So we had a bunch of flexible volumes, all mounted via nfs:
/vol/vm_dns
/vol/vm_vpn
/vol/vm_misc
In order to deduplicate them on DataONTAP 7.3.3, we jammed them all into a single volume:
/vol/vms/vm_dns
/vol/vms/vm_vpn
/vol/vms/vm_misc
And that worked, but now we're really feeling the cost.
First, copying a qtree takes radically longer than copying the same size volume. A second our storage is no longer independent. We had a snap mirror slowdown, and all of a sudden each of the qtrees got the lesser of their quota or the overall available volume size (in other words, all the vm's ran to 0% disk space all at once). And we no longer have the same tools to view the volumes (e.g. vol status, df, etc.).
Other than monitoring disk space better... is there anything we can do to regain the waffly goodness of individual volumes for each of our VM's?