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Set a throughput floor with QoS

Contributors netapp-thomi netapp-ahibbard

You can use the min-throughput field for a policy group to define a throughput floor for storage object workloads (QoS Min). You can apply the policy group when you create or modify the storage object. Beginning with ONTAP 9.8, you can specify the throughput floor in IOPS or MBps, or IOPS and MBps.

Before you begin
  • You must be running ONTAP 9.2 or later. Throughput floors are available beginning with ONTAP 9.2.

  • You must be a cluster administrator to create a policy group.

  • Beginning in ONTAP 9.13.1, you can enforce throughput floors at the SVM level using an adaptive policy group template. You cannot set an adaptive policy group template on an SVM with a QoS policy group.

About this task
  • Beginning with ONTAP 9.4, you can use a non-shared QoS policy group to specify that the defined throughput floor be applied to each member workload individually. This is the only condition in which a policy group for a throughput floor can be applied to multiple workloads.

    Set -is-shared=false for the qos policy-group create command to specify a non-shared policy group.

  • Throughput to a workload might fall below the specified floor if there is insufficient performance capacity (headroom) on the node or aggregate.

  • A storage object that is subject to a QoS limit must be contained by the SVM to which the policy group belongs. Multiple policy groups can belong to the same SVM.

  • It is a QoS best practice to apply a policy group to the same type of storage objects.

  • A policy group that defines a throughput floor cannot be applied to an SVM.

Steps
  1. Check for adequate performance capacity on the node or aggregate, as described in Identifying remaining performance capacity.

  2. Create a policy group:

    qos policy-group create -policy group policy_group -vserver SVM -min-throughput qos_target -is-shared true|false

    For complete command syntax, see the man page for your ONTAP release. You can use the qos policy-group modify command to adjust throughput floors.

    The following command creates the shared policy group pg-vs2 with a minimum throughput of 1,000 IOPS:

    cluster1::> qos policy-group create -policy group pg-vs2 -vserver vs2 -min-throughput 1000iops -is-shared true

    The following command creates the non-shared policy group pg-vs4 without a throughput limit:

    cluster1::> qos policy-group create -policy group pg-vs4 -vserver vs4 -is-shared false
  3. Apply a policy group to a volume or LUN:

    storage_object create -vserver SVM -qos-policy-group policy_group

    For complete command syntax, see the man pages. You can use the _storage_object_modify command to apply a different policy group to the storage object.

    The following command applies policy group pg-app2 to the volume app2:

    cluster1::> volume create -vserver vs2 -volume app2 -aggregate aggr1 -qos-policy-group pg-app2
  4. Monitor policy group performance:

    qos statistics performance show

    For complete command syntax, see the man page.

    Note

    Monitor performance from the cluster. Do not use a tool on the host to monitor performance.

    The following command shows policy group performance:

    cluster1::> qos statistics performance show
    Policy Group           IOPS      Throughput   Latency
    -------------------- -------- --------------- ----------
    -total-                 12316       47.76MB/s  1264.00us
    pg_app2                  7216       28.19MB/s   420.00us
    _System-Best-Effort        62       13.36KB/s     4.13ms
    _System-Background         30           0KB/s        0ms
  5. Monitor workload performance:

    qos statistics workload performance show

    For complete command syntax, see the man page.

    Note

    Monitor performance from the cluster. Do not use a tool on the host to monitor performance.

    The following command shows workload performance:

    cluster1::> qos statistics workload performance show
    Workload          ID     IOPS      Throughput    Latency
    --------------- ------ -------- ---------------- ----------
    -total-              -    12320        47.84MB/s  1215.00us
    app2-wid7967      7967     7219        28.20MB/s   319.00us
    vs1-wid12279     12279     5026        19.63MB/s     2.52ms
    _USERSPACE_APPS     14       55        10.92KB/s   236.00us
    _Scan_Backgro..   5688       20            0KB/s        0ms
    Note

    You can use the qos statistics workload latency show command to view detailed latency statistics for QoS workloads.