The IBM® i operating system SSD Fuel Gauge tool is used to check the amount of life remaining in a read intensive solid-state drive (SSD).  This tool is introduced in IBM i 7.3 base release, and in IBM i 7.2 TR 4.

Invocation and Usage

1. If the system has logical partitions, complete this procedure from the logical partition that is configured with the read intensive SSDs.
2. Sign on to an IBM i session, with at least service level authority.
3. To create a report in a spoolfile, from the XPF command line call the QSMGSSTD API:

CALL PGM(QSMGSSTD) PARM('SSDGAUGE' X'00000008' 'SSTD0100' X'00000000')

4. Display the contents of the spoolfile generated by the QSMGSSTD API.
5. Look at the information recorded for each of the read intensive SSDs.
6. Is the value in the Life Remaining Gauge field 0 percent?
   • No: The SSD has not reached its limit for the number of write operations that are supported. As the Life Remaining Gauge nears 0 percent, messages will be logged several times before the drive reaches its write operation limit and becomes a read-only drive and starts rejecting write operations.
   • Yes: The SSD has reached the limit for the number of write operations that are supported. The SSD is now a read-only drive and should be replaced. When the operating system writes to the SSD, the write operations are rejected, and the operating system treats the drive as if a failure occurred. Replace the drive.
     Note: Replacement of the read intensive SSD might not be covered by the system's level of service entitlement, depending on the terms and conditions of the system. For more information about read intensive SSDs, see Read intensive SSDs.

Sample Results

Sample information from the SSD Fuel Gauge for a read intensive SSD:

Field definitions

• "Resource Name" is the symbolic name of the hardware resource that was either created by the system when the hardware was first sensed, or was updated to a new value by a user on a change screen.
• "Location Code" is a sequence of location labels that represent the physical or logical location of the resource.
• "Part Number" is the resource's internal part number from the resource's VPD (Vital Product Data).
• "Serial Number" is a unique identifier for the resource.
• "Firmware Level" is the microcode level being used by the resource.
• "Number of bytes written to SSD" is the lifetime number of bytes that have been physically written to the NAND memory in this particular unit thus far.  This will be strongly related to bytes written by the applications using the drive, but will not match.  Until there have been 1 GB or more bytes written, this field will be 0.
• "Number of written bytes supported" is the lifetime number of bytes that the SSD is expected to be able to physically write at a minimum.  Additional writes beyond this number may start to fail due to the limited write endurance of a Read Intensive drive.
• "Life Remaining Gauge" indicates the percentage of usable function remaining for the drive before it should be replaced.  Note that calculations for this percentage include more than just the number of bytes written and supported.
• "PFA trip" is an indicator for the logging of a Predictive Failure Analysis warning.
• "Power on days" is the number of days the resource has been active in a system.

Additional Information

For additional information, see Read Intensive SSDs.

For additional information about the API, see QSMGSSTD.