Unitrends Reports To Find HD Usage

tonystahl · 2014-10-02T19:22:11.000Z

We backup, replicate, and archive with our one appliance & backup and replicate with another 2 appliances. I’m seeing that I have about 86% used space in /backup so I want to find a report that nicely shows what is using all the space so I can go to management and see about getting a larger appliance or two. I’m concerned that we only have a little more than a month of recovery points and I feel it should be about 2 months.

I havent found a good and clear report that is management worthy so I’m asking if maybe I missed it.

katie-unitrends · 2014-10-02T19:37:08.000Z

Tony - Great seeing you last week in Austin. Let me do some digging to see what I can find. It may be tomorrow before I have a solid answer for you. Is that okay?

tonystahl · 2014-10-02T20:27:45.000Z

Yea that’s fine. Shouldn’t there be a current disk usage and forecasted disk usage report? Also a report to show how much disk is used for backups vs replication on the same appliance. Something with pretty graphs and stuff.

I think we have a feature request brewing.

katie-unitrends · 2014-10-03T11:55:45.000Z

Tony - Unfortunately, there isn’t a single report today that can pull the information that you need, so this is a great feature request. (One of my colleagues who I consulted with on this said that you made a great point here - so kudos). Would you like for me to submit this request to our development team, or would you like to so that you can add in any other details that you’re looking for?

tonystahl · 2014-10-03T12:23:37.000Z

My feature requests dont go through (just like my SNMP traps get blocked) by my firewall so can you submit it?

Thanks for checking, I will work with support to dig out the info so I can go to management before the budget gets done if I need bigger appliances.

katie-unitrends · 2014-10-03T12:31:53.000Z

Tony -Done! I’ve already shared this thread with development, so you’re all set. If you think of anything else, will you let me or support know?

tonystahl · 2014-10-03T12:52:42.000Z

Thanks! I’m waiting for support to call me back so I will work with them to get my answers for now.

tonystahl · 2014-10-07T11:54:04.000Z

Well I have to say that the reporting is about as clear as mud. This is what we were able to find.

I have the 813 appliance which has a total size of 8.2 TB which we have 5.6TB used (2.6 free). My retention goes back 43 days. Of my used 5.6TB my backups are using 3.2TB & replicated backups are using 2.4TB. I am licenses for 7.5TB. so 7.5 - 5.6 = 1.9TB that are sitting open as a “landing zone”.

Does that seem like an excessive amount of “landing zone” to anyone else? Maybe I don’t understand the reasoning behind the formula.

Some side info that I just found is the appliance rack mount data sheet PDF on the Unitrends website says that the “Maximun Backup (TB) = 6” for this appliance. So does that mean that this appliance can only handle 6TB so that leaves only a 400GB “landing zone”? Which I can completely understand.

EDIT: link to the PDF http://www.unitrends.com/docs/datasheets/appliance-rackmount-datasheet.pdf

katie-unitrends · 2014-10-07T12:34:45.000Z

Tony - The maximum recommended backup for your appliance is 6TBs, so as you suggested, there is about 400GB for a “landing zone”. Are you employing any features like instant recovery or incremental forever?

tonystahl · 2014-10-07T12:46:33.000Z

Our physical servers are masters with differentials but our VMs are incremental forever. We dont have any (well 2GB) space reserved for instant recovery at this time as I figured if we have a meltdown I can add space and deal with the consequences at that time.

So it sounds like we are licensed for 7.5TB but the appliance will keep itself at/under 6TB so we are running as expected. That is the info I was looking for and we will just have to decide if 43 days is long enough.

katie-unitrends · 2014-10-07T12:56:22.000Z

Tony - The appliance does have a raw capacity of 7.5TBs, and the 6TB maximum backup size is a guideline to allow for retention on the appliance. You can definitely protect data larger than 6TBs on the appliance, but the retention will suffer because of it. Does that make sense?

tonystahl · 2014-10-07T13:04:31.000Z

No… now I’m confused.

My total used space on the appliance is 5.6TB (2.4 is from replication and 3.2 is from backups going back 43 days). Is the appliance limiting me to 6TB total or should it be filling closer to the 7.5TB? No single backup job is 6TB in size (if that is where the 6TB limit is talking about).

katie-unitrends · 2014-10-07T13:25:28.000Z

Tony - Maximum backup size is exactly what it sounds like, however, every environment has different retention needs. This means that some customers with an 813 will backup a 6TB full backup, and only have a few days of retention on the appliance, while others will have a 2TB full backup with 40+ days of retention, and 2TBs of replicated data. The appliance uses some of the space to store the Unitrends software, and allocates other space for Instant Recovery (if selected) and other processes. If you feel that your appliance isn’t being used to its full capacity, please let me know so that we can have an engineer look into your configuration.

r0b · 2014-10-07T13:49:26.000Z

Tony

It sounds like you are getting about the right amount of use out of it. Don’t forget that the appliance will keep some temp space for background processing of things like the deduplication and processing of synthetic backups for you incremental forever jobs. That is often where the ‘extra’ space gets used.

tonystahl · 2014-10-07T14:32:39.000Z

Just talked to our regional sales guy and I think I’m all straightened out. Now it’s just seeing what it’s going to cost me to upgrade my appliances and see what management says.