Dell Unity Data Reduction provides savings information at many different levels within the system, and in many different formats. Savings information is provided at the individual storage resource, the Pool, and the System level. For each of the levels, savings information is reported in GBs, percent savings, and as a ratio. The total savings not only includes savings due to data reduction on the storage resource, but also Advanced Deduplication savings and savings which are realized on any Snapshots and Thin Clones taken of the resource. All savings information is aggregated and then displayed at the Pool level and System level. The following sections outline where savings information can be viewed in Unisphere. Savings information is also accessible using Unisphere CLI and REST API but will not be covered in the following sections.

Storage Resource Level

Space savings information in the three formats are available within the Properties window of the storage resource. For LUNs, you will either need to access the Properties page from the Block page, or on the LUN tab from within the Consistency Group Properties window. As shown in Error! Reference source not found., data reduction savings are shown on the General tab within the LUN Properties Window.

Figure 31.    LUN Properties Window – Data Reduction Savings

File Systems also provide the same savings information as LUNs. Error! Reference source not found. below shows an example of the Properties window of a File System. As with LUNs, the data reduction savings are reported in GBs, % savings, and ratio.

Figure 32.    File System Properties Window – Data Reduction Savings

VMware VMFS Datastores display data reduction savings in the same manner as LUNs and File Systems. In the VMware VMFS Properties window on the General tab, the GBs saved, % savings, and ratio can be viewed. An example of this screen can be found in Figure 1.

Figure 1. VMware VMFS Datastore Properties Window – Data Reduction Savings

VMware NFS Datastores display data reduction savings in the same manner as VMware VMFS Datastores. In the VMware NFS Properties window on the General tab, the GBs saved, % savings, and ratio can be viewed. An example of this screen can be found in Error! Reference source not found..

Figure 33.    VMware NFS Datastore Properties Window – Data Reduction Savings

Pool Level

Data reduction information is also aggregated to the Pool level. Savings are reported in the three formats, which include the GBs saved, % savings, and ratio, on the Usage tab within the Pool Properties Window. The GBs savings reflects the total amount of space saved due to data reduction on storage resources and their Snapshots and Thin Clones. An example of the Usage tab can be seen in Error! Reference source not found..

Figure 34.    Pool Properties Window – Usage Tab – Data Reduction Savings

System Level

Data reduction savings information is also available at the System Level. The system level aggregates all savings across the entire system and displays them in the three formats available, GBs saved, % saved, and ratio. For the GBs saved, this value is the total amount of space saved due to data reduction, along with savings achieved by Snapshots and Thin Clones of data reduction enabled storage resources. In the Dell UnityOS 4.5 release, the system level data reduction savings information is displayed within the System Efficiency view block found on the system Dashboard page. To see the data reduction savings in the three values mentioned previously, hover over the Data Reduction value. In codes prior to this release, data reduction savings information is displayed in the System Capacity view block. If the view block is not shown on your system, you can add it by selecting the Main tab, clicking Customize, and adding the view block. An example of the System Efficiency view block, which is available in Dell UnityOS version 4.3 and later, is shown in Error! Reference source not found..

Figure 35.    System Efficiency View Block – Unisphere Dashboard Page

Calculating Savings

In Dell UnityOS version 4.5, multiple changes were made to space reporting within the system. The space reporting updates affect the System, Pool, and Storage Resource values. With these changes, users are able to utilize the formulas, displayed in Error! Reference source not found., to calculate and verify the data reduction savings percentage and ratio for the System, Pools, and Storage Resources.

Figure 36.    Data Reduction Savings Formulas