topic Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules in ONTAP Discussions

ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JarkSupport — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 22:11:02 GMT

Hi,

We have a pair of Netapp FAS2220-2 filers with the DS shelves. We have never had any reallocation scheduling setup and our partner has not configured this from day 1, we are now over a year since install and suffering performance issues. I have read up about reallocation, read-reallocation, space optimization, extent etc but i`m not 100% sure what the best practises are. I`m also not sure about wether to reallocate on a deduplicated volume or not. Some of our volumes are deduplicated and some are not (those with exchange db and SQL db).... What`s the best way to handle this? I have ran some measures on the volumes, some are showing as high as 8 with hotspots.

Regards,

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JGPSHNTAP — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 15:15:45 GMT

Whats to assume that you need to re-allocate..

You need to run a reallocate measure to see if you require it..

Also, look at tr-3929

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JarkSupport — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 15:22:09 GMT

Sure 🙂

What i`d like to understand is what schedule should i perform on all of my volumes and should i be reallocating on deduplicated volumes as well? Additionally any advise on reallocate read / space optimization / extent would also be appreciated.

Regards,

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JGPSHNTAP — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 15:44:54 GMT

You did not answer my first question. Have you added any disks? And did you run re-allocate measure?

Also, it seems they pulled 3929, but see if you can find it online and take a read thru of it

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JarkSupport — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 15:50:56 GMT

Didn`t see a question? No disks have been added. Sure, i`m running the measures now on all the volumes, some are showing 6+

link for the working 3929: ftp://190.151.85.37/netapp/TR-3929.pdf

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JGPSHNTAP — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 16:00:32 GMT

IM sorry, I thought I asked if Disks' were added, but I didn't until later..

Also, as per the TR, the associated aggr option needs to be set with the vol option.

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JarkSupport — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 16:07:36 GMT

no worries 🙂

Sorry what command?

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JGPSHNTAP — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 16:12:17 GMT

from doc

3.4 Free Space Reallocate and Read Reallocate
When enabling free space reallocation on an aggregate, also consider enabling read reallocate
space_optimized for the volumes in the aggregate. The two are complementary technologies that help
maintain optimal layout. Read reallocate will optimize the system for sequential reads on the fly, while
free space reallocate will optimize for writes.

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

JarkSupport — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 16:17:09 GMT

Are those ok to run on:

deduplicated volumes

Exchange and SQL volumes? What are the pro`s and con`s?

regards,

pete.

Re: ONTAP 8.1.4P9 Reallocation and Schedules

aborzenkov — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 04:24:12 GMT

Reallocation helps in two case - it optimized data layout (reduces fragmentation) and optimize sequential workload.

The former is inherent problem of any redirect-on-write filesystem. The latter depends on your use case, although in most cases you always have some sequential workload (even if you use snapshots for backup, you probably want to verify them and that does sequential scan).

De duplication unfortunately convicts with reallocation. Reallocation aligns blocks belonging to the same file, but decuplicYrd blocks may belong to multiple files, so which one should win? You still may want to use free space reallocation to optimize raid layout though.