Why Managing Snapshot Reserve is Important …

… and what can happen if snapshot utilization is left unchecked!

This post is essentially a continuation of Understanding NetApp Snapshots (was thinking to call it part II except this subject deserves its own title!) Here we’ll see what happens when snapshots exceed their snapshot reserve, and what can potentially happen if snapshots are allowed to build up too much.

At the end of the aforementioned post, we had our 1024MB volume with 0MB file-system space used, and 20MB of snapshot reserve used. The volume has a 5% snapshot reserve (for completeness: it is also thin-provisioned/space-guarantee=none, and has a 0% fractional reserve.)

Filesystem               total   used   avail capacity
/vol/cdotshare/          972MB    0MB   972MB       0%
/vol/cdotshare/.snapshot  51MB   20MB    30MB      40%

Our client sees an empty volume (share) of size 972MB (95% of 1024MB).

Image: Empty Share
What does the client see if we increase the snapshot reserve to 20%?

::> volume modify cdotshare -percent-snapshot-space 20

Image: Empty Share but less user visible space due to increased snapshot reserve
Our client sees the volume size has reduced to 819MB (80% of 1024MB).
So, we now have 204MB of snapshot reserve with 20MB of that reserve used.

::> df -megabyte cdotshare
Filesystem               total       used      avail capacity
/vol/cdotshare/          819MB        0MB      819MB       0%
/vol/cdotshare/.snapshot 204MB       21MB      183MB      10%

What happens if we overfill the snapshot reserve to say 200% (408MB) by adding data, creating snapshot, and then deleing all the data? What does the client see?

Step 1: Add ~380MB to the share via the client
Step 2: Take a snapshot

::> snapshot create cdotshare -snapshot snap04 -vserver vs1

Step 3: Using the client, delete everything in the share so the additional 380MB is also locked in snapshots

So, our snapshot capacity is now at 200% (that’s twice its reserve) and the “df” output shows there’s only 613MB available user capacity.

Filesystem               total       used      avail capacity
/vol/cdotshare/          819MB      205MB      613MB      25%
/vol/cdotshare/.snapshot 204MB      410MB        0MB     200%

The 613MB available user capacity is confirmed via the client, even though volume is actually empty.

Image: Share now occupied but not by active file-system data
Image: The share says it is empty!
If you ever get questions like “my volume’s empty but something’s using up my space - what is it?” now you know what the answer might be - snapshots going over their reserve!

::> snapshot show cdotshare
Vserver  Volume  Snapshot    State        Size Total% Used%
-------- ------- ----------- -------- -------- ------ -----
vs1      cdotshare
                 snap01      valid        92KB     0%   15%
                 snap02      valid     20.61MB     2%   98%
                 snap03      valid     184.5MB    18%  100%
                 snap04      valid       205MB    20%  100%

To take it to the furthest, I could completely fill up the volume with snapshots (by adding data, taking a snapshot, deleting data) and then there’s no space for any active file-system - that is - the user will see an empty but completely full volume! Or - better put - a volume empty of active user data but otherwise full due to snapshot retention of past changes/deletions.

Image: Empty but completely full volume!
Filesystem               total       used      avail capacity
/vol/cdotshare/          819MB      818MB        0MB     100%
/vol/cdotshare/.snapshot 204MB     1022MB        0MB     499%

What are (some) ways to manage snapshots?

1) The volume should be sized correctly for the amount of data that’s going to go in it (keeping in mind the need for growth), and the snapshot reserve should be of a size that will contain the changes (deletions/block modifications) over the retention period required.

2) The snapshot policy should be set appropriately:

::> volume modify -vserver VSERVER -volume VOLUME -snapshot-policy POLICY

Note: Changing the snapshot policy will require manual deletion of snapshots that were controlled by the previous policy.

3) Consider making using of these space and snapshot management features:

::> volume modify -vserver VSERVER -volume VOLUME -?
-autosize {true|false}
-max-autosize {integer(KB/MB/GB/TB/PB)}
-autosize-increment {integer(KB/MB/GB/TB/PB)}
-space-mgmt-try-first {volume_grow/snap_delete}

Monitoring, Events and Alerting

OnCommand Unified Manager (OCUM) is available and free to use - OCUM can monitor your snapshot reserve utilization levels and much more!

Finally - Fractional Reserve

Going back to our example, what would it look like if we set the fractional reserve to 100%?

The answer is no different:

::> volume modify -vserver vs1 -volume cdotshare -fractional-reserve 100%

::> df -megabyte cdotshare
Filesystem               total       used      avail capacity
/vol/cdotshare/          819MB      818MB        0MB     100%
/vol/cdotshare/.snapshot 204MB     1022MB        0MB     499%

The volume is still full of snapshot with no space for active filesystem data!

If you want to learn more about what Fractional Reserve is (I’m not going to make a mess of explaining it here), this looks like a good place to start:

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