Disk array policies

Turbonomic ships with default automation policies that are believed to give you the best results based on our analysis. For certain entities in your environment, you can create automation policies as a way to override the defaults.

Automation workflow

The following table describes the default action acceptance modes for disk array actions and automation support for environments that have disk array storage controllers as targets.

Action Default mode Dell Compellent HP 3Par NetApp ONTAP VMAX Dell EMC VNX Nutanix Pure Storage XTremIO
Move Disabled

N/A

N/A

 Recommend N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Provision Recommend Recommend Recommend Recommend N/A N/A Recommend Recommend N/A
Resize (up) Recommend Recommend Recommend Recommend Recommend Recommend Recommend Recommend N/A
Start Recommend

N/A

 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Suspend Disabled N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Action automation for NetApp storage systems

For NetApp storage systems, the actions Turbonomic can automatically perform depend on the NetApp version you are running, and whether the system is running in cluster mode:

Automated action Cluster mode
Move VM between datastores, on the same disk array Yes
Move VM between datastores on different disk arrays Yes
Move Datastore between disk arrays on the same storage controller Yes
Move Datastore between disk arrays on different storage controllers Yes
Resize Storage Yes
Resize Disk Array No — Resize up, only

In addition, for a system running in Cluster-Mode, Turbonomic can recommend moving an aggregate to another storage controller.

Utilization constraints

Utilization constraints affect the actions Turbonomic recommends as it manages your environment. Turbonomic recommends actions that avoid using these resources beyond the given settings. The values you set here specify what percentage of the existing capacity that Turbonomic will consider to be 100% of capacity.

Attribute Default value
Storage Amount Utilization 90

Storage settings

Set capacity for specific storage resources.

Attribute Default value
SSD Disk IOPS Capacity 50000
15k Disk IOPS Capacity 1600
VSeries LUN IOPS Capacity 5000
Storage Latency Capacity 100 ms
7.2k Disk IOPS Capacity 800
Storage Overprovisioned Percentage 200
IOPS Capacity - a generic setting for disk array IOPS capacity (see Disk Array IOPS Capacity). 5000
10k Disk IOPS Capacity 1200
Disk Array IOPS Capacity 10000
Note:

Turbonomic discovers storage latency and IOPS capacities that you set in your environment (for example VMAX) and uses them in its analysis. These capacities will be overridden by values that you set in Turbonomic policies.

  • IOPS capacity

    The capacity of IOPS (IO operations per second) that your storage devices can support. Turbonomic considers these settings when calculating utilization percentage. For example, assume IOPS Capacity of 5000 for a disk array. If utilization on the array is 2500 IOPS, then the disk array is at 50% of capacity for that metric.

    Note that the IOPS setting for an array will determine IOPS calculations for all the storage on that array. If you made different IOPS settings for individual datastores hosted by the array, Turbonomic ignores the datastore settings and uses the disk array settings.

    • Various disk IOPS capacity settings, such as SSD Disk IOPS and 7.2k Disk IOPS

      IOPS capacity settings for the different types of physical drives that are discovered on a disk array. If the storage controller exposes the types of disks in the array, Turbonomic uses multiples of these values to calculate the IOPS capacity of the disk array.

    • Disk array IOPS capacity

      Some disk arrays do not expose data for their individual disks — This is typical for flash arrays, or arrays that aggregate storage utilization across multiple tiers. Turbonomic uses this setting for the IOPS capacity of such disk arrays. Set it to the global scope to specify IOPS capacity for all disk arrays. To override this setting, set a disk array or group of disk arrays as the property scope, and then set the value you want for IOPS Capacity.

    Note:

    The user interface shows a disk array entity for any array that is discovered through a valid disk array or storage controller target. It also shows placeholder disk arrays for disk arrays that are not discovered through a configured target. For example, you might have disk arrays that Turbonomic does not natively support. Or you might have storage that is not hosted by any disk array. Such placeholder disk array entities appear with the string "DiskArray-" prefixed to their names. The user interface allows you to set IOPS Capacity to these placeholders, but those settings have no effect. To set IOPS Capacity for that storage, you must set it to the individual datastores.

  • Storage overprovisioned percentage

    This setting indicates how much overprovisioning Turbonomic assumes when recommending actions for disk arrays. For example, if a disk array has a 30 TB capacity, and Storage Overprovisioned Percentage is set to 200, Turbonomic will treat the datastore as though it has a capacity of 60 TB, or 200% of the actual disk array capacity.

    If the disk array is returning good Data Reduction Rates (DRR) in excess of the Storage Overprovisioned Percentage, actions to provision disk array may be generated. Consider increasing the percentage upwards closer to the real DRR. For example, if DRR is 12 to 1, the percentage could be closer to 1200.