By default, you can provision a combined total of 250 block and file storage volumes. Please contact your sales representative to increase your volumes.
The default limit for number of authorizations per file volume is 64. Please contact your sales representative to increase the limit.
When provisioning Performance or Endurance Block/File Storage, are the allocated IOPS enforced by instance or by volume?
IOPS are enforced at the volume level. Said differently, two hosts connected to a volume with 6000 IOPS share that 6000 IOPS.
IOPS are measured based on a load profile of 16kb blocks with random 50% read and 50% writes. Workloads that differ from this profile may experience lower performance.
Maximum IOPS can still be obtained when using smaller block sizes, however throughput will be lower. For example; a volume with 6000 IOPS would have the following throughput at various block sizes:
- 16KB * 6000 IOPS == ~93.75 MB/sec
- 8KB * 6000 IOPS == ~46.88 MB/sec
- 4KB * 6000 IOPS == ~23.44 MB/sec
There is no need for pre-warming. You will observe specified throughput immediately upon provisioning the volume.
When viewing your list of Block or File storage in the customer portal, you will see a lock icon to the right of LUN/volume name for those that are encrypted.
If I have non-encrypted File storage provisioned in a data center that has been upgraded for encryption, can I encrypt my File storage?
File storage that is provisioned prior to a data center upgrade cannot be encrypted. New File storage provisioned in upgraded data centers is automatically encrypted ; there is no encrypt setting to choose from, it’s automatic.. Data on non-encrypted storage in an upgraded data center can be encrypted by creating a new File volume, then copying the data to the new encrypted volume or volume with host-based migration. See this article for instructions on how to perform the migration.
When provisioning Block or File storage, all upgraded data centers will be denoted with an asterisk (*) in the order form and an indication that you will be provisioning storage with encryption. Once the storage is provisioned, you will see an icon in the storage list that shows that volume or volume as encrypted. All encrypted volumes and volumes are provisioned in upgraded data centers only. You can find a full list of upgraded data centers and available features here.
Why can I provision block and file storage with an Endurance 10 IOPS tier in some data centers and not in others?
The File storage Endurance type 10 IOPS/GB tier is only available in select data centers, with new data centers being added soon. You can find a full list of upgraded data centers and available features here.
All encrypted File storage volumes provisioned in these data centers have a different mount point than non-encrypted volumes. To ensure you are using the correct mount point for both your encrypted and non-encrypted file storage volumes you can view the mount point information in the Volume Detials page in the UI as well as access the correct mountpoint via an API call: SoftLayer_Network_Storage::getNetworkMountAddress().
What are the maximum file shares allowed per volume size?
Following are the maximum inodes or file shares allowed based on volume size:
Volume Size Inodes/Files
20GB 622,484
40GB 1,245,084
80GB 2,490,263
100GB 3,112,863
250GB 7,782,300
500GB 15,564,695
1TB+ 31,876,593