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Analyze inactive ONTAP data with inactive data reporting

Contributors netapp-lenida netapp-aaron-holt netapp-dbagwell johnlantz netapp-bhouser netapp-aherbin
PDFs

Inactive data reporting (IDR) is an excellent tool for determining the amount of inactive (cold) data that can be tiered from a local tier.

By default, IDR uses a 31-day cooling period to determine what data is considered inactive. The amount of cold data that is tiered is dependent on the tiering policies set on volumes. In releases earlier than ONTAP 9.8, IDR used a fixed 31-day cooling period.

Before you begin

ONTAP 9.4

  • IDR is enabled by default on all FabricPool aggregates.

  • IDR can be enabled on non-FabricPool SSD aggregates.

ONTAP 9.6

  • IDR is enabled by default on all non-FabricPool SSD aggregates.

  • IDR can be enabled on non-FabricPool HDD aggregates.

ONTAP 9.8

  • IDR cooling period can be adjusted using the volume -tiering-minimum-cooling-days setting.

About this task

  • IDR reports on inactive data that can be tiered, not inactive data that has been tiered. If FabricPool has been enabled and inactive data has been tiered out it will it will no longer be reported by IDR.

Note

Although IDR is enabled by default on all SSD aggregates (ONTAP 9.6 and later), if a client workload needs 90% of system resources, IDR is automatically turns off, resetting cooling days to zero. If this happens, IDR does not automatically turn back on.

To avoid automated process shutting off IDR in order to free up resources for other workloads, manually enable -is-inactive-data-reporting-enabled to true.

  • Inactive data reporting when FabricPool cannot be enabled, including the following instances:

    • Root aggregates

    • Aggregates that contain volumes using a space guarantee other than none. (Thick-provisioned volumes are not supported.)

    • MetroCluster aggregates running ONTAP versions earlier than 9.7

    • Flash Pool (hybrid aggregates, or SnapLock aggregates)

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 snapshots.

    • 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.

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