The ability to modify PA data retention levels is useful for:
- Trending. Specifically, establishing performance profiles for applications.
- Managing space that PA data consumes. Although a weeks worth of data for volumes won't take up much space, a years worth of data for nodes is too much.
- Unexpected requests for data. Many times our business units and/or application owners ask for data from months ago during a critical period of time that is useful to them.
Retaining PA data for a week is simply too short while retaining it for a year may be too long and might consume too much disk space. Bottom line is I need the ability to control PA data retention for all objects so I can balance my needs and the needs of my customers with realistic OnCommand filesystem space consumption.
Moving to CDOT is challenging enough without a direct upgrade path for existing 7mode arrays but losing critical functionality in the supporting toolsets like this raises other more fundamental concerns. As an example, the OCUM 6.x line at this time lacks so much functionality (e.g., reporting, resource groups, comment fields) that we can't even consider using it until many of these features reappear. So to see this type of thing crop up in the 5.x line really concerns me.