Administrator Guide

Increase the Reported Size of a Volume
You can increase the reported size of the volume while the volume remains online.
The following considerations apply to increasing the size of a volume:
• If the size you specify is not a multiple of 15MB, the group rounds up the value to the nearest multiple of 15MB.
• If you do not specify a unit for the size, the unit defaults to MB.
• If you congured the volume for replication, the wizard shows the delegated space on the replication partner.
• If the new volume size exceeds the capacity of a pool, the free space cell displays a negative value.
• For thin-provisioned volumes, you can modify the in-use warning value and maximum in-use space value.
• Resizing out-of-sync synchronous replication (SyncRep) volumes is not supported.
To increase the reported volume size:
1. Click Volumes.
2. Expand Volumes and then select the volume name.
3. Click Modify settings.
4. Click the Space tab to open the Modify Volume Settings – Space dialog box.
5. Specify the new reported volume size in the Volume size eld.
(Values in the Pool Space table change, based on the new volume size.)
6. (Optional) Use the slider bars to modify the in-use warning value and maximum in-use space value for a thin-provisioned
volume.
7. Click OK.
8. Conrm that you want to create a snapshot of the current volume before you resize it.
You can also increase the size of a volume with the Group Manager CLI volume select size command. See the Dell EqualLogic Group
Manager CLI Reference Guide for more information about using CLI commands that relate to volumes.
About Reclaiming Unallocated Space
PS Series rmware supports using SCSI unmap operations to recover unused space previously allocated to volumes.
As a host writes data to a volume, the array allocates additional space for that data. Prior to support of the volume unmapping
feature, that space remained allocated to the volume, even if the data was deleted from the volume and hosts were no longer using
it. This usage created a “watermark” eect; the array could not deallocate the space, and therefore the space was unavailable for
allocation to other volumes.
With volume unmapping, the array can reclaim this unused space. When a host connected to a volume issues a SCSI unmap
operation, the array deletes the data and deallocates the space, making it available for allocation by other volumes. Space
deallocation occurs only if you are using initiators that are capable of sending SCSI unmap operations and only on a “best eort”
basis. Although space deallocation occurs on both thin-provisioned volumes and regular volumes, the volume reserve size can
potentially shrink as a result of unmap operations only on thin-provisioned volumes.
If space is deallocated, that space might not be immediately available as free space for other volumes until the array deletes
snapshots of those volumes.
Unmap operations are supported in the following operating systems:
• VMware ESX 5.5u3 or later
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 or later
• Windows Servers 2012 and 2016
About Volumes
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