Isilon Unbalanced Storage

[sc...@tacomadata.com]

This year I was asked to help with an Isilon project for our storage team.  We were planning a datacenter move and wanted to eject the oldest tech (first 20 nodes) from a 40 node Isilon cluster.  

To make the smartfail of n1-20  complete more quickly, our techsupport had us enable a trial license for 'smartpools'  -  then configure it to move data from nodes 1-20 to nodes 21-40.  This all went well. 

The cluster has been operating on 20 nodes, the move is still pending, but here's where it gets interesting:

Last month I got a 'pool is getting full' warning.  Our smartpools license expired in July as expected. I'd noticed Autobalance and FSanalyze had failed 2x, so I started them manually (they did complete) 

I realized I'd overlooked my networked nodes 33-40 from  pool "a2000_200tb_800gb-ssd-sed_64gb" were all filled to >99% while nodes 21-32 from pool 'a40_200tb_800gb-ssd-sed_16gb'  are only filled to 36%.

I made sure AutoBalance completed correctly but I think that might have only balanced data within each nodepool.  

Here is what I wonder:  Did we inadvertently turn-off a setting that keeps whole cluster balanced when we enabled the temporary Smartpools license?  When I look here I see 'balanced' set to 'no' between nodepools.  Maybe there is a way to set this to 'yes?' :-)

# isi storagepool nodepools list -v                  ID: 19                Name: a40_200tb_800gb-ssd-sed_16gb               Nodes: 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32       Node Type IDs: 2   Protection Policy: +3d:1n              Manual: No          L3 Enabled: Yes L3 Migration Status: l3                Tier: Archive               Usage                 Avail Bytes: 1.35P             Avail SSD Bytes: 0.00                    Balanced: No                  Free Bytes: 1.36P              Free SSD Bytes: 0.00                 Total Bytes: 2.11P             Total SSD Bytes: 0.00     Virtual Hot Spare Bytes: 19.12T --------------------------------------------------------------------------------                  ID: 50                Name: a2000_200tb_800gb-ssd-sed_64gb               Nodes: 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40       Node Type IDs: 3   Protection Policy: +2d:1n              Manual: No          L3 Enabled: Yes L3 Migration Status: l3                Tier: Archive               Usage                 Avail Bytes: 390.98G             Avail SSD Bytes: 0.00                    Balanced: Yes                  Free Bytes: 19.41T              Free SSD Bytes: 0.00                 Total Bytes: 1.41P             Total SSD Bytes: 0.00     Virtual Hot Spare Bytes: 19.02T

Hope someone here can help, or give me ideas on what I can do.  

[Joseph DAndrea]

If you still have nodes/pools over about 85 percent full the auto balance may not work correctly.  I have attached a document that I have had to use several times on customer environments when their space utilization gets out of hand 

I'm not sure about the behavior of a smart pools license expiring. My instinct is you let it get too far out of hand and the only option is the link I provided. 

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Regards
Joseph DAndrea
USMC 02-07
AZANG 07-08

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater
                                                                                                                                 -Albert Einstein

[Luc Simard]

Use autobalancelin if you possibly can, less of a heavy lift , I recommend you resolve your license expiration with your Dell team. 

Cheers.

/ls

Luc Simard
Personal Email:
- simard.J...@gmail.com
Mobile Vox: 415-501-0438
Washington State, USA

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucsimard/

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 15, 2025, at 07:44, Joseph DAndrea <joseph....@gmail.com> wrote:



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<PowerScale_ Using AutoBalanceLin to quickly move data off of a full node pool _ Dell US.pdf>

[Joseph DAndrea]

When i get home I can shoot you the autobalanclin instructions. 

Regards
Joseph DAndrea
USMC 02-07
AZANG 07-08

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater
                                                                                                                                 -Albert Einstein

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/isilon-user-group/857FECFD-9948-4224-B262-0C9047FC38C8%40gmail.com.