SANmp Periodic Drive Maintenance
It is recommended that SAN volumes should be reinitialized on a six to twelve month cycle. This helps maintain a reliable file system on the disk and keeps the SAN running at peak performance. This is not a limitation, nor consequence of using SANmp, but rather, HFS+ and NTFS drives can exhibit irregular behavior when operated too close to maximum capacity. It is also therefore recommended that users always maintain free space on each drive equal to at least approximately 15% of that drive’s total formatted capacity (i.e. a 100GB volume should always have at least 15GB free). HFS+ volumes should be maintained from a Macintosh running SANmp Admin; NTFS volumes should be maintained from a Windows workstation running SANmp Admin.
SANmp v.4 and higher will check the amount of free space on a volume when it is mounted, and if insufficient free space exists the notice ’Warning <volume> almost full’ will be displayed. This warning can help to raise awareness that periodic drive maintenance is in order.
To perform periodic drive maintenance or to clear a volume’s free space warning indicator, please follow these directions:
- Launch SANmp Client and mount a volume.
- Back up and verify all data on the volume as the following steps will completely erase it.
- Unmount the volume and quit SANmp Client.
- Launch SANmp Admin.
- Select the volume/partition then choose the Erase tab. (All users must have this volume/partition unmounted.)
- Then, click the Erase button, and confirm after reading the dialog box.
- Test access to the volume using SANmp Client. Return to step 1 if you have additional SANmp volumes to maintain.
Additional information on this topic can be found in the SANmp User Guide.
Learn more about disk optimization with Mac OS X from this article on Apple's knowledge base.
The following procedures are deprecated and preserved for historical purposes.
SANmp Periodic Drive Maintenance Procedure for NTFS (Windows) formatted SAN volumes.
1. Shut down all other workstations.
2. Launch SANmp Client and mount one drive.
3. Back up and verify all data on the drive as the following steps will completely erase it.
4. Unmount the drive and quit SANmp Client.
5. Launch SANmp Admin.
6. Select the volume/partition then choose the Erase tab.
7. You may change the volume name at this point if you wish. Then click the Erase button, and confirm
after reading the dialog box.
8. Test access to the volume using SANmp Client. Return to step 2 if you have additional SANmp volumes
to maintain.
SANmp Periodic Drive Maintenance Procedure for HFS+ (Mac OS X) formatted SAN volumes.
1. Shut down all other workstations.
2. Launch SANmp Client and mount one drive.
3. Back up and verify all data on the drive as the following steps will completely erase it.
4. Unmount the drive and quit SANmp Client.
5. Launch SANmp Admin.
6. Select the volume then choose Unconvert Disk from the Administrator menu. This will restore the
disk to a standard OS volume and it will mount on the desktop.
7. Launch Apple Disk Utility.
8. In Disk Utility choose the volume from the list, then choose the Erase tab. Set Volume Format to
Mac OS Extended (Non Journaled) and un-select Install OS 9 drivers if the checkbox appears. If
you are using an Intel Mac you should also check the Options button to confirm that Apple Partition
Map is selected. Click on the Erase button, then Confirm.
9. After successfully erasing the volume, launch SANmp Admin. Choose the volume, click on the Sharing
tab, then click on the button to Convert the disk into a SANmp volume.
10. After successfully converting the volume select all members of the volume list, then select all members of
the user list. You can then click the Copy User to Disk button.
11. Select the volume again and assign access permission for each user.
12. Test access to the volume using SANmp Client. Return to step 2 if you have additional SANmp volumes
to maintain.