Notifications on production datastores (feature req v9.5)

[ljverschuren]

With version 9.5 for VMware vSphere, the Notifications on free disk space have been changed from a setting in absolute GB's to a percentage. Since we use rather big datastores (5-10TB) the default percentage level is generating a lot of warnings on free space, while having enough. It would be great if this could be set again to absolute GB's (or having the choice in either percentage of absolute value)?

Anyone recognizing this change?

[Shestakov]

Hello,
indeed the option has been changed from GBs to %, but it`s a configurable value.
You may calculate the needed percentage and set the parameter.
Thanks!

[ljverschuren]

Hi,

Off course you can calculate, but setting a value to for example 2% is ok for a 10TB datastore, but for a 50GB datastore it is not. Having a mixed environment with various datastore sizes I would prefer an absolute value for this setting.

[Gostev]

Well, it's exactly the opposite actually. Percent value works much better for environments with varying datastore size due to its dynamic nature (larger datastores tend to have more and larger VMs, which will consume free space much faster during backup). Using percent value was driven by the customer feedback and VMware best practices, and based on multiple "production down" situations we have been observing in support in the past years due to using the absolute warning amount.

Remember that VMware explicitly recommends keeping 10% of datastore capacity available to accommodate VM snapshots (instead of recommending some absolute amount regardless of datastore size). In fact, this recommendation is exactly where the default 10% warning-threshold comes from.

That said, the absolute stop-threshold value is still available as before, using the same old registry key (see What's New in 9.5 for details). You can use this to protect those tiny datastores from overfilling if you choose to set your warning-threshold % to a very low value.

[Shestakov]

To get more flexibility can also use Veeam ONE alarms if you have the full Veeam Availability Suite.
Thanks!

[JTT]

Hi

The notification for "Warn me when free disk space is below" is a really good feature, but would it be possible to add a custom precentage per backup storage/repo? Currently one value for all, is a issue, because some job end with warning, even if there is plenty of free space.
For an example one vbr with multiple repos, that have size between 5 to 25tb, one precentage warning does not work for them.

Also the same problem is with Production datastores warning. Different sizes CSV or vmware datastores means, that this is a big problem.

[HannesK]

Hello,
I merged your request to one of the existing threads.

Adding features is always "possible", but in this case I would vote against it as it helps only a small fraction of customers. For the others it's just adding more options and complexity.

Your default monitoring tool should be able to monitor whatever free space you like to have monitored. Then you can disable the monitoring from VBR side completely.

Best regards,
Hannes