amazon-fsx

Deleting data from an FSxN volume not freeing up space


I have a volume under a FSx Netapp filesystem that when I delete files free space isn't being restored to the volume. For example. Here I am deleting an 8GB file on a 10GB volume but no space is being returned to the filesystem:

$ df -h .
Filesystem               Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
fsxdata:/keith_test_vol  9.5G  8.6G  981M  90% /mnt
$ ls -lh
total 8.1G
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root   8.0G Jan 26 09:07 bigfile
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu    6 Dec  6 11:30 test
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root      0 Oct  9 16:54 test2
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu    0 Nov  9 11:35 test3
drwxrwxrwx 2 root   root   8.0K Dec 15 09:25 test_qtree
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root      0 Oct  9 11:53 testfilefromroot
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu    0 Nov  9 11:34 testfromunbuntu
$ rm bigfile
rm: remove write-protected regular file 'bigfile'? y
$ ls -lh
total 8.0K
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu    6 Dec  6 11:30 test
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root      0 Oct  9 16:54 test2
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu    0 Nov  9 11:35 test3
drwxrwxrwx 2 root   root   8.0K Dec 15 09:25 test_qtree
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root      0 Oct  9 11:53 testfilefromroot
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu    0 Nov  9 11:34 testfromunbuntu
$ df -h .
Filesystem               Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
fsxdata:/keith_test_vol  9.5G  8.6G  978M  90% /mnt

Anyone know what is going on here?


Solution

  • FSxN uses ONTAP technology that uses snapshots (if not disabled). This keeps old data around even after users have deleted it. Check your volume snapshot policy. You can delete old snapshots if you no longer need them, also in general based on the policy they will age off as well and then the space will be reclaimed.

    vol show -fields snapshot-policy
    vol snapshot policy show
    vol snapshots show -volume <vol name>