topic Re: What is the maximum inodes limit for a volume in ONTAP Hardware

What is the maximum inodes limit for a volume

kdvbhuvankumar — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:59:18 GMT

Hi,

Recently i faced a issue in my environment on 100% usage of inodes for a volume. I have increased the inodes limit from 32mil to 42mil. Can anyone help me how much more i can increase the inodes?What is the maximum inode limit we can assign for a volume? Will there be any performance impact after increasing the inodes? User requested to increase the inode limit to 128mil can i go for it? Suggest me on this.

Volume details:

Filesystem               total       used      avail capacity Mounted on
/vol/mfghist/           1833GB      955GB      877GB      52% /vol/mfghist/
snap reserve               0KB        0KB        0KB     ---% /vol/mfghist/..

Inode Details:

Filesystem iused ifree %iused Mounted on
/vol/mfghist/ 36568031 6308649 85% /vol/mfghist/

My Filer Details:

NetApp Release 7.3.3: Thu Mar 11 22:29:52 PST 2010

Model Name: FAS3040

Anymore information need please let me know as soon as possible.

Thanks,

Bhuvan

Re: What is the maximum inodes limit for a volume

scottgelb — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:43:08 GMT

There is a KB/Solution on the now site about maxfiles (inodes). The default is one inode for every 32k and you can increase up to one inode for every 4k. The easiest way to find the max inodes, is to try to set it to a huge unreasonable number and then you get a message back that it is too large and the message gives you the max number. Once you increase, you can't shrink the maxfiles, so often increment as many as you need or slightly over instead of doubling or maxing... I don't have performance metrics, but it will take some additional resources but you can look at current metrics to make sure your system is not at limits.

For example, maxfiles volname 99999999999999999999999999999999999 # will error and give you the max setting...but don't go that high.

Re: What is the maximum inodes limit for a volume

kdvbhuvankumar — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:36:54 GMT

Thanks Scott for your response. But still i am looking for correct answer, because i knew that 1node gives 34KB disk space but i have enough space in the disk as i pasted in my first discussion. I am looking for inode increase, if i increase to 128mil limit what could be the issue on filer side? and is it recommended to increase 128mil? if not give me other good solution to overcome from this issue and satisfy my customer, any more suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Re: What is the maximum inodes limit for a volume

lovik_netapp — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:43:01 GMT

Here are the KB articles taking about inode and max which can be set, hope it helps.

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=3010655

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&actp=LIST&id=1010665

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&actp=LIST&id=1010377

Cheers.

Re: What is the maximum inodes limit for a volume

lovik_netapp — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:48:14 GMT

WAFL will not allow to go beyond 1 inode per 4KB and it is not advisible to go beyond that due to performance reason so even if you go with workaround today you will face the heat of performance.

Re: What is the maximum inodes limit for a volume

pavangjakati — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:52:05 GMT

Simple concept: Each 4K block is 1 node. lets say you have 1TB volume, the number of inodes you can have is: (1024 * 1024 *1024)/4= 268435456 inodes. The best practice is use upto 75 to 85% of nodes of a volume. If you further need the inodes, you better increase the size of the volume and increase the inodes after the threshold is reached (85% inodes consumption).

First 1024 is GB and second 1024 is mb and third 1024 is KB - This is just a note.

I hope this is very clear to you