Storage Center: How to troubleshoot secondary storage systems in Conservation Mode.

Summary: How to troubleshoot when secondary storage systems enter conservation mode.

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Symptoms

Alert:

Secondary Storage "storage name" Conservation Operation, No new volumes, early replay expiration, Index: "number"

Cause

System with compression enabled has entered Conservation Mode. No new space is provisioned, and the system uses logic to more aggressively recover space through Point in Time Copy (PITC) expiration.

Resolution

Storage Center has entered Conservation Mode because remaining free space is critically low. No new volumes can be created. Storage Center begins to aggressively expire replays. Immediate action is necessary to avoid entering Emergency Mode, which halts all write I/O to Storage Center until sufficient space is available.

To resolve conservation mode, you must reclaim consumed space or add more capacity. After Conservation Mode has been resolved, review the system capacity requirements and consider adding disk space.

Do not change the system-wide RAID level if the Storage Center is in Conservation Mode. Although it seems logical that changing the RAID level from fewer drives to more drives frees space, Storage Center needs additional space to hold data before restriping it. If you try to change the system-wide RAID level from five or six drives to nine or ten drives, you run out of free space sooner.

To reclaim consumed space, perform each of the following steps and wait a few minutes before reassessing available space:

  1. Check the Recycle Bin and empty if applicable.
  2. Identify and expire unnecessary replays. Do not expire the most recent two replays.
  3. Delete unnecessary volumes and empty the Recycle Bin.
  4. Run whitespace recovery on hosts where applicable.

Affected Products

Dell Compellent SC200, Dell Compellent SC220, Dell Compellent SC280, Dell Compellent SC4020, Dell Storage SC8000, Dell Compellent Series 40, Dell Storage SC100, Dell Storage SC120, Dell Storage SC180, Dell Storage SCv2000, Dell Storage SCv2020 , Dell Storage SCv2080 ...
Article Properties
Article Number: 000134903
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 09 Dec 2025
Version:  4
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