UNSOLVED
Basic questions un-answered by storage scope?
So, I'm missing something obvious here, but my boss asked a simple question.
"We have a bunch of new apps coming up, how much space is left in the DMX?"
This, to me, seem like a basic question with no clear answer. Any numbers that come close are RAW, which is useless to any real world scenerio.
I've been stumbling around with support, engineering, pre-sales, etc...
As I've gotten more into it, the more I realize that most of the most basic question that one would need to know in an enterprise environment must be custom queries.
I'm I missing something or is there a canned report/properties tab that show used/unused?
"We have a bunch of new apps coming up, how much space is left in the DMX?"
This, to me, seem like a basic question with no clear answer. Any numbers that come close are RAW, which is useless to any real world scenerio.
I've been stumbling around with support, engineering, pre-sales, etc...
As I've gotten more into it, the more I realize that most of the most basic question that one would need to know in an enterprise environment must be custom queries.
I'm I missing something or is there a canned report/properties tab that show used/unused?
1613
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Posted July 22nd, 2009 10:00
1. Unconfigured capacity
This is the storage that has not been carved into lun. This is raw capacity.
Yeah, i'm there after I account for raid, got that.
2. Unallocated capacity
This is the capacity that is not mapped or lun masked to host. StorageScope has both raw and usable capacity for this.
Actually, unallocated can be mapped. Since R1/BCV's and R2 that have R-BCV's aren't masked (or mapped), they show as unallocated as well.
So here is what I'm left with, for what seems like a fairly straight forward question.
Configured Capacity - Systems devices + (unconfigure * Raid) = usable capacity.
(System devices show 5g in ECC, 4.21 in SMC btw).
Free capacity is Configured capacity - Mapped unallocated (not including RDF/BCV) + unmapped unallocated...
You see where I'm going.
I would love to see a canned report (perhaps on the dashboard that simply says how much space I have left on my frame for hosts... Currently I'm relegated to massive spread sheets/custom queries...
Am I the first one that has ever asked how much space is allocated and how much space is left?
Hope I'm missing something.1613
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Posted July 23rd, 2009 08:00
Hey there nfwtnit,
Welcome to the Forums. I understand your pain and I agree completely that these reports seem to sometimes give lots of info that we don't care about and miss some very important factors.
Now that you have found the Powerlink Forums, oddly enough I'm going to suggest that you also check out the "other" EMC online community for EMC ControlCenter (www.controlcentercommunity.com). This Forum is great for technical support, while the Online User Community is very focused on the future of ControlCenter. There are lots of Developers, Engineers, and Product Managers over there who are looking for this kind of feedback on all components of CC. This would be valuable feedback to provide them as they work on both patches to the current release, and the next release as well.1620
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Posted July 27th, 2009 13:00
Regarding your thoughts on R/BCV's and R2 that have R-BCV's being counted under Unallocated Capacity, I wanted to inform you about how Storagescope works these numbers.
"2. Unallocated capacity
This is the capacity that is not mapped or lun masked to host. StorageScope has both raw and usable capacity for this.
Actually, unallocated can be mapped. Since R1/BCV's and R2 that have R-BCV's aren't masked (or mapped), they show as unallocated as well."
If the standard devices behind those R/BCV's and R2 that have R-BCV's are masked/mapped then those R1's and R2's will also be flagged as "array allocated" and "host allocated . Hence these replica devices will not be included in the "Unallocated capacity" (usable and raw) calculations.
Hope that helps.
Anu1620
1
Posted November 11th, 2009 13:00
You are dealing with the exact same problems with StorageScope that I am. My director says "Tell me how much storage I have, how much is in use and how much I have left" I have both Clariion and Symmetrix arrays. Now try to explain to him that unallocated on one box is not the same as unallocated on the other. It is a real mess.1344
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Posted November 27th, 2009 04:00
So it seems I'm not alone with regards all this. We are having the same problems with reporting...allocated and unallocated space is one part of the problem in the reporting. We have 20 Symmetrix and 54 Clariions onsite and also make use of spreadsheets to try and keep this all up-to-date.
Another problem is that we have been asked to report on different categories of storage i.e.: Production Storage, DR storage, FRA storage, Clone storage etc and there is no-way you can tell this from StorageScope what storage is used for what...what would help with this is if the SD_ALLOCA_TYPE field in the STS_DEVICE_ALLOCATION table would be able to cater for more types than just the "Local Replica, Primary, Remote Replica etc...
1344
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Posted November 27th, 2009 06:00
I've developed a half decent spreadsheet (now I'm trying to reverse engineer a storage scope report) that does pretty decent on the DMX's. Clariions are not bad, but we do not use any form of replication for them.
All the data can be had from Control Center mapped/unmapped. If anyone wants to share sheets/methods, I'm all for it. Shoot an email to bob dot roberts at huntington.com, I'll pass along my own.
Remember to scrub any dollars/numbers/projects etc off your sheets
.
1620
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Posted November 29th, 2009 21:00
We had similar questions and opened a case with EMC...below the response we received...
Clariion has capability of creating Raid Groups which have a raid type by default. These RGs while show the assigned raid type and not Unbound, but they are actually unbound as no LUN has been created. These Raid groups were getting added to ConfiguredNotAssigned capacity.
Solution : We are now checking the logical capacity of RG also along with the raid type. Logical capacity of a RG will be 0 in case it's created with default raid type and has no LUNs bound to it. This capacity would be added to UnAllocated capacity.
I understand that the above issue together with additional Clariion issues will be fixed in Update Bundle 7 which currently has a GA date of 2nd December 2009.
1620
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Posted December 2nd, 2009 06:00
I wanted to clarify your understanding on, this being fixed in ECC Console(properties view) in UB7. The Allocated and Unallocated capacities for Clariion has been removed from ECC Console properties view in UB7. Please use the Allocated and Unallocated capacities in StorageScope for your further use. The Unallocated capacity for Clariion in StorageScope does not include unbound raid group capacity. It can be obtained in the column ConfiguredNotAssigned.
"
Solution : We are now checking the logical capacity of RG also along with the raid type. Logical capacity of a RG will be 0 in case it's created with default raid type and has no LUNs bound to it. This capacity would be added to UnAllocated capacity.
I understand that the above issue together with additional Clariion issues will be fixed in Update Bundle 7 which currently has a GA date of 2nd December 2009."
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Posted December 2nd, 2009 06:00
This seems to be EMC just giving up by removing it from properties. Why is something as simple as a report showing Allocated and Unallocated space so complicated to get? Based on this info the only way to get this info is to go through creating a custom query/report and then having to create some giant explanation for management on what all the different columns mean. I can honestly say this is causing our management to look at other vendors management and reporting products for storage.
Butterfly2
17 Posts
1613
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Posted July 17th, 2009 13:00
1. Unconfigured capacity
This is the storage that has not been carved into lun. This is raw capacity.
2. Unallocated capacity
This is the capacity that is not mapped or lun masked to host. StorageScope has both raw and usable capacity for this.