Reclaiming Space of Unused Volumes

Over time, as servers connected to a SAN get decommissioned, you may find an increasing number of volumes that are no longer used by any server. These LUNs, while unused, still occupy disk space in the disk array. Being able to identify such volumes and reclaim the disk space uselessly consumed by these devices will help you avoid unnecessary upgrades and extensions of your devices.

To identify which volume is the less used, you will need to create a simple one-row dashboard. Dashboards allow you to gather specific types of data and display them in a consolidated graphical format. For detailed information about dashboards options and features, refer to the BMC documentation

To Reclaim Space from Unused Volumes

1.	Login to your BMC TrueSight Operations Management console.

2.	Select Dashboards from the navigation pane.

3.	In the Dashboards page, click Add Dashboard or select Add Dashboard from the dashboard action menu .

Dashboard_Add

4.	Enter a Title for your dashboard and configure a Global Filter, if needed

5.	Click Add Dashlet to open the dashlet library for the first column of the row.

6.	From the dashlet library, select the Monitors - Top/Bottom Performers template.

Dashlet_Configure EMC Unused_Volume1

7.	Select Configure Dashlet by clicking the button.

8.	In the panel of input fields and options that opens below the dashboard, enter a Title for the dashlet and specify a Refresh Rate (default is 5 minutes).

9.	Select the Monitor Type for which you want to create a graph.

10.	Configure the graph parameters:

•	In the Type field, select Top N Graph,

•	In the Number of Bars field, select the number of volumes for which you need to compare activity (default is 10),

11.	Set the Refresh Rate.

12.	Select the Time Since Last Activity parameter, and click Apply.

Dashlet_Configure EMC Unused_Volume2

13.	The dashboard is completed and shows the top x volumes with the higher number of days of inactivity. Pass the mouse over a bar to view the average, high and low values for a volume.

Dashboard_EMC Unused_Volumes

Storage space in volumes with a high Time Since Last Activity value can be reclaimed. The freed storage space is then available for other file systems created in a given storage pool.