Add metadata disks in Azure
DDVE uses disks to save metadata. For metadata disks, it is recommended to use Standard HDD for cost effectiveness and Premium SSD for better performance.
- A managed disk is recommended. Azure also enables you to convert unmanaged disks to managed disks.
- It is not necessary to shut down the virtual machine before adding metadata disks.
- The metadata disk is not resized. To add more storage to the virtual machine, you can create a new virtual disk.
Required capacity
- Metadata disk capacity—The required metadata capacity varies based on the workload. It is recommended that metadata capacity be equal to 10% of the total DDVE capacity, which is sufficient for most workloads. If your workload is using a higher deduplication ratio, consider adding more metadata disks.
- Licensed capacity—Ensure that the DDVE instance can support the licensed capacity. If the new licensed capacity is more than the supported capacity of the DDVE instance, upgrade the DDVE instance.
Metadata disk requirements
- For 16TB, 32TB, and 96TB DDVE instances, the minimum size of the metadata disk is 1 TB.
- The recommended size for all metadata disks is 1 TB. For example, if 10 TB of metadata capacity is required, configure ten 1-TB metadata disks.
- The metadata disks should be the same disk type as the OS and NVRAM disk.
- For 256 TB DDVE instance, the recommended size for all metadata disks is 2 TB. For example, if 20 TB of metadata capacity is required, configure ten 2-TB metadata disks.
Adding managed disks in Azure
Use the following procedure to add managed disks to DDVE in Azure.
- Log in to the Azure portal.
- Search for the name of the DDVE virtual machine.
- In the right pane under SETTINGS, select Disks.
- Click Add data disk.
- Select Create disk from the menu.
- In the pop-up window, enter values for the following:
- Disk name: A name for the disk.
- Resource group: Specifies the resource group for the disk. It is recommended that you select the same resource group as the DDVE.
- Source Type: Select None.
- Size: Click Change Size to select a storage type of Standard HDD or Premium SSD and size of 1024 GB or 2048 GB.
- Host Caching: Select None. Host caching is not supported in DDVE.
- Click Create.
- Click Save (disk icon in the upper left corner of the page) to add the data disks.
- Repeat the steps above to add more metadata disks.
- Display new disks with the disk show hardware command.
- If the file system is already enabled, add the new disks with the storage add tier active <disk> command, and expand the file system with the filesys expand command.