Dell PowerVault ME4 Series Storage System Administrator’s Guide

Viewing capacity information

The capacity panel in the footer shows a pair of color-coded bars. The lower bar represents the physical capacity of the system, and the upper bar identifies how the capacity is allocated and used.

Hover the cursor over a segment to see the storage type and size that is represented by that segment. For instance, in a system where storage is being used, the bottom bar has color-coded segments that show the total unused disk space and space that is used by disk groups. The total of these segments is equal to the total disk capacity of the system.

Hover the cursor over a segment to see the storage type and size that is represented by that segment. For instance, in a system where both virtual and linear storage is being used, the bottom bar has color-coded segments that show the total unused disk space that is allotted for virtual and linear disk groups and the space that is used by the disk groups. The total of these segments is equal to the total disk capacity of the system.

In this same system, the top bar has color-coded segments for reserved, allocated, and unallocated space for disk groups. If very little disk group space is used for any of these categories, it will not be visually represented.

In this same system, the top bar has color-coded segments for reserved, allocated, and unallocated space for virtual and linear disk groups. If very little disk group space is used for any of these categories, it will not be visually represented.

Reserved space refers to space that is unavailable for host use. It consists of RAID parity and the metadata that is needed for internal management of data structures. The terms allocated space and unallocated space have different meanings for the virtual and linear storage technologies. For virtual storage, allocated space refers to the amount of space that is consumed by data that is written to the pool. Unallocated space is the difference between the space that is designated for all volumes and the allocated space.

Reserved space refers to space that is unavailable for host use. It consists of RAID parity and the metadata that is needed for internal management of data structures. The terms allocated space and unallocated space have different meanings for the virtual and linear storage technologies. Allocated space, for virtual storage, refers to the amount of space that is consumed by data that is written to the pool. Unallocated space is the difference between the space that is designated for all volumes and the allocated space.

For linear storage, allocated space is the space that is designated for all volumes. (When a linear volume is created, space equivalent to the volume size is reserved for it. This is not the case for virtual volumes.) Unallocated space is the difference between the overall and allocated space.