inode count on volume

[VKALVEMULA]

did any see thw case where volume ran out of inodes.

-- did you increase the vol size or

   just increased the inode count, if so any perf issues.

[nitish]

Generally, i increase the inode count. Never seen issues with performance.

[darraghos]

you need ot increase the inode count.

[scottgelb]

monitor with df -i, then increase with maxfiles... you can increase but can't decrease the inode count but I haven't seen any noticeable performance issues although it is one of the warnings

[VKALVEMULA]

increrased the maxfiles couple of days back..

but want to know any seen perf issues down the lane after 5-6 months later.

[scottgelb]

I haven’t noticed any…but good to use performance advisor and perfstat if you want baseline performance information.

[VKALVEMULA]

thanks. will keep an eye on those volumes and see how they are performing.

[SKC64750]

with Data ONTAP 8.0, you can decrease the maximum inode count as long as the new value is greater than the current inode allocation range.

[scottgelb]

Good point... I recently reviewed that in the release notes so any version higher than 8 can now lower the inodes which makes it a lot more flexible.

[SKC64750]

Hii scott, I have a question..In my earlier company we went till 95% aggr capacity and we dint go beyond that. In my new one, they are saying we cant go beyond 85% which affects performance. Is this true..If not whats the best practice..Does it depend on disk types?.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks,

Karthik C.S

[scottgelb]

85% is a good practice… the issue is any full file system will not perform as well.

[SKC64750]

Thanks guys...So all our aggregates on a box reached 85%, and a new volume has to be created, I cant delete snapshots as they are important, I cant add more disks as there are only two spares left..i reduced snap reserve to 0% on aggregate already..i cant reduce inode count too as it is already 92%...Does reducing the quota limits on the qtres will provide space on aggregate as our volumes are thick provisioned…so now what am I supposed to do other than putting that volume on other storage box.

-Karthik C.S

[scottgelb]

Changing tree quota limits will affect the user view but not the storage system used.

[AGUMADAVALLI]

Hi Karthik,

you don't have the options or setting to provide any space or inode's from the said the volume.  Try dedup too.

Please add new storage or create new volume on another storage.

thank you,

AK G

[SKC64750]

Yes the volume is already deduped and compressed too..So there aint any way other than adding more disks or moving volume to other storage box?

[scottgelb]

I don't see another way...and if you move a volume you have to wait for aggr snaps to roll off before the space will be given back...

[SKC64750]

cool..Thnx

[SKC64750]

Hii scott, we are planning to implement system analyzer in our environment for windows hosts. I see that it is used for ontap 7.2 or greater. So I am skeptical whether we can use it for ontap 8.1 7 mode and c-mode.

Thanks,

Karthik C.S

[AGUMADAVALLI]

Hi Karthik,

The best practice is 80% -85 %, but you can increase the inodes by maxfiles parameter. I doesn't depend on the disk type. General principle every 4KB block is 1 node.

Thank you,

AK G

[AGUMADAVALLI · Accepted solution]

Hi Reddy,

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.

thank you,

AK G

[DENISOZORIO]

Thanks man for this information.

Do you have any NetApp document mentioning this information ?