configuring file systems

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Configuring File Systems

Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:• Define file system components and storage pools• Describe file system features including file system automatic

extension and virtual provisioning• Create file systems using Automatic Volume Manager• Explain how to manage file systems

Configuring File Systems 1



This lesson covers the following topics:• UxFS file system• Automatic Volume Manager (AVM)• Storage pools

Lesson 1: UxFS File System



VNX File System Overview

• Method of cataloging and managing files and directories on a storage system


• VNX for File uses UxFS file system Groups file data with its metadata for an

improved locality of reference

• VNX file systems can be created automatically or manually


Creating File Systems Automatically• Automatic Volume Manager (AVM) is a feature used to create

VNX file systems automatically The AVM algorithm creates the underlying file system structure

* We will be covering file systems via AVM in this module


Automatic Volume Management

Manual

• Provides an easy to use method of creating and managing file systems

• Maximizes capacity and improves client performance

• Application requires precise placement of file systems on particular disks

• Provides more control over storage allocation


AVM File System Structure

File System

Metavolume

Slice

Stripe

Disk Volumes (dVol)



File System Components: dVols• The underlying storage for all other volume types• Disk volumes are created when LUNs are presented to the VNX

for File via: The file storage provisioning wizard Adding LUNs to ~filestorage storage group

• Each dVol maps to a LUN on the storage system LUNs may come from RAID Groups or Block storage pools


LUN 207

LUN 208

dvol 21

dvol 22


File System Components: Stripe Volumes• Volumes are stripped together and presented as one logical

volume• Achieve greater performance and higher aggregate throughput• AVM decides on the number of dVols to stripe depending on the

LUN type Up to 4 dVols when RAID Group LUNs are used Up to 5 dVols when Pool LUNs are used


Stripe Volume80 GB

dvol 1920 GB

dvol 1020 GB

dvol 2120 GB

dvol 1220 GB


File System Components: Slice Volumes• Method of making smaller volumes from larger volumes• Satisfies a file system request without utilizing the entire stripe

volume Space left over on the stripe volume can be used for other file

systems• Slicing is the default when creating file systems


Stripe Volume80 GB

Slice Volume 20 GB


File System Components: Metavolume• A metavolume is a concatenation of one or more volumes• In order to create a file system, a metavolume must first exist • A file system is able to dynamically expand by adding more

volumes to the metavolume


Slice 20 GB

Slice 30 GB

Metavolume

Metavolume

File System 20 GB

File System 30 GB


Disk Volume Types• Disk volumes are categorized in AVM by the physical disk associated

with the LUN and the LUN type

* Complete Disk Types listing in Managing Volumes and File Systems with VNX™ AVM product document


Disk Type DescriptionCLSAS VNX Block SAS drives (including NL-SAS)

CLEFD VNX Block Performance and SATA II Flash drives

Capacity VNX Block pool LUNs from NL-SAS disksPerformance VNX Block pool LUNs from SAS disksMixed VNX Block pool LUNs from mixed disk types


AVM Storage Pools• Storage pools are containers that hold stripe volumes ready for

use by AVM• Storage pools with RAID Group LUNs

System-defined pools 256 KB stripe element size

User-defined pools• Storage pools with Pool LUNs

Mapped pools


Storage Pool = 160 GB

Stripe 180 GB

Stripe 280 GB

Member Volumes


System-defined Pools


SAS Drives - CLSAS Pool RAID Config

clarsas_archive 3+1, 4+1, 6+1, 8+1 RAID 5

clarsas_r6 4+2, 6+2, 12+2 RAID 6clarsas_r10 1+1 RAID 1/0

Flash Drives - CLEFDPool RAID Config

clarefd_r5 4+1, 8+1 RAID 5clarefd_r10 1+1 RAID 1/0


Mapped Pools


• When Pool LUNs are presented to the VNX File, a mapped pool is created by AVM The mapped pool is deleted when all Pool LUNs are removed from

the ~filestorage group Advanced Block storage features such as FAST-VP, Thin LUNs and

Compression are supported

MappedPool

1 : 1


Striping with Pool LUNs• Before striping, AVM will divide available Pool LUNs/dVols in

Thick and Thin groups• All Thick LUNs will be used first before using any Thin LUNs• Up to 5 dVols of the same size, data services, and SP balanced

will be striped, with a minimum of two


Stripe Stripe

Stripe Stripe

First 5

Then 4

Then 3

Then 2


Concatenating with Pool LUNs


• If AVM can’t find available LUNs of the same size for striping, then: Concatenate enough Thick LUNs to meet size requirements

If no Thick LUNs are available, use Thin LUNs

If not possible, put Thick and Thin together

• If that is not possible, file system creation/extension fails!

LUN1 LUN2LUN2

LUN1

LUN 1LUN 2

LUN 2

LUN 1

LUN 2

LUN1


AVM Considerations• All volumes of a file system must be stored on the same storage

system• AVM storage pools must contain only one disk type and cannot

be mixed, unless if using Pool LUNs

• When creating Pool LUNs: Pool LUN count should be divisible by 5 to assist AVM striping Balance SP ownership

• If File Thin Provisioning is desired, use a Thin Enabled file system on RAID Group LUNs or Thick LUNs, instead of Thin LUNs




During this lesson the following topics were covered:• UxFS file system• Automatic Volume Manager (AVM)• Storage pools

Lesson 1: Summary




This lesson covers the following topics:• VNX automatic file system extension feature• VNX file system thin provisioning feature• File system deduplication• Provisioning Monitoring

Lesson 2: File System Features



Auto Extend Overview• AVM automatically extends a file system based on High Water Mark

Enabled at creation time or at a later time via the file system properties page



File System Extension Process• Another slice is taken from the same stripe volume, if possible, to

create another metavolume


s69 20 GB slice

v110 20 GB meta

v10780 GB stripe

s71 20 GB slice

v117 20 GB meta

File System


Auto Extend Considerations• All file system commands are blocked until file system extension

is complete

• Auto extend options may only be modified if file system is mounted read/write on the Data Mover

• Enabling automatic file system extension does not reserve space in the storage pool Administrators need to ensure there is enough space in the pool

for file system extension



Thin Provisioning Overview• Allocate file system storage on a need basis

File system grows on demand as data is being written

• Auto Extend must be enabled to use thin provisioning on a file system Max Capacity must be specified

• NFS/CIFS clients and applications will see the virtual maximum size instead of the actual allocated size



Configuring Thin Provisioning



File Deduplication Overview• Deduplicate and compress

redundant data at the file-level If two or more files are

identical, only one instance of the file will be used

Increased storage efficiency

• File system must have at least 1 MB of free space

• Active files will not be deduplicated


File A

File A

File A

File B

File BActive

File

File C

File B

File A

File C

File A

File A

File A

File C

File B

File B


File Deduplication Policy Engine• The File Data Deduplication policy engine specifies which data to

be processed based on the file’s: Modification time - at least 15 days Last access time - at least 15 days Size - 24KB to 8TB File extension

• None of the file’s metadata (attributes, name, timestamps) is affected by the deduplication process



Deduplication Walkthrough


1. Eligible? (policy check) 2. Copy, compress, and hash.3. Redundant? (hash check) 4. Write hash, erase file, leave stub.

YES

Production File System

PP1FED81

Hidden Store

Hash Table

NO

PP1FED81

Policy Engine


Deduplication Walkthrough (continued)


PP1FED81

Hidden Store

Hash Table

HG3FEF23

PP1FED81

1. Eligible? (policy check) 2. Copy, compress, and hash.3. Redundant? (hash check)4. Write hash, erase file, leave stub.

NO

YES

HG3FEF23HG3FEF23

Policy Engine





PP1FED81

Hidden Store

Hash Table

HG3FEF23

PP1FED81

HG3FEF23HG3FEF23

1. Eligible? (policy check) Size is too small

NO

Policy Engine





PP1FED81

Hidden Store

Hash Table

HG3FEF23

PP1FED81

HG3FEF23HG3FEF23

1. Eligible? (policy check) Access time check did not pass, this is an active file

NO

Policy Engine





PP1FED81

Hidden Store

Hash Table

HG3FEF23

PP1FED81

HG3FEF23HG3FEF23

1. Eligible? (policy check) 2. Copy, compress, and hash.3. Redundant? (hash check) 4. Erase file, leave stub.

YES

YES

Policy Engine



File Deduplication Considerations• Increase storage efficiency by running File Deduplication on:

Secondary or archival data if the primary storage has a short retention period

Both primary and secondary data if there is a longer primary storage retention period

• Heavy utilized Data Movers will take longer to deduplicate files Use file extension to limit the deduplication on non-compressible,

non-duplicate files

• A deduplicated file system may be backed up and restored using NDMP Volume Based Backup without any re-duplication of files



Provisioning Monitoring


• System > Monitoring and Alerts > Statistics for File• Three weeks worth of data• Able to export or print data



During this lesson the following topics were covered:• VNX automatic file system extension feature• VNX file system thin provisioning feature• File system deduplication• Provisioning Monitoring

Lesson 2: Summary




This lesson covers the following topics:• File system size considerations• File system creation with AVM• View existing file systems• Extending a file system manually• Renaming an existing file system• Delete a file system

Lesson 3: Creating File Systems



Size Considerations


• New and existing file systems can be extended up to 16 TB file system size

• Minimum size of 2 MB per file system

File System size

• 2048 per Data Mover• 4096 per cabinet

Maximum number of File Systems


Viewing Existing File Systems• Storage > Storage Configuration > File Systems



File System Creation



File System Properties



File System Volumes



VNX File System Wizard



Extending File Systems



Extending File Systems (continued)• A new metavolume was created (v117) and concatenated to the

original v110 metavolume



Renaming a File System• A file system may be renamed after it has been created,

mounted, or exported Renaming is done from the Properties page File system mountpoint and export will still need to be renamed


filesystem_8


Deleting a File System• After an AVM file system is deleted, underlying volume structure

is also deleted and storage is returned to the pool




During this lesson the following topics were covered:• File system size considerations• File system creation with AVM• View existing file systems• Extending a file system manually• Renaming an existing file system• Delete a file system

Lesson 3: Summary




This lesson covers the following topics:• Obtain status on a file system• File system capacity management• Evaluating file systems status

Lesson 4: File System Administration

46Configuring File Systems


VNX File System Statistics



Capacity Management

48

• 26 weeks of historical usage data

• Graph and properties can be printed

• Graph usage data can be exported as CSV file



server_stats Overview• Provides real-time

performance statistics for a specified Data Mover, including file systems CLI only

• Displayed in a time-series style Statistics are displayed at the

end of each polling interval

49

-monitor basic-std-monitor cifs-std-monitor nfs-std-monitor caches-std-monitor netDevices-

std-monitor diskVolumes-

std-monitor

metaVolumes-std-monitor cifsOps-std-monitor nfsOps-std



server_stats Command Syntax

50

[nasadmin@VNXB ~]$ server_statsUSAGE:server_stats <movername> -list | -info [-all|<statpath_name>[,...]] | -service { -start [-port <port_number>] | -stop | -delete | -status } | -monitor -action {status|enable|disable} |[ [{ -monitor {statpath_name|statgroup_name}[,...] | -monitor {statpath_name|statgroup_name} [-sort <field_name>] [-order {asc|desc}] [-lines <lines_of_output>] }...] [-count <count>] [-interval <seconds>] [-terminationsummary {no|yes|only}] [-format {text [-titles {never|once|<repeat_frequency>}]|csv}] [-type {rate|diff|accu}] [-file <output_filepath> [-overwrite]] ]



server_stats Example: Disk Volume Analysis

51

server_5 dVol Queue Read Read Avg Read Write Write Avg WriteTimestamp Depth KiB/s Ops/s Size KiB/s Ops/s Size Bytes BytesAverage NBS1 0 1 0 8192 40 1 27397 root_ldisk 0 0 0 - 30838 834 39066 NBS5 0 0 0 - 0 0 - NBS6 0 0 0 - 0 0 - d9 0 123 15 8192 8478 860 8191 d10 0 98 12 8192 6590 824 8192 d11 0 121 15 8192 8039 1005 8191 d38 0 128 16 8192 8503 1062 8196 d39 0 99 12 8192 6593 824 8194 d40 0 125 16 8192 8043 1004 8202 d15 0 128 16 8192 8493 1062 8192 d16 0 100 12 8192 6616 827 8193 d17 0 125 16 8192 8046 1006 8192 d44 0 115 14 8192 8754 1093 8198 d45 0 92 11 8192 6816 852 8192 d46 0 114 14 8192 8208 824 8205 d21 0 98 12 8192 6581 822 8194

$ server_stats server_5 -m diskVolumes-std -i 10 -c 6



Storage Pool Reporting

52

$ nas_pool -info id=48id = 48name = File Pooldescription = Mapped Pool File Pool on FNM00130702376acl = 0in_use = Trueclients = fs15,fs16,vpfs15,root_fs_vdm_VDM01,fs12members = v107,v111storage_system(s) = FNM00130702376default_slice_flag = Trueis_user_defined = Falsethin = Falsetiering_policy = Auto-Tier/Highest Available Tiercompressed = Falsemirrored = Falsedisk_type = Mixedserver_visibility = server_2,server_3volume_profile = File Pool_vpis_dynamic = Trueis_greedy = N/Anum_stripe_members = 5stripe_size = 262144[nasadmin@VNXB ~]$

$ nas_pool -size id=48id = 48name = File Poolused_mb = 41088avail_mb = 9435558total_mb = 9476646potential_mb = 0

[nasadmin@VNXB ~]$




During this lesson the following topics were covered:• Obtain status on a file system• File system capacity management• Evaluating file systems status

Lesson 4: Summary



SummaryKey points covered in this module:• File Systems can be created with Automatic Volume Manager • The types of VNX volumes that can be created are slice, stripe and

metavolumes• Storage Pools are containers that holds storage ready for use by file

systems• Auto-extend feature allows the size of the file system to increase

automatically • Virtual Provisioning grows the file system gradually on an as-needed

basis • File system deduplication increases storage efficiency• VNX File statistics and server_stats may be used to monitor file

systems


configuring file systems

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