Capacity metrics for chargeback and consumer reports

Learn more about how the capacity and costs for block and file storage is calculated in chargeback and consumer reports.

Chargeback and storage consumer reports

The same block capacity metrics are shown in chargeback and consumer reports. In chargeback reports, the block capacity and costs are shown for all applications, departments, and physical servers. In consumer reports, the block capacity and costs are shown for a specific application, department, or physical server. The capacity and cost of file storage is not included in consumer reports.

If you create reports about physical servers, servers that are virtual machines are excluded from the report.
Tip: To find out which hosts are virtual machines, click Hosts > Hosts, right-click any column heading and click Virtual Machine.

Virtual machine capacity

If you assign the storage resources on a virtual machine to an application or department, the capacity of those storage resources is included in the calculation of capacity and cost for the application or department.

For example, three virtual machines are allocated capacity from a data store, which has a total capacity of 3 TiB. The capacity for the data store comprises:
  • One volume on tier 1 with a capacity of 2 TiB
  • One volume on tier 2 with a capacity of 1 TiB
The ratio of tier-1 storage to tier-2 storage is 2:1 or 66.66% to 33.33%.

The total capacity of the data store is split across 3 by 1,024 GiB disks and one of the disks is allocated to Virtual_Machine_1. The used capacity on Virtual_Machine_1 is allocated to a database application. So, the total amount of capacity that is allocated to the database application is 1,024 GiB, which comprises 66.66% of tier-1 storage and 33.33% of tier-2 storage. When the report is generated for the database application, the block capacity for tier-1 storage is 1024 GiB*66.66%, which is 682.67 GiB or 0.67 TiB. The block capacity for the tier-2 storage is 1024 GiB*33.33%, which is 341.33 GiB or 0.33 TiB.

If you calculate the capacity and cost of storage by used capacity, the capacity and cost of the storage that is used by the application or department is shown in the chargeback and consumer reports.
Restriction: You might get unexpected results in chargeback and consumer reports if the volumes that are used to provide the capacity on the disks for the virtual machine are thin-provisioned and shared by two or more applications.

Physical server clusters

In chargeback and storage consumer reports, the capacity and cost of storage for physical servers that are members of clusters are included in the capacity and cost of the cluster that they belong to. For example, physical_server_1 and physical_server_2 belong to cluster_1. To create the chargeback report about the physical servers' cluster, you choose Physical Servers as the consumer, and the capacity and the cost of the two physical servers are included in the report entry for cluster_1. To create a report for cluster_1 in a storage consumer report, you choose Physical Server as the type of consumer, and cluster_1 as the name of the consumer.

Block storage

The following information is provided about how block capacity is calculated:
Block or Used Capacity

In chargeback reports, the total block capacity for all of the storage resources is called Block capacity, whereas in consumer reports the total block capacity that the storage consumer uses is called Used Capacity.

The total capacity of these volumes is included in the calculation of block capacity:
  • The provisioned capacity of the volumes without copies that are allocated to the consumer
  • The provisioned capacity of the volumes with copies that are allocated to the consumer such as:
    • The total capacity of VDisk mirror volumes and their copies
    • The total capacity of FlashCopy® volumes and their target volumes
    • The total capacity of Safeguarded Copy source volumes and their volume backups
    • The total capacity of Global Mirror, Global Copy, and Metro Mirror volumes and their target volumes

For example, an application is assigned all of the block storage volumes on a physical server. In this scenario, the block capacity value includes the capacity of all of the block volumes that are assigned to the physical server. If the assigned volume on the physical server has a VDisk mirror copy or the volume is a FlashCopy source volume, the capacity of the VDisk mirror copy or the capacity of the FlashCopy target volume is also included in the calculation.

Primary capacity
The total capacity of the following types of volumes is included in the calculation of primary capacity:
  • The provisioned capacity of the volumes without copies that are allocated to the consumer
  • The provisioned capacity of primary VDisk mirror copies that are allocated to the consumer
  • The provisioned capacity of the source volumes in FlashCopy relationships that are allocated to the consumer
  • The provisioned capacity of the Safeguarded Copy source volumes that are allocated to the consumer
  • The provisioned capacity of the Global Mirror, Global Copy, and Metro Mirror source volumes that are allocated to the consumer
VDisk Mirrors
The total capacity of the VDisk mirror copies for the volumes that are allocated to the consumer.
FlashCopy
The total capacity of the following types of volumes is included in the calculation of FlashCopy:
  • The capacity of the FlashCopy target volumes for the source volumes that are allocated to the consumer
  • The capacity of the volume backups for the Safeguarded Copy source volumes that are allocated to the consumer
Remote Mirrors
The total capacity of the Global Mirror, Global Copy, and Metro Mirror target volumes for the source volumes that are allocated to the consumer.
Primary capacity by tier
The primary capacity that is allocated to the consumer for the specified tier.
Copy capacity by tier
The copy capacity that is allocated to the consumer for the specified tier, which is calculated as follows:
  • The total capacity of the non-primary VDisk mirror copies
  • The total capacity of the target volumes for volumes in FlashCopy relationships
  • The total capacity of target volumes for Global Mirror, Global Copy, and Metro Mirror

In tiered environments, the source volume might be on tier 1 and the target volume on tier 3. In this case, the capacity of the source volume is included in the calculation for the total primary capacity for Tier 1 and the capacity of the target volume is included in the calculation for the total copy capacity for tier 3.

Figure 1. Calculating copy capacity
Copy capacity for volumes with multiple copies
Restriction: For volumes that have multiple volume copies, only the capacity of the first copy and the capacity of the second copy of the volume are included in the calculation of copy capacity.

File storage

File capacity is the total amount of file storage space that is allocated to the consumer.

For example, if a server mounts a fileset export from a file storage system and a quota is defined for the fileset, the file capacity is the hard limit capacity that is defined for the quota.

If a quota is not defined for the fileset, the file capacity is the capacity of the file system that contains the fileset. If multiple fileset exports from the same file system are mounted and the hard limits that are defined for the quota exceed the total file system capacity, then the file capacity is the total capacity of the file system.