inode full ~ When does performance suffer or what are the effects

NairAJ — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:41:08 GMT

Hi,

Evironment:- FAS8040

Version 8.2.4 7-Mode.

We hit almost a 180Million files/inodes now on one of the volumes.

We can increase it but wants to know upto what number we can increase and when it will start affecting the filers performance.

Any suggestion ?

Thanks.

Re: inode full ~ When does performance suffer or what are the effects

GidonMarcus — Wed, 23 May 2018 23:28:57 GMT

i think that in general you are safe

this article is pretty old and state 2 billion files are supported. if it tested on these old platforms mentioned in the article, it would probably be ok for your large memory beast 🙂

https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1196906/html/GUID-AA1419CF-50AB-41FF-A73C-C401741C847C.html

but i checked and it's still the number in ontap 9 documentation

There's a few internals that i can think of that are depended on file count.

1. Quota. re-initialize quota on volumes with large numbers of file can take hours.

2. Snap vault. transer time can take longer.

3. deswizzling. when large snapshot deleted (happens after snapmirror transfer for example) the disswizler have to run on all the inodes. if you have frequent replication. the scan may never end as it re-starts after each snapshot deletion.

Gidi

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inode full ~ When does performance suffer or what are the effects

Re: inode full ~ When does performance suffer or what are the effects