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Digital Advisor warning: Up to High Impact - Aggregate is almost full or Volume vulnerable to becoming 100% Full

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Applies to

  • ONTAP 9 
  • Data ONTAP  7-Mode

Answer

Value of reviewing this information:

Aggregates that have over 97% capacity used with non-guaranteed volumes may experience impact to availability if used capacity reaches 100%, up to and including write failures to volumes and LUN offline events. Additionally, aggregates over 97% capacity may see increased write latency. This risk is in place to help proactively plan to avoid this type of event.

There are some situations where there are a mix of guarantees in an aggregate or where one volume has had its guarantee disabled due to insufficient overall space the impact can be limited to a single volume experiencing write failures or offline LUNs as opposed to every volume within the aggregate. Finally background deduplication has a requirement of 3% free space within an aggregate.

How this wellness check is validated? 

The following commands can be used to validate Aggregate Space usage: 

  • ONTAP 9: storage aggregate show-space – fields physical-used,physical-used-percent
  • 7-Mode: aggr status, df- A, df   
The following AutoSupport sections are reviewed by Digital Advisor to determine aggregate capacity usage:  
  • ONTAP 9: AGGR-STATUS-S to determine physical space used, not including root aggregates.
    Aggregate : <aggregate_name>
          Feature                                           Used      Used%
          --------------------------------      ----------------      ----- 
          Volume Footprints                                152TB        75%
          Aggregate Metadata                              7.24GB         0%
          Total Used                                       152TB        75%
          Total Physical Used                              150TB        74%
     
  • 7- Mode:
    • If all volumes are Guarantee=None
      <aggregate_name> 217574431488 163743726624 53830704864      75%
      <aggregate_name>/.snapshot          0          0          0       0%
    • If some or all volumes are Guarantee=Volume the sum of guaranteed volumes from DF is subtracted from the total Aggregate Size and Used size.  The remaining Size and used size from DF -A is used to calculate remaining space. This can result in an aggr being full and a volume with a disabled volume guarantee or guarantee of none being at risk.

The impact level of the Digital Advisor Wellness Rule Aggregate is almost full is determined by the following physical capacity utilization levels: 

  • Greater than 97%: High Impact
  • 93% to 97%: Medium Impact 

The impact level of the Digital Advisor Wellness Rule Volume vulnerable to becoming 100% Full is determined by the following aggregate capacity levels if a mix of guarantees are detected:

  • Greater than 97%: High Impact
  • 93% to 97%: Medium Impact 
What should I do about the information provided by this Digital Advisor Wellness rule?

If you already have a plan for this proactive wellness warning, acknowledge it within your Digital Advisor dashboard. This will ensure that the Wellness warnings you see are issues you do not have a plan in place to address. 
 
To address this type of scenario you may have options beyond adding additional capacity:

  1. Do not add additional workloads to any aggregate seeing these capacity alerts.
  2. Review the options found in How to reclaim space in an aggregate that is full.
  3. Ensure storage efficiency related Digital Advisor wellness warnings or best practices seen under "Capacity" and "Performance and Efficiency" are addressed.
  4. As proactive solution, consider running a newer version of ONTAP.   Most major releases of ONTAP introduce greater efficiencies or capacity capabilities, 9.12.1 for example can provide up to 5% more usable capacity for cetain configurations by substantially reducing WAFL reserve requirements.  You can find more cumulative enhancements that get you more space (to avoid this type of scenario) with 0 additional capex here under Storage Efficiency Enhancements.
  5. Fabric Pool is another proactive solution, long term, for space constraints on local storage.
  6. If you have exhausted your options it may be necessary to add physical capacity if your storage system can accommodate the additional capacity or consider spinning some workload off to Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

After any resolution step is taken, to avoid future occurrence, ensure that you are monitoring existing capacity via any mechanism you have available.

  1. Use Active IQ Unified Manager to monitor storage capacity. 
    Configure Active IQ Unified Manager to monitor and alert on aggregate capacity

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  2. Cloud Insights Basic is offered for Advisor and above and allows for up to 5 custom monitors as well as default monitors.   Learn more here.
  3. EMS notifications for capacity can be configured as well.

Additional Information

Where can I find more information on this topic?

 

NetApp provides no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or reliability or serviceability of any information or recommendations provided in this publication or with respect to any results that may be obtained by the use of the information or observance of any recommendations provided herein. The information in this document is distributed AS IS and the use of this information or the implementation of any recommendations or techniques herein is a customer's responsibility and depends on the customer's ability to evaluate and integrate them into the customer's operational environment. This document and the information contained herein may be used solely in connection with the NetApp products discussed in this document.