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Avamar User and OS Capacity Management

Scope This article is written for Avamar system administrators or those who monitor the health of an Avamar installation and require a working understanding of how to manage OS and User capacity levels. This article is specifically targeted to Avamar versions 5.x and onwards. Although the capacity management concepts mentioned are directly applicable to Avamar version 4, we refer to the Blackout window rather than the traditional 'cron' maintenance jobs.
Objectives

Summarize the types of data which are stored in the /data* partitions Introduce the concept of "OS Capacity" and contrast this with the concept of "User Capacity" (sometimes referred to as "GSAN Capacity") Explain why Avamar should not be run close to the User Capacity limit List the factors which contribute to checkpoint overhead Describe how to monitor data partition utilization Describe the symptoms experienced if OS capacity gets out of control List typical causes of the "MSG_ERR_DISKFULL" message Outline the recovery methods used where high OS capacity is impacting normal system operation Describe the symptoms experienced if User Capacity exceeds the User capacity limit Discuss how to recover from a high User Capacity situation

Common issues which affect, or are symptoms, of too high "OS Capacity" symptoms are:
Checkpoint validation (HFS Check) is failing Garbage collection fails to run and reports with a MSG_ERR_DISKFULL Checkpoint creation fails

Common symptoms which are closely associated with too high "User Capacity" are:
Backups will fail. Replication of data to the system to will fail. The Avamar Administrator shows the system in 'Admin' mode during the backup window

Cause/Resolution
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. How is data stored on the Avamar grid? How is data stored in the data partitions? Why an Avamar system should not be run close to the "User capacity" limit Factors which contribute to checkpoint overhead How to monitor data partition utilization What happens if Operating System capacity usage gets out of control? What causes the "MSG_ERR_DISKFULL" message?

Generated by Jive on 2013-03-13-07:00 1

Avamar User and OS Capacity Management

Actions to investigate and help alleviate high OS capacity 1. Find out when the last successful HFScheck completed. 2. Confirm if HFScheck ran or if it failed Actions to alleviate high User Capacity 1. Ensure that garbage collection is running every day and that it does not get interrupted by backups 2. Stop adding new clients to the grid. 3. Learn which clients are consuming the most storage space 4. Reassess retention policies 5. Delete old backups 6. Increase the Blackout Window 7. Monitor data change using capacity.sh Expanding the Avamar system 1. Single node systems and Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE) systems. 2. Multi-node systems Useful Tools
status.dpn capacity.sh Avalanche DPN Summary Report replcnt.sh

Please refer to knowledge base article esg118578 for detailed explanation.

Generated by Jive on 2013-03-13-07:00 2

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