topic Purge deleted object from DFM in Active IQ Unified Manager Discussions

Purge deleted object from DFM

ZARNOVICAN — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:08:29 GMT

Hi,

we are seeing a large portion of DFM database objects marked as deleted.

# dfm qtree list | wc -l

# dfm qtree list -a | wc -l

540

# dfm lun list | wc -l

# dfm lun list -a | wc -l

536

This is for us a normal operation that LUNs are created and deleted frequently. The above ration was created during last two months since we started using Netapp LUNs for Openstack storage.

I found other posts stating that you cannot easily purge deleted volumes

https://communities.netapp.com/message/71484

https://communities.netapp.com/message/72050

# dfm about

Version 5.1 (5.1)

Executable Type 64-bit

Serial Number 1-50-134097

Edition Standard edition of DataFabric Manager server

Data ONTAP Operating Mode 7-Mode

# du -sh /opt/NTAPdfm/data/ /opt/NTAPdfm/perfdata/

136M /opt/NTAPdfm/data/

1011M /opt/NTAPdfm/perfdata/

Questions:

* Those posts are about a year old. Do they still hold true ? Is the "dfm volume delete -f" still a most elegant way to permanently delete object in v5.1 ? I presume that corresponding -f flag exists also for qtree and lun.

* We have a control over SOAP calls to DFM that do LUN deletion. Is there a way in SOAP to specify that I want to permanently delete the LUN also from DFM database ? I haven't found it..

* The size of our db backup is growing rapidly. Can we at least remove perfdata from backup ?

Thanks,

Brano Zarnovican

Re: Purge deleted object from DFM

adaikkap — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 04:45:33 GMT

Hi Brano,

The product doesn't do it on a periodic basis even in version 5.1. But we have done quite a bit of improvement in in OCUM 5.2 during the upgrade process were we purge all these stale instances and keep the embedded db in clean state.

For versions until 5.1 we have a utility called dfmpurge which will remove all these stale instances but requires down time. The utility has 2 modes and gives the estimation of downtime required as well. In most cases it shouldn't take more than 30mins to cleanup.

Pls take a look at this video ( 3.43 Mins) and read the KB on how this tool works.

Video Link: DFM Purge Tool: How to Video

KB link: https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=1014077

Link to tool chest: http://support.netapp.com/NOW/download/tools/dfmpurge/

Regards

adai

Re: Purge deleted object from DFM

ZARNOVICAN — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:18:47 GMT

Thanks Adai,

I will try dfmpurge during some maintenance window. Here is the 'report' output FYI

Object Type Older than 3 days Older than 7 days

----------- ------------------ ------------------

Lun Path 453 ( 94%) 421 ( 87%)

Qtree 420 ( 93%) 387 ( 86%)

Volume 26 (100%) 24 ( 92%)

Initiator Group 0 ( 0%) 0 ( 0%)

Regards,

Brano Zarnovican

Re: Purge deleted object from DFM

adaikkap — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 04:00:30 GMT

Hi Brano,

A good idea to run the tool is when you have atlesat as much deleted objects as your live objects. The reason I say this is because you need to schedule a downtime.

So its worth doing it when you get the most out of it. In order to help you find that the KB article under section 5.2 says the following.

You can find the number of current live objects of each type in your DFM server by going to the group summary page as below

http://<your dfm server name-or-ip>:8080/dfm/ -or- https://<your dfm server name-or-ip>:8443/dfm/

Regards

adai

Re: Purge deleted object from DFM

jcbettinelli — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:40:12 GMT

Hello,

Is there a way to monitor the progress of "dfm database reload"?

I can't see any process running using the "Windows Task Manager".

A db engine was running for a while, but I can't see it anymore.

Is there any log or process to monitor the progress?

Thanks in advance,

Jean-Christophe

Re: Purge deleted object from DFM

adaikkap — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 01:20:08 GMT

Hi Jean,

Typically the db-reload time is included in the purge estimation itself. You can monitor the progress of the db reload in the following files.

The unload of tables can be monitored by 'tail -f' on <inst>/log/dbunload.log

Regards

adai