topic Re: How to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3 in ONTAP Discussions

How to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3

pedro_rocha — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:57:25 GMT

Hello,

Does anyone know the best way to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3?

I know that from 9.4 there's the feature "-is-inactive-data-reporting-enabled" for the aggregates. But 9.3 don't.

Regards,

Pedro

Re: How to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3

TMACMD — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 03:41:21 GMT

That was only available in 9.4 for SSD aggregates only (not hdd and not hybrid).

I believe in ONTAP 9.6, inactive data reporting was enabled for any aggregate.

So, if you aggr is SSD, you need to upgrade to 9.4. If it is HDD or HDD w/FlashPool, then upgrade to ONTAP 9.6 (or 9.7)

Re: How to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3

pedro_rocha — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 11:21:55 GMT

Thanks for the reply, but I believe since 9.4 it is possible to enable it (-is-inactive-data-reporting-enabled) for any aggregate in order to predict space savings.

This system cannot go beyond 9.3 because of legacy IOM3s... I guess we'll need to check for activity with monitoring tools to guess what is inactive though.

Regards,

Pedro

Re: How to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3

parisi — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 13:36:08 GMT

What TMac was saying is that it was in 9.4, but only for SSDs.

Later releases allow you to use HDD for inactive data reporting (IDR).

There is an offbox option for inactive data using XCP (free at http://xcp.netapp.com/).

With XCP 1.6.1 you can either enable File System Analytics (which will scan the data and report on cold data) or you can run the following command:

xcp scan -match "((now-x.atime) / 3600) > 31*day" "

The downside is that it's file-based rather than block based, so it won't be exactly the same as IDR, but close.

Re: How to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3

parisi — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 13:38:10 GMT

Here are the caveats for inactive data reporting:

• IDR is enabled by default on all SSD aggregates in ONTAP 9.6.
• IDR is enabled by default on FabricPool aggregates in ONTAP 9.4 and ONTAP 9.5.
• IDR can be enabled on non-FabricPool aggregates using the ONTAP CLI. This includes HDD aggregates starting in ONTAP 9.6.
• IDR cannot be enabled for situations in which FabricPool cannot be enabled: for example, root aggregates, Flash Pool or Hybrid aggregates, and so on.

Re: How to check for inactive data on ONTAP 9.3

TMACMD — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 13:43:05 GMT

Thanks @parisi . To further clarify:

ONTAP release notes

See the very bottom of page 45.