remaining 110TB of my 193TB for raid usage? If that is the case, does that mean the only way to increase that 82.46TB is to add more drives/storage to my environment? When I hover over individual volumes though it shows "raid" and gives a comparatively small amount to the total volume size suggesting, to me at least, that the raid consumption for that volume is not over 50% of my total storage. I wonder if I am just over thinking this...

My system in a SC3020 with an additional enclosure and unisphere 20.1.2.14 Available Space.PNG Storage Types.PNG

Thank you in advance

Origin3k · Accepted Answer

It looks like that the unisphere gui will hide a missing peace. I dont see the information about non allocated space which are your 119.64TB.

SCOS allocated space for storing your data and also to be "ready" for new incomming data in the same way as it need space to move data around aka Autoraid and Dataprogression. Right now your SC have 82.46 allocated and within this space the 74.17(74.18) are in use.
The system will automatically allocated more resources when needed. I have seen situation when this not happens but that was only under weird circumstances. Can you tell us which SCOS Version youre runnning?

It depends on which "level" or "stage" youre within the GUI and the representation of what is "free" will change and if youre working with a "pool" it can be difficult to understand. Also non accurate numbers like your 74.17 <-> 74.18 can confuse the admin.

I will print a screenshot from the Dell Storage Manger Client which i like it more than Unisphere.

This system have 96.84TB of space in and right now and all data stays within these 55.57TB. But the system have allocated up to 70.66TB because 7.78+7.32 are needed to "ready" and are used the past for example. For my TIER3 the system can allocated 23.65TB more resourced to the already 7.32TB to store data and to be "ready".

Regards,
Joerg

LawT · Answer

Side note any documentation to further my understanding of this would be incredibly welcome

LawT · Answer

Thank you for the detailed help, I did not know it would allocate more when needed. The red tier bars had me really worried. I have SCOS 7.4.21.4. I have been checking on the status quite frequently and the percentages have gone down and the capacity has slightly increased from the 82.46 to 83.02TB. Is there a way to allocate more space to the tiers/ storage types manually or is it purely automatic?

Origin3k · Answer

Adjusting the allocated space is not a user/admin do able task. Yes, you can to it on the command line... if you are fully away what youre doing.

If youre worry about your SC just call Dell Support..... even it its not named Co-Pilot anymore and its different today they will answer your questions and take a look and also adjusting the resources.
Iam responsable for 3 dozen Compellents and we have 6 alone in the building right now and i am satisfied with the support they provide.

You should open the SecureConsole befor calling them because than they could connect immediately and take a look.

Regards,
Joerg

Compellent

Storage Types vs Available

Was this post helpful?