Knowledge Base Article: 000479495

How does space reclamation within a pool work with a VNX/VNX2/VNXe2 (000479495)
Primary Product : VNX2 Series
Product : VNX2 Series,VNX1 Series,VNXe2 Series,VNXe1600,vVNX,VNXe3200

Version: 4 Article Type: Break Fix Audience: Level 30 = Customers Last Published: Mon Mar 21 11:31:41 GMT 2016

Summary: How to correct when the space consumption of Thin LUNs is greater than the expectation at host
Issue: Why is "Block Reclamation needed". The simple answer is that block reclamation that it ensures thin storage stays thin.

In order to fully appreciate dead space reclamation, one must examine the host front-end and storage backend. Once a
host writes to a thin provisioned volume, physical capacity is allocated to the host file system.

However if the host deletes the file, only the host file systems frees up space, but the physical capacity of the storage
system remains unchanged. In other words the storage systems does not automatically free up the deleted capacity for
the now deleted host file

Cause: When files are deleted (for example Virtual Machine VMDK files) or migrated from a thin aware file system (e.g. a
VMware Datastore), the array is not informed automatically that these blocks are now free. This leads to array
management tools reporting significantly higher space consumption than is actually the case in the hosts file system and
the space is not reclaimed on the Storage Array. If not correctly managed it is possible for the host to believe there is
adequate free space in the thin file system, however the storage maybe fully allocated as previously deleted items
allocated space may not have been reclaimed by the host, this can result in out of space conditions being reported.

Resolution: How does SCSI UNMAP work?

In simple terms Unmap is basically de-allocating the relationship between an LBA and a physical Block in a Lun. This
allows a hosts to mark a portion of a filesystem as being unneeded and the associated storage with the portion can be
then freed.

The SCSI T10 Technical Committee established the T10 SCSI Block Command 3 (SBC3) specification which defines the
UNMAP command for a diverse spectrum of storage devices including hard disk drives (HDDs) and numerous other
storage media. Using SCSI UNMAP, IT administrators can now reclaim host file system space and back-end storage
dead space. However, not only does SCSI UNMAP require T10 SBC3 compliant SCSI hardware, it also requires
necessary software application programming interfaces (APIs)

In a thin provisioned LUN, the space from underlying Storage is provisioned on demand (this does not apply to array
Thick LUNs). The VNX allocates capacity in slices, which are 1GB in VNX1 and 256MB in VNX2 and VNXe2. Once the
slices are provisioned, the used space of the LUN is not returned to the underlying storage pool upon deletion of user
data. The act of returning the freed data is done usually manually by a host initiated UNMAP (please check with your
host vendor how this is done).

To return capacity back to the pool, the data from multiple partially used slices must be consolidated onto fewer
slices. The freed up slices can then be zeroed again and returned to the pool. Be aware that this process is not
instantaneous and can take hours for a large amount of free space to be returned for reuse. As a result EMC
recommends to monitor storage pool space closely and when needed schedule the usage of SCSI UNMAP commands
(preferable outside of peak business hours as it does cause extra processing to be incurred (both from the array and the
hosts point of view)).

The SCSI UNMAP command allows a host (ESX/Windows 2012/Various *nix OS's), to tell the Storage Array that space
that was previously occupied by a file (for example a Virtual Machine), can be reclaimed. This allows an array to correctly
report space consumption of a Thin Provisioned Filesystem, which enables customers to correctly monitor and forecast
new Storage requirements.

Different OS Vendors handle the implementation of SCSI UNMAP differently (even various revisions of Host OS code
handle it differently). An inclusive list of vendors that use SCSI UNMAP include:
VMWare
Microsoft
Symantec
Redhat

Primary Product: VNX2 Series

Product: VNX2 Series,VNX1 Series,VNXe2 Series,VNXe1600,vVNX,VNXe3200