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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 ofan 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" (sometimesreferred 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. How is data stored on the Avamar grid?

2. How is data stored in the data partitions?

3. Why an Avamar system should not be run close to the "User capacity" limit

4. Factors which contribute to checkpoint overhead

5. How to monitor data partition utilization

6. What happens if Operating System capacity usage gets out of control?

7. What causes the "MSG_ERR_DISKFULL" message?

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Avamar User and OS Capacity Management

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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.