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Traditionally, OneFS has used the SmartPools jobs to apply its file pool policies. To apply the policies, the SmartPools job goes to every file, and the SmartPoolsTree job goes to a tree of files. However, the scanning portion of these jobs can result in significant random impact to the cluster and lengthy execution times, particularly in a SmartPools job.
To address this issue, the FilePolicy job provides a faster, lower-impact method for applying file pool policies than the full-blown SmartPools job. Along with the IndexUpdate job, FilePolicy improves job scan performance by using a file system index, or changelist—rather than a full tree scan—to find files requiring policy changes.
Avoiding a full tree walk dramatically decreases the amount of locking and metadata scanning work the job is required to perform. This approach reduces impact on CPU and disk, at the expense of not doing everything that SmartPools does. The FilePolicy job enforces only the SmartPools file pool policies, as opposed to the storage pool settings. For example, FilePolicy does not deal with changes to storage pools or storage pool settings, such as:
However, SmartPools and FilePolicy usually perform the same work. You can run the FilePolicy job in one of four modes:
FilePolicy mode | Description |
Default | Enacts full policy changes on file and directories |
Dry Run | Calculates and reports on the policy changes that would be made |
Directory Only | Process policies for directories but skips the files themselves |
Policy Only | Applies the matching FilePool policies but skips the data restriping |
Select the FilePolicy job mode in the WebUI by going to Cluster Management > Job Operations > File Policy > View/Edit.
Disabled by default, FilePolicy supports the full range of file pool policy features, reports the same information, and provides the same configuration options as the SmartPools job. Because FilePolicy is a changelist-based job, it performs best when run frequently. For example, once or multiple times a day, depending on the configured file pool policies, data size, and rate of change.
Configure job schedules in the WebUI by going to Cluster Management > Job Operations, highlighting the job, and selecting View\Edit. The following example illustrates configuring the IndexUpdate job to run every 6 hours at a LOW impact level with a priority value of 5:
When you are enabling and using the FilePolicy and IndexUpdate jobs, the recommendation is to continue running the SmartPools job as well, but at a reduced frequency (monthly).
Note: In addition to running on a configured schedule, the FilePolicy job can also be performed manually.
FilePolicy requires access to a current index. If the IndexUpdate job has not yet been run, an attempt to start the FilePolicy job will fail with an error, as shown in Figure 17. The error message will provide an instruction to run the IndexUpdate job first. Once the index has been created, the FilePolicy job will run successfully. The IndexUpdate job can be run several times daily (for example, every 6 hours) to keep the index current and prevent the snapshots from getting large.
Consider using the FilePolicy job with the job schedules shown in Table 5 for workflows and datasets with the following characteristics:
Note: For clusters without these characteristics, the recommendation is to continue running the SmartPools job as usual and to not activate the FilePolicy job.
The following table provides a suggested job schedule when deploying FilePolicy:
Job | Schedule | Impact | Priority |
FilePolicy | Every day at 22:00 | LOW | 6 |
IndexUpdate | Every 6 hours, every day | LOW | 5 |
SmartPools | Monthly – Sunday at 23:00 | LOW | 6 |
Note: Because no two clusters are the same, this suggested job schedule might require additional tuning to meet the needs of a specific environment.
Note: For more information about job configuration, see the OneFS Job Engine white paper.