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Analyze inactive ONTAP data with inactive data reporting

Contributors netapp-lenida netapp-dbagwell netapp-aherbin
PDFs

Seeing how much data in a volume is inactive enables you to make good use of storage tiers. Information in inactive data reporting helps you decide which aggregate to use for FabricPool, whether to move a volume in to or out of FabricPool, or whether to modify the tiering policy of a volume.

What you'll need

You must be running ONTAP 9.4 or later to use the inactive data reporting functionality.

About this task

  • Inactive data reporting is not supported on some aggregates.

    You cannot enable inactive data reporting when FabricPool cannot be enabled, including the following instances:

    • Root aggregates

    • MetroCluster aggregates running ONTAP versions earlier than 9.7

    • Flash Pool (hybrid aggregates, or SnapLock aggregates)

  • Inactive data reporting is enabled by default on aggregates where any volumes have adaptive compression enabled.

  • Inactive data reporting is enabled by default on all SSD aggregates in ONTAP 9.6.

  • Inactive data reporting is enabled by default on FabricPool aggregate in ONTAP 9.4 and ONTAP 9.5.

  • You can enable inactive data reporting on non-FabricPool aggregates using the ONTAP CLI, including HDD aggregates, beginning with ONTAP 9.6.

Procedure

You can determine how much data is inactive with ONTAP System Manager or the ONTAP CLI.

System Manager

  1. Choose one of the following options:

    • When you have existing HDD aggregates, navigate to Storage > Tiers and click Menu options icon for the aggregate on which you want to enable inactive data reporting.

    • When no cloud tiers are configured, navigate to Dashboard and click the Enable inactive data reporting link under Capacity.

CLI
To enable inactive data reporting with the CLI:

  1. If the aggregate for which you want to see inactive data reporting is not used in FabricPool, enable inactive data reporting for the aggregate by using the storage aggregate modify command with the -is-inactive-data-reporting-enabled true parameter.

    cluster1::> storage aggregate modify -aggregate aggr1 -is-inactive-data-reporting-enabled true

    You need to explicitly enable the inactive data reporting functionality on an aggregate that is not used for FabricPool.

    You cannot and do not need to enable inactive data reporting on a FabricPool-enabled aggregate because the aggregate already comes with inactive data reporting. The -is-inactive-data-reporting-enabled parameter does not work on FabricPool-enabled aggregates.

    The -fields is-inactive-data-reporting-enabled parameter of the storage aggregate show command shows whether inactive data reporting is enabled on an aggregate.

  2. To display how much data is inactive on a volume, use the volume show command with the -fields performance-tier-inactive-user-data,performance-tier-inactive-user-data-percent parameter.

    cluster1::> volume show -fields performance-tier-inactive-user-data,performance-tier-inactive-user-data-percent

vserver volume performance-tier-inactive-user-data performance-tier-inactive-user-data-percent
------- ------ ----------------------------------- -------------------------------------------
vsim1   vol0   0B                                  0%
vs1     vs1rv1 0B                                  0%
vs1     vv1    10.34MB                             0%
vs1     vv2    10.38MB                             0%
4 entries were displayed.

    • The performance-tier-inactive-user-data field displays how much user data stored in the aggregate is inactive.

    • The performance-tier-inactive-user-data-percent field displays what percent of the data is inactive across the active file system and Snapshot copies.

    • For an aggregate that is not used for FabricPool, inactive data reporting uses the tiering policy to decide how much data to report as cold.

      • For the none tiering policy, 31 days is used.

      • For the snapshot-only and auto, inactive data reporting uses tiering-minimum-cooling-days.

      • For the ALL policy, inactive data reporting assumes the data will tier within a day.

        Until the period is reached, the output shows “-” for the amount of inactive data instead of a value.

    • On a volume that is part of FabricPool, what ONTAP reports as inactive depends on the tiering policy that is set on a volume.

      • For the none tiering policy, ONTAP reports the amount of the entire volume that is inactive for at least 31 days. You cannot use the -tiering-minimum-cooling-days parameter with the none tiering policy.

      • For the ALL, snapshot-only, and auto tiering policies, inactive data reporting is not supported.