storage capacity management: simplicity is efficiency

storage capacity management: simplicity is efficiency

EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 2011

Olumide AdemidunStorage ArchitectING Bank [email protected]


Disclaimer: The views, processes, or methodologies published in this article are those of the

author. They do not necessarily reflect EMC Corporation’s views, processes, or methodologies.


Storage Capacity Management: Simplicity is Efficiency I am a certified EMC Proven Professional Technology Architect Specialist. I have been part of

the storage team for my organization for many years. Our environment is mostly SAN

(CLARiiON®) and CAS (Centera®) storage devices and I am responsible for administering and

managing the Centera. I wasn’t certified before the task of managing this storage device was

assigned to me, but I took up the challenge and started exploring this cluster. I have found the

Centera to be a great device that provides the answer to most of my storage architecture

solution.

For years now, I have designed some of our storage infrastructure architecture around this

device which suddenly has become a very important part of our storage environment as more

applications and data are migrated to the device pool. However, one of the first problems I

encountered was the limited tools for planning, monitoring, capacity management, and

forecasting.

Faced with a thin storage budget for Tier 3 storage devices, I started building and customizing

my own report using an Excel spreadsheet. Within three years, this Excel file has grown and

become increasingly important in managing the storage cluster.

I was able to achieve this by making use of two other EMC utilities included with Centera;

Centera Viewer and Centera Console.

From my simple Excel spreadsheet, I am able to keep track of each node capacity, when it was

upgraded, and the type of fault tolerance node/cube used.

Additional Centera capacity per node: 3.0TB/Node

(Gen4, cube 2) 3.0TB/Node

Number of Nodes available: 4 Nodes

Access/Storage Dual Node: 4 Nodes

Storage Dedicated Node:

Fault Tolerance Type: CPM (Mirror Protection)

Useable Storage Capacity: (4 X 3)TB/2 (mirror) 6 TB 11-Feb-09

The spreadsheet also enabled me to keep track of the cluster capacity, application pool

allocation, percentage usage, and when to reorder.


Telecoms Current Allocation: 6.0 TB

Telecoms Current Disk Usage of allocated space 3.918 TB

Disk Size /GB 6000

Disk Used/GB 3423

Available Space/GB 2577

Percentage used on Telecoms allocated space 57.05%

Telecoms Current Allocation: 6.0 TB

eXchange EV pool allocation 4.6 TB

Proposed eXchange journaling pool (eXchangeJournal) 2.1 TB

Proposed eXchangeArchive pool (eXchangeArchive) 2.5 TB

Proposed BloomBerg pool (BloomB) 0 TB

Proposed Response Manager pool (ResponseM) 0 TB

Total eXchange Allocation: 4.6 TB

Total allocated /used storage space on Centera 10.6 TB

System Resources 0.124 TB

Total unallocated free useable storage capacity on

Centera cluster 15.4 TB

Reorder level is

20% or less

Most importantly, I was also able to translate this easily to graphical form and send as an

executive summary to the management to defend my budget or disk order requisition.


With my simple Excel spreadsheet, I was also able to manage and monitor application usage

per month and most importantly, utilize these data to produce various reports as I may require

or as may be requested by management.

Application pool usage data

Date

Used Pool Capacity

(GB)

Number of

Files

Available

Pool

9-Jun-10 1361 970,556 739 65%

27-Jul-10 1442 1,024,864 658 69%

23-Aug-10 1511 1,070,067 589 72%

8-Sep-10 1537 1,088,601 563 73%

13-Oct-10 1605 1,134,313 495 current 76%

Telecoms Current Allocation :, 6.0, 22.97%

eXchange EV pool allocation, 4.6, 17.61%

Total unallocated free useable storage capacity on Centera cluster, 15.4, 58.95%

System Resources, 0.124, 0.47%

Centera Disk Allocation

Telecoms Current Allocation :

eXchange EV pool allocation

Total unallocated free useable storage capacity on centera cluster

System Resources


Graphical pool usage

Pool usage trend

1605

495

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1,134,313

Pe

rce

nta

ge

of

sp

ac

e U

se

d

Number of Files written

EV pool usage on the Centera

Available Pool

Used Pool Capacity (GB)

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

9-Jun-10 9-Jul-10 9-Aug-10 9-Sep-10 9-Oct-10

# o

f Fi

les

Jou

rnal

ed

Date

Usage Trend

Series1

Series2


Projection and Forecast

With the above data and information, I have been able to successfully manage the growth of our

cluster from about 1TB to over 25TB with some critical application growth. I am also able to

manage each growth area and allocate more storage to the application pool based on the total

storage available on the cluster. Most importantly, I was able to achieve this proactively!

I was also able to monitor when to reorder storage for the cluster and plan and envisage when a

particular application pool will require additional storage.

After awhile, I took this Excel spreadsheet for granted. That is until I did a lease replacement of

my laptop without backing up some of the locally stored documents, including this Excel

spreadsheet. I quickly realized its importance. There was no way I could have successfully

managed the cluster with our thin budget without this simple but highly efficient tool.

Yes, it’s simple but it is very efficient for capacity management!

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

9-Jun-10 9-Jul-10 9-Aug-10 9-Sep-10 9-Oct-10 9-Nov-10 9-Dec-10

Series1

Projection


EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The

information is subject to change without notice.

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MAKES NO RESPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO

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storage capacity management: simplicity is efficiency

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