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ONTAP Technical Reports

Monitor maxfiles, EMS events, and ONTAP enhancements

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Monitor both current public-inode use and the public inode file's allocated high-water capacity. Use EMS events to detect exhaustion and constituent imbalance.

callhome.no.inodes

This ERROR event indicates that a volume is out of inodes. New file-system objects cannot be created until inodes are made available or the configured maximum is increased. Check files, files-used, files-maximum-possible, and volume capacity before changing the limit.

FlexGroup constituent events

  • fg.inodes.member.nearlyFull indicates that a constituent is almost out of inodes. ONTAP directs fewer creates to that constituent, potentially affecting distribution and performance.

  • fg.inodes.member.full indicates that a constituent has run out of inodes and cannot accept new files.

  • fg.inodes.member.allOK indicates that the conditions that raised the nearly-full or full events no longer apply.

For FlexGroup events, investigate constituent distribution as well as FlexGroup-level totals. Raise the FlexGroup file allowance rather than attempting to set files directly on one constituent. A constituent that is out of data capacity can make the whole FlexGroup report ENOSPC and can even fail ls; see FlexGroup constituent out of space.

Monitoring example

Use the CLI to view the public ceiling and current use:

volume show -vserver <svm> -volume <volume> -fields files,files-used

At advanced privilege, include the maximum possible value and allocated public inode-file capacity:

set -privilege advanced
volume show -vserver <svm> -volume <volume> -fields files,files-used,files-maximum-possible,files-set-maximum,inodefile-public-capacity

volume show-space -vserver <svm> -volume <volume>

Use the REST API to retrieve the public files ceiling and current use:

GET /api/storage/volumes?name=<volume>&fields=files

The REST files.maximum and files.used fields correspond to CLI files and files-used. Use the advanced CLI field for inodefile-public-capacity.

files-used includes public ACL inodes, named streams, stream directories, public directory indexes, and other public objects. volume show does not provide a separate ACL-inode counter.

Track both current use and inode-file capacity. A low files-used value after a large deletion does not mean that inode-file capacity has been returned.

ONTAP release Functionality

Earlier ONTAP 9 releases

Administrators can inspect files and files-used and set a specific -files value. The default automatic value historically stopped growing at 21,251,126 when volume size reached approximately 680 GB; this was a default-sizing plateau, not the maximum configurable value.

ONTAP 9.9.1

Added -files-set-maximum true, a one-shot action that sets files to the current files-maximum-possible. See Setting files to the maximum up front.

ONTAP 9.13.1

Automatic default inode sizing continues as volumes grow beyond the earlier approximately 21-million plateau.

ONTAP 9.17.1

Added the option to place and migrate directory-index inodes into public inode space. See About private and public index inodes.

Release support and limits can vary by platform and volume type. Verify behavior in the command reference for the ONTAP release in use.

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