Managing storage and throughput capacity

You can increase the storage capacity that is configured on your Amazon FSx for Lustre file system as you need additional storage and throughput. Because the throughput of an Amazon FSx for Lustre file system scales linearly with storage capacity, you also get a comparable increase in throughput capacity. To increase the storage capacity, you can use the Amazon FSx console, the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or the Amazon FSx API.

When you request an update to your file system's storage capacity, Amazon FSx automatically adds new network file servers and scales your metadata server. While scaling storage capacity, the file system may be unavailable for a few minutes. File operations issued by clients while the file system is unavailable will transparently retry and eventually succeed after storage scaling is complete. During the time that the file system is unavailable, the file system status is set to UPDATING. Once storage scaling is complete, the file system status is set to AVAILABLE.

Amazon FSx then runs a storage optimization process that transparently rebalances data across the existing and newly added file servers. Rebalancing is performed in the background with no impact to file system availability. During rebalancing, you might see decreased file system performance as resources are consumed for data movement. For most file systems, storage optimization takes a few hours up to a few days. You can access and use your file system during the optimization phase.

You can track the storage optimization progress at any time using the Amazon FSx console, CLI, and API. For more information, see Monitoring storage capacity increases.

Important points to know when increasing storage capacity

Here are a few important items to consider when increasing storage capacity:

When to increase storage and throughput capacity

Increase your file system's storage capacity when it's running low on free storage capacity. Use the FreeStorageCapacity CloudWatch metric to monitor the amount of free storage that is available on the file system. You can create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm on this metric and get notified when it drops below a specific threshold. For more information, see Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch.

You can use CloudWatch metrics to monitor your file system's ongoing throughput usage levels. If you determine that your file system needs a higher throughput capacity, you can use the metric information to help you decide how much to increase the storage capacity. For information about how to determine your file system's current throughput, see How to Use Amazon FSx for Lustre Metrics. For information about how storage capacity affects throughput capacity, see Amazon FSx for Lustre Performance.

You can also view your file system's storage capacity and total throughput on the Summary panel of the file system details page.

How concurrent storage scaling and backup requests are handled

You can request a backup just before a storage scaling workflow begins or while it is in progress. The sequence of how Amazon FSx handles the two requests is as follows:

If a storage scaling request is pending and a file system backup request is also pending, the backup task has higher precedence. The storage scaling task does not start until the backup task is finished.

How to increase storage capacity

You can increase a file system's storage capacity using the Amazon FSx console, the AWS CLI, or the Amazon FSx API.

$ aws fsx update-file-system \
    --file-system-id fs-0123456789abcdef0 \
    --storage-capacity 9600

Monitoring storage capacity increases

You can monitor the progress of a storage capacity increase using the Amazon FSx console, the API, or the AWS CLI.

In the Updates tab in the file system details page, you can view the 10 most recent updates for each update type.

You can view the following information:

Update type

Supported types are Storage capacity and Storage optimization.

Target value

The desired value to update the file system's storage capacity to.

Status

The current status of the storage capacity updates. The possible values are as follows:

• Pending – Amazon FSx has received the update request, but has not started processing it.

• In progress – Amazon FSx is processing the update request.

• Updated; Optimizing – Amazon FSx has increased the file system's storage capacity. The storage optimization process is now rebalancing data across the file servers.

• Completed – The storage capacity increase completed successfully.

• Failed – The storage capacity increase failed. Choose the question mark (?) to see details on why the storage update failed.

Progress %

Displays the progress of the storage optimization process as percent complete.

Request time

The time that Amazon FSx received the update action request.

You can view and monitor file system storage capacity increase requests using the describe-file-systems AWS CLI command and the DescribeFileSystems API action. The AdministrativeActions array lists the 10 most recent update actions for each administrative action type. When you increase a file system's storage capacity, two AdministrativeActions are generated: a FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE and a STORAGE_OPTIMIZATION action.

The following example shows an excerpt of the response of a describe-file-systems CLI command. The file system has a storage capacity of 4800 GB, and there is a pending administrative action to increase the storage capacity to 9600 GB.

{
    "FileSystems": [
        {
            "OwnerId": "111122223333",
            .
            .
            .
            "StorageCapacity": 4800,
            "AdministrativeActions": [
                {
                     "AdministrativeActionType": "FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE",
                     "RequestTime": 1581694764.757,
                     "Status": "PENDING",
                     "TargetFileSystemValues": {
                         "StorageCapacity": 9600
                     }
                },
                {
                    "AdministrativeActionType": "STORAGE_OPTIMIZATION",
                    "RequestTime": 1581694764.757,
                    "Status": "PENDING",
                }
            ]

Amazon FSx processes the FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE action first, adding new file servers to the file system. When the new storage is available to the file system, the FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE status changes to UPDATED_OPTIMIZING. The storage capacity shows the new larger value, and Amazon FSx begins processing the STORAGE_OPTIMIZATION administrative action. This is shown in the following excerpt of the response of a describe-file-systems CLI command.

The ProgressPercent property displays the progress of the storage optimization process. After the storage optimization process completes successfully, the status of the FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE action changes to COMPLETED, and the STORAGE_OPTIMIZATION action no longer appears.

{
    "FileSystems": [
        {
            "OwnerId": "111122223333",
            .
            .
            .
            "StorageCapacity": 9600,
            "AdministrativeActions": [
                {
                    "AdministrativeActionType": "FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE",
                    "RequestTime": 1581694764.757,
                    "Status": "UPDATED_OPTIMIZING",
                    "TargetFileSystemValues": {
                        "StorageCapacity": 9600
                }
                },
                {
                    "AdministrativeActionType": "STORAGE_OPTIMIZATION",
                    "RequestTime": 1581694764.757,
                    "Status": "IN_PROGRESS",
                    "ProgressPercent": 50,
                }
            ]

If the storage capacity increase fails, the status of the FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE action changes to FAILED. The FailureDetails property provides information about the failure, shown in the following example.

{
    "FileSystems": [ 
        { 
            "OwnerId": "111122223333",
            .
            .
            .
            "StorageCapacity": 4800,
            "AdministrativeActions": [ 
                { 
                    "AdministrativeActionType": "FILE_SYSTEM_UPDATE",
                    "FailureDetails": { 
                        "Message": "string"
                    },
                    "RequestTime": 1581694764.757,
                    "Status": "FAILED",
                    "TargetFileSystemValues": 
                        "StorageCapacity": 9600
                }
            ]