Volume (Cloud)

Synopsis

Monitored Resources

Turbonomic monitors the following resources:

• Storage Amount

  Storage Amount is the storage capacity (disk size) of a volume.

  Turbonomic discovers Storage Amount, but does not monitor utilization.

  For a Kubeturbo (container) deployment that includes volumes, Kubeturbo monitors Storage Amount utilization for the volumes. You can view utilization information in the Capacity and Usage chart.

• Storage Access (IOPS)

  Storage Access, also known as IOPS, is the measurement of IOPS capacity that is in use.

• I/O Throughput

  I/O Throughput is the measurement of I/O throughput capacity that is in use.

Actions

Turbonomic supports the following actions:

• Scale

  Scale attached volumes to optimize performance and costs.

• Delete

  Delete unattached volumes as a cost-saving measure. Turbonomic generates an action immediately after discovering an unattached volume.

Scale Actions

Scale attached volumes to optimize performance and costs.

Turbonomic can recommend:

• Scaling within the same tier (scale up or down), or from one tier to another

  Examples:

  • An action to scale down IOPS for a high performance volume, such as Azure Managed Ultra

  • An action to scale a volume from the io1 to the gp2 tier

  These actions can reduce costs significantly while continuing to assure performance. In addition, they are non-disruptive and reversible.

  Note:

  For details about action disruptiveness and reversibility, see Non-disruptive and Reversible Scaling Actions.

• Scaling from one tier to another and then within the new tier, in a single action

  For example, to achieve higher IOPS performance for VMs that are premium storage capable, you might see an action to scale the corresponding volume from Standard to Premium, and then scale up volume capacity from 32GB to 256 GB. This action increases costs and is irreversible, but is more cost effective than scaling up within the original tier.

  Note:

  Not all VM types are premium storage capable. For details, see the Azure Documentation.

Points to consider:

• When there are multiple disks attached to a volume, every volume scale action can potentially disrupt the same VM multiple times and some of the actions may fail due to concurrency. To mitigate these issues, Turbonomic identifies all volume actions associated with a particular VM and combines them into a single unit for execution, thus reducing disruptions and the chance of failures due to concurrency. This approach applies to scale actions in Manual or Automated mode.

• You can create policies to control the scaling actions that Turbonomic generates.

  • Turbonomic includes a policy setting that lets you choose between two outcomes – better savings (default) and better reversibility. If you choose reversibility, which can increase costs, Turbonomic will prioritize actions to change tiers whenever possible.

    

  • Set scaling constraints if you want volumes to only scale to or avoid certain tiers. For details, see Cloud Storage Tiers.

Delete Actions

Delete unattached volumes as a cost-saving measure.

Exceptions for Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup Volumes

Turbonomic discovers Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup volumes when you add Azure targets. Even though these volumes are always unattached, Turbonomic will never recommend deleting them because they are critical to business continuity and disaster recovery.

To identify Azure Site Recovery volumes, Turbonomic checks an Azure resource called Recovery Services vault, which includes information specific to the volumes. It also checks for the ASR-ReplicaDisk tag, which Azure automatically assigns to the volumes.

For Azure Backup volumes, Turbonomic checks for the RSVaultBackup tag.

It is important that you do not remove these tags. If these tags have been removed for some reason, create a volume policy for the affected volumes and disable the Delete action in that policy.

Action Execution for Locked Volumes

For Azure environments, Turbonomic can recommend scale and delete actions for locked volumes, but the lock level configured for the volumes may prevent some actions from executing.

• For volumes with the ReadOnly lock, both scale and delete actions are not executable.

• For volumes with the CanNotDelete lock, delete actions are not executable, but scale actions are executable.

You must sign in to Azure and then remove the locks for the affected volumes before you can execute actions. To identify the specific locks that you need to remove, open the Action Details page for a pending volume action and see the Execution Prerequisites section.

Volume Actions in Charts

Use the Necessary Investments and Potential Savings charts to view pending volume actions. These charts show total monthly investments and savings, assuming you execute all the actions.

Click Show All for each chart to review and execute the actions.

The table shows the following:

• Actions that are pending for each volume

• Savings or investments for each volume

• For Delete actions in the Potential Savings chart:

  

  • Number of days a volume has been unattached

    This information helps you decide whether to take the action.

    Turbonomic polls your cloud volumes every 6 hours, and then records their state (attached or unattached) at the time of polling. It does not account for changes in state between polls.

    For newly unattached volumes, Turbonomic shows a dash symbol (-) if a volume has been unattached within the last 6 hours. A value of 0 (zero) means that a volume has been unattached within the last 24 hours.

    Once Turbonomic discovers an unattached volume, it immediately recommends that you delete it. If a currently unattached volume is not deleted and is subsequently discovered as attached, Turbonomic removes the Delete action attached to it, and then resets the unattached period.

    Note:

    For volumes that have been deleted from the cloud provider and are no longer discoverable, Turbonomic removes them from its records after 15 days.

    To see the last known VM attached to the volume, click DETAILS.

  • For Scale actions in the Potential Savings or Necessary Investments chart:

    

    • Whether actions are non-disruptive or reversible

    • Changes the actions will effect (for example, changes in tiers and/or resource allocations)

    When you click the DETAILS button for a scaling action, you will see utilization charts that help explain the reason for the action.

Utilization Charts for Volume Scaling Actions

Turbonomic uses percentile calculations to measure IOPS and throughput more accurately, and drive scaling actions that improve overall utilization and reduce costs. When you examine the details for a pending scaling action on a volume, you will see charts that highlight resource utilization percentiles for a given observation period, and the projected percentiles after you execute the action.

The charts also plot daily average utilization for your reference. If you have previously executed scaling actions on the volume, you can see the resulting improvements in daily average utilization. Put together, these charts allow you to easily recognize utilization trends that drive Turbonomic's scaling recommendations.