May 21, 2012

average file size

While attending a webex for a SRM solution, couple of questions came up with regards to the number of files in file system and average file size per file system. I should write a snmp query for getting that info for Netapps. Most SRM/file reporting solutions’ performance depends on the number of files, not the size of the file system.

Comments

  1. You can use filestats on the filer to get filesize information from a filer. It’s on a volume basis, so if you have a lot of volumes, I see a for loop in your future. The syntax looks like this.

    filestats sizes * snapshot hourly.0 volume vol03

    That will give you counters for every unique filesize in volume vol03, in snapshot hourly.0. Filestats only runs against a snapshot.

    If you wanted more in buckets, you could do this.

    filestats ages 1k 2k 3k 4k 5k 6k 7k 8k 9k 10k snapshot hourly.0 volume vol03

    I warn you if you run this you will loose your console until the command is done running. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours (not suprisingly) based off the number of files you have. I therefor recommend running doing this via rsh. :)

    You could graph this fairly easily I think, might be nice to have a running average or plot things over the lifespan of a filer.

  2. Thx for the note. We/I know about the filestats command. I even use it in a few occasions. However, that requires access to the console and not very helpful to users. At our location, non-admins do not have any console access. My next post attempts to provide a shell routine (about to become a php routine)

    I also experienced high load on the filers when running filestats.

    Netapp does have an exhaustive SNMP mib. I provide several php routines that are used to get the filer info as part of our workflow.

    AJAX and Netapp MIB is a killer combination!

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