Description
In some instances, the capacity of the volume shown in the operating system appears noticeably less than the capacity showing in PowerVault Manager or CLI. This is not an error and is part of the normal system operations.
PowerVault Manager displays capacity space in decimal format (base-10), by default. Many host operating systems display storage space (volumes/disks) using binary format (base-2) and this is the reason for the apparent discrepancy. Base 10 values are called Gigabytes, abbreviated GB, and Base 2 values are called Gibibytes, abbreviated GiB. In order to confirm the capacity of the volume shown in the operating system matches the capacity showing in PowerVault Manager or CLI, is to convert the GB to GiB or to convert the Base 10 Bytes to Base 2 bytes. Please see the worked examples below:
Gigabytes example:
500 GB volume is approximately 500,000,000,000 bytes
Note: 1 GB = 1^10 bytes = 1,000,000,000 bytes
Gibibytes example:
500 GB volume is approximately 500,000,000,000 bytes
Note: 1 GiB = 2^30 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes
GB to GiB example
500,000,000,000 bytes / 1,073,741,824 Base 2 bytes = 465.661 GB
Below are the Decimal to Binary capacity conversion formulas, for MB/GB/TB:
- Decimal capacity in bytes / 1,048,576 = Binary MB capacity
- Decimal capacity in bytes / 1,073,741,824 = Binary GB capacity
- Decimal capacity in bytes / 1,099,511,627,776 = Binary TB capacity
Solution
PowerVault ME4 series administrators
If preferred, the ME4 Series user settings can be changed to display Base 2 per user following the steps below:
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Login to the PowerVault Manager web based management interface.
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Navigate to the Home tab if needed
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Click the Action button in the upper left
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Select System Settings
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Click on the
Manage Users Tab
Figure 1: System Settings - Manage Users Tab
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Select a user account you wish to display in Base 2
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In the Preferences section, use the "Base Preference:" drop down to choose Base 2
Figure 2: System Settings - Manage User Tab - Preferences section
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Log out from PowerVault Manager
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Log back in to PowerVault Manager and you now see volume sizes, and other information reported using Base-2 units.
Further InformationFor more information about Dell PowerVault ME4 Series Storage System refer to the
Administrator's Guide.
A data storage conversion calculator can be found
here at calctool.org. Please note that calctool.org is an independent third party site and was not created by Dell Technologies.