Managing the capacity of your storage infrastructure

What can you do with TrueSight Capacity Optimization?

As a Capacity Planner or storage Administrator, you can use TSCO to manage the capacity of your storage infrastructure.

TSCO enables you to collect and analyze data for the storage infrastructure elements.

Managing the capacity of storage infrastructure resources

You can analyze the capacity of your storage infrastructure resources by using the Storage views. For the infrastructure data to be available in the view, the storage Administrator must first set up the data source to collect data.

Step 1. Collect data and install the views

As a storage Administrator, use one or several of the following ETLs for data collection, depending on your infrastructure:

Storage - All-in-One Extractor Service

After data collection starts, data is loaded in the data warehouse daily and Indicators are available in the Workspace.

As an Administrator, you must install the Storage views and grant the necessary permissions to Capacity Planners and storage Administrators to access these views.

Step 2. Analize the collected data

The Storage-views provide a wide range of metrics to get an overview of the storage infrastructure usage and health:

Understand the usage and health of your storage systems

Review and analyze the Storage-Systems-page-in-the-Storage-Systems-view to understand the utilization and health of storage systems.

Analyzing Storage Capacity Utilization

Storage demand exponentially grew over the past years and lead to runaway storage costs. To control these costs, SAN administrators are asked to better plan for future capacity needs, which is almost impossible without a clear view of the storage capacity utilization. With the Storage view, administrators can analyze storage capacity utilization at the storage systems and at the storage pools levels.

At the storage systems level

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Verify the capacity of the storage systems and more specifically:
1. their overall size (Size metric).
2. their total space (Capacity metric).
3. the host visible capacity (Subscribed Capacity metric).
4. the total space not consumed (Available Capacity metric).
5. the space actually consumed (Consumed Capacity metric).
Click the storage system for which you wish to get more information.
Refer to the Storage Capacity graph to analyze the trend of your storage system utilization.
You can also download or saved this data for further analysis by clicking .

Based on the capacity information available, you can now plan for your current and future capacity needs.

At the storage pools level

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the Storage Pools tab.
If needed, apply filters.
Verify the capacity of your storage pools and more especially:
1. their overall size (Size metric).
2. their total space (Capacity metric).
3. the host visible capacity (Subscribed Capacity metric).
4. the total space not consumed (Available Capacity metric).
5. the space actually consumed (Consumed Capacity metric).
Click the storage pool for which you wish to get more information.
You can also download or saved this data for further analysis by clicking .

This capacity information will help you better control your storage costs.

Identify the storage pools with oversubscription risk

Review the Storage-Pools-page-in-the-Storage-Systems-view to identify the storage pools that are oversubscribed.

Identifying Oversubscription Risks

An oversubscription situation is automatically identified when:

the storage pool is configured for thin provisioning (“thin storage pool”)
the storage pool is oversubscribed, i.e. the total disk space visible to the hosts (subscribers) is greater than its actual capacity (this situation is normal for a thin pool since it is its very purpose)
the storage pool actual consumed capacity has crossed the configured threshold.

Such a situation is highly critical because the inability to allocate additional space to a volume when requested by the subscriber host will lead to catastrophic data loss and corruption.

The following video (1:54) illustrates how you can use the Storage views to easily identify future capacity saturations within storage pools that can help you to avoid and manage oversubscriptions risks.

https://youtu.be/l9Q2mxe6p60

To make sure no oversubscription situation is about to occur, administrators can check the Oversubscription Risk column available in the Storage Capacity View. By default, this metric displays:

"-" for non-thin pools
"No risk" for thin-pools that are not oversubscribed, i.e when the Storage Subscribed Capacity Percentage metric is lower than 100%.
"Warning" when the Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage metric is greater than or equal to 75% and the number of days before saturation is greater than or equal to 7.
"Critical" when the Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage metric is greater than or equal to 75% and the number of days before saturation is less than 7.

The threshold of the Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage metric can however be modified for each storage pool to warn administrators sooner about an oversubscription risk.

To customize the oversubscription risk

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the Storage Pools tab.
Click the storage pool for which you wish to create thresholds.
In the Related information section, click Thresholds.
If the oversubscription risk indicator has already been customized, the line Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage will appear in the Thresholds table:
1. Click the button to modify the threshold set for the Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage metric.
2. Modify the Good Threshold and Warn Threshold fields.
3. Click Save.
If the oversubscription risk indicator has not already been customized:
1. Click Add threshold.
2. In the Metric search field, type Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage.
3. Select Fixed value.
4. In the Good Threshold and Warn Threshold fields, enter the value of your choice. You can for example enter 50 and 60 so that a warning is triggered when the Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage is greater than or equal to 860% and the number of days before saturation is greater than or equal to 7 and a critical situation is indicated when the Storage Consumed Capacity Percentage is higher than 60% and the number of days before saturation is less than 7.
5. Click Save. As you can see in the example below, following this modification, the saturation risk for the DP Pool with a consumed capacity of 69% has changed to "17 days to saturation" and a warning is displayed in the Oversubscription Risk column.

To identify oversubscription situations

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the Storage Pools tab.
Filter the information displayed:
1. by storage system to only list the storage system for which you wish to study the storage pools.
2. by pool type to only display thin pools.
3. by oversubscription risk to only display thin pools for which the risk is critical.

You now have all the information required to prevent oversubscription situations and unrecoverable data loss and corruption.

Reclaiming the unused capacity of storage systems

Review and analyze the Storage-Volumes-page-in-the-Storage-Systems-view to identify the unmapped and unused volumes to reclaim the disk capacity.

Reclaiming Unused Storage Capacity

Over time, as servers connected to a SAN get decommissioned, administrators find an increasing number of unmapped volumes that are no longer used by any server. These volumes, while unused, still occupy disk space in the storage system. Being able to identify such unmapped volumes and reclaim the disk space uselessly consumed by these volumes will help administrators avoid unnecessary upgrades and extensions of their storage systems.

The following video (1:38) illustrates how you can use the Storage views to easily identify the unmapped and unused volumes that are allocated to decommissioned servers that can help you to reclaim unused storage capacity.

https://youtu.be/u6m3UFJvpig

Identifying unmapped volumes

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the Storage Volumes tab.
Display unmapped volumes:
1. Click next to No Mapped Filter and select Select Mapped Filter
2. Select Not Mapped
3. Click Apply.

You can now reclaim the disk space uselessly consumed by these volumes to avoid unnecessary upgrades and extensions.

Volumes might be tagged as Not Mapped but be required for the correct operation of the system.

Identifying unused volumes

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the Storage Volumes tab.
If needed, apply filters.
Apply a filter to the Time Since Last Activity column:
1. Click the Time Since Last Activity column
2. From the operator pull-down list, select equals.
3. Type the number of days required (e.g.: 30).
4. Click Filter.

The list of volumes that have not been used for 30 days is displayed. You can now take the necessary actions and reclaim the unused space.

The Time Since Last Activity metric is evaluated from the date the ETL was initially started.

Identify the storage pools with exhausting resources

Use the Storage-Pools-page-in-the-Storage-Systems-view to identify the storage pools that at a risk of being saturated.

Managing the future demand

Planning for Additional Storage Capacity

Administrators are not only asked to assign storage resources but also to plan for both current and future storage requirements. Because under-purchasing and over-purchasing capacity will respectively result in downtimes and wasted storage, both situations must be prevented. Smooth storage administration can only be achieved if administrators can answer the questions below:

With this information, they will be able to guarantee enough remaining space to answer allocation requests as quickly as possible.

When will storage pools be running out of capacity?

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the Storage Pools tab.
Verify the capacity of your storage pools and more especially:
1. their total space (Capacity metric).
2. the total space not consumed (Available Capacity metric).
3. the space actually consumed (Consumed Capacity metric).
Display storage pools that are at a risk of being saturated:
1. Click next to No Saturation Risk Filter and select Apply Saturation Risk Filter
2. Select Near saturation
3. Click Apply.

You will now be able to take the necessary actions at the right time to ensure that storage pools will never run out of capacity.

By how much the capacity of their storage pools must be extended to meet allocation requirements?

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the Storage Pools tab.
Click the storage pool of your choice to display its details and check its Consumed Capacity Trendline.

After completing the above steps, you should know exactly by how much the capacity of your storage pool needs to be extended.

Are there enough unused disks in the storage systems to extend the capacity of the existing storage pools?

Before purchasing additional space, administrators can also check if there are unused disks in their storage systems that could still be used to extend the capacity of the existing storage pools. To perform this verification:

Access the Storage Systems page:
1. Log on to the TrueSight console
2. In the Navigation pane, click Capacity > Storage > Storage Systems
Click the storage system for which you wish to check the number of unused disks.
In the Capacity Summary graph, check the value of the Available Capacity for Storage Pools metric.

You now know which disks can be used to extend the capacity of your storage pools.

For additional use cases, refer to the following pages: