Methods to create space in a FlexVol volume

There are multiple ways to create space in a FlexVol volume. Understanding what these methods are and their respective benefits and drawbacks helps you decide which method is best for your requirements.

Some common ways to create space in a volume are as follows:

• Increase the size of the volume.

  You can do this manually, or automatically by enabling the autogrow functionality.

• Reduce the size of the Snapshot reserve if the df command shows that the Snapshot reserve is not 100 percent full.

  This makes space available to the active file system.

• Make more space in the aggregate.

  This results directly or indirectly in more space being made for the volume. For example, more space in the aggregate can allow a volume to increase in size automatically with the autogrow capability.

• Enable storage efficiency technologies, such as deduplication and compression.
• Delete volume Snapshot copies if the Snapshot reserve is 100 percent full and Snapshot copies are spilling into the active file system.

  You can delete Snapshot copies manually, or automatically by enabling the Snapshot autodelete capability for the volume.

• Delete FlexClone LUNs and LUN clones.
• (Temporarily) change the fractional reserve to 0 percent if your volume contains reserved files or LUNs and the fractional reserve is 100 percent.

  You should only use this as a temporary measure to create space. When the fractional reserve is set to 0 percent, overwrites might fail, and in certain deployments write failures might not be acceptable.

• Delete files.

  If the volume is 100 percent full, it might not be possible to delete a file if it participates in any block sharing, such as volume Snapshot copies or deduplication, and you cannot recover the space. In addition, modifying a directory to delete a file might require additional space, so deleting the file can actually consume space. Under these conditions, you can do one of the following:

  • You can use the rm command, available at the advanced privilege level, to delete files even in full volumes with Snapshot copies.
  • You can use any of the other methods listed to create more space in the volume and aggregate so that there is enough space available for file deletions.