Setting capacity limits

Edit online

If your company has a policy to maintain a reserve of available capacity, you can set a limit on the amount of capacity that is used by your storage systems and pools.

Before you begin

Only users with Administrator privileges can set capacity limits.

About this task

When you set a limit on the amount of capacity that is used, you can monitor whether the capacity that is used is above or below the limit that you set. You can also define alerts that notify you when you are over the capacity limit.

You can set the same capacity limit:
  • For all storage systems or one or more storage systems
  • For all pools or one or more pools
Alternatively, you can set different capacity limits for storage systems and pools.
Tip: IBM FlashSystem A9000 and IBM FlashSystem A9000R storage systems are configured to report storage consumption at the storage system rather than the pool level. So, if you want to set a capacity limit for these types of storage systems, set the capacity limit for the storage systems.

Procedure

  1. To set the capacity limit for storage systems or pools, choose one of the following options:
    Storage Resource Step
    Block Storage Systems Click Storage, and then click Block Storage Systems.
    Pools Click Storage, and then click Pools.
  2. Select the storage systems or pools.
    Tip: To select multiple storage systems or pools, press Shift and click.
  3. Right-click and click View Properties.
  4. Click Edit Properties
  5. Enter the percentage value for the capacity limit.
  6. Save your changes.

Results

The capacity limit is set and can be shown as a percentage value or GiB value. Just right-click any column heading and add Capacity Limit (%) or Capacity Limit (GiB) to the Block Storage Systems or Pools pages. You can also add the Adjusted Used Capacity (%) column which tells you how much used capacity is left based on the capacity limit. By default, the Capacity-to-Limit (GiB) column is shown on the Block Storage Systems and Pools pages so that you can see how much available capacity you have left before you reach the capacity limit.

Zero capacity: When you set the capacity limit for pools, the values shown for Zero Capacity are readjusted to take into account the capacity limit of the pool. The date will represent when the capacity limit of the pool is reached. If the pool has already reached the capacity limit, Depleted is shown. None is shown when a trend in storage consumption can't be detected because the pool's storage isn't being consumed or because not enough data was collected to predict storage consumption.