FlexShare

Module 15 Data ONTAP 7.3 Fundamentals

Module Objectives
By the end of this module, you should be able to: Describe and use FlexShare to tune and improve performance Monitor FlexShare performance changes Describe specific cases that could benefit from quality of service (QOS) improvements using FlexShare

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FlexShare
FlexShare facilitates increased storage resource control in the following ways: Volume priorities Hints of cache buffers No license required

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FlexShare Application Scenarios

Scenario 1A mission-critical database is on the same storage system as user home directories Use FlexShare to ensure that database accesses are assigned a higher priority than accesses to home directories Scenario 2System operations are negatively impacting client accesses Use FlexShare to ensure that client accesses are assigned a higher priority than system operations Scenario 3Volumes have different caching requirements A database log volume that does not need to be cached after writing Use the cache buffer policy hint to help Data ONTAP determine how to manage the cache buffers for volumes with different caching requirements
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FlexShare Characteristics
No performance guarantees Priority levels are relative Both nodes in an active-active configuration Must have the priority feature enabled

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Effects of Volume Operations on FlexShare Priorities

Volume Operation Effect on FlexShare Settings

Deletion
Rename FlexClone Volume Creation

FlexShare settings removed

FlexShare settings unchanged Parent volume settings unchanged FlexShare settings for new FlexClone volume unset (as for a newly created volume) Source volume settings unchanged FlexShare settings for destination volume unset (as for a newly created volume) FlexShare settings preserved

Copy

Offline or Online

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Global I/O Concurrency Option

FlexShare limits concurrent I/O based on the following criteria:
Volume priority Disk type

The default for most applications is the correct value Change concurrent I/O for nonstandard disks or loads

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Assigning Priorities to Volume Data Access

To assign priorities to volume data access: 1. Ensure that FlexShare is enabled:
priority on

2. Specify the priority for a volume:

priority set volume vol_name level=priority_level

3. (Optional) Verify the priority level:

priority show volume [-v] vol_name

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Assign Priorities to System and User Operations

To assign priorities to system and user operations: 1. Ensure that FlexShare is enabled:
priority on

2. Specify the priority:

priority set volume vol_name system

3. (Optional) Verify the volume priority levels:

priority show volume -v vol_name

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Buffer Cache Policy

Settings:
Keep Reuse Default

Setting policy:
Priority on Priority set volume vol_name cache=policy

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Removing or Disabling FlexShare Policies

To temporarily disable FlexShare priority:
system> priority set volume [volname] service=off

To remove FlexShare priority:

system> priority delete volume [volname]

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Default Volume Priority

To specify or modify the default volume priority: priority set default option=value [option=value]

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Module Summary
In this module, you should have learned to: Describe and use FlexShare to tune and improve performance Monitor FlexShare performance changes Describe specific cases that could benefit from quality of service (QOS) using FlexShare

2008 NetApp. All rights reserved.

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Exercise
Module 15: FlexShare Estimated Time: 30 minutes

Answers
Module 15: FlexShare