What is Adaptive QoS and how does it work?

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/What_is_Ada…
Updated: Tue, 19 Jul 2022 16:08:18 GMT

Applies to
ONTAP 9.3 or newer

Answer
• Adaptive QoS uses QoS Throughput Floors and Ceilings (Minimum and Maximum throttle limits) to set
individual Volume limits.
• Floors are used to guarantee nearly-idle workloads do not interfere with busier workloads.
• Adaptive QoS is dynamic based upon volume size, meaning a 10GB volume would have a different Floor
and Ceiling than a 10 TB volume.
◦ This means the Ceiling is the greater of 1) Expected IOPS, 2) Peak IOPS, or 3) Absolute Minimum
IOPS
▪ Note: Expected or peak could be determined by if used or allocated space is set, so if calculating,

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 please consider that
◦ The Floor is always Expected IOPS unless below the Absolute Minimum IOPS

Terms

Dynamic QoS Ceilings and Floors which grow or shrink based upon volume size
Adaptive QoS
used or allocated

Throughput Floor
The amount of IOPs required to not hit deadline scheduler and obtain optimal latency
(Minimum)

Throughput Ceiling
A hard limit of how many IOPs a Volume is allocated (regular QoS)
(Maximum)

Expected IOPS The Throughput Floor value in IOPS per terabyte (unless specified different)

An IOP Throughput Floor, used when Expected IOPs becomes too low and overrides
Absolute minimum Expected IOPs or Peak
IOPS
Example: A 10 GB Volume with a default Adaptive QoS "value" policy group will
have a Floor of 75 IOPs, not 1.28 IOPs Expected.

The value in IOPS per terabyte (unless specified different) is the Ceiling when
Peak IOPS
greater than Expected and Absolute Minimum IOPS

Note: The calculated value can be seen with the qos workload show -instance command

Cluster::> qos workload show -instance

Workload Name: aqos1-wid32444

...
Maximum Throughput: 1425IOPS

• Custom policies may be made available with the qos adaptive-policy-group create command
• By default, three buckets are created:

policy-group expected-iops peak-iops absolute-min-iops

extreme 6144IOPS/TB 12288IOPS/TB 1000IOPS

performance 2048IOPS/TB 4096IOPS/TB 500IOPS

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 value 128IOPS/TB 512IOPS/TB 75IOPS

How does Adaptive QoS decide when to throttle?

1. In ONTAP 9.6 and earlier, Volumes not in an adaptive policy will be put into a deadline scheduler called
Best Effort if CPU Headroom is over 100%
2. In ONTAP 9.7 and later, Volumes not in an adaptive policy will be put into a deadline scheduler called Best
Effort.
3. Volumes in an adaptive policy with IOPs are below the Throughput Floor will be put into the deadline
scheduler Best Effort.
4. Volumes in an adaptive policy with IOPs above the Throughput Floor will not be throttled by QoS.
5. Volumes in an adaptive policy with IOPs at the Throughput Ceiling will be throttled at that value.

Note: ONTAP 9.7 changes are due to Throughput Floors v2.

Additional Information
• Release notes for ONTAP: Storage QoS features by release
• Documentation on Adaptive QoS.
• Documentation on Throughput Floors

• Here is some additional examples of space usage and throttling levels for comparison:
◦ Expected IOPS = 200/TB
◦ Peak IOPS = 1000/TB
◦ Absolute Min IOPS = 75
◦ Expected IOPs = allocated space
◦ Peak IOPs = used space
• The minimum and maximum IOPS will be calculated as follows for used-space allocation:

Volume Size Data Stored QoS Min IOPS (SSD Aggregate only) QoS Max IOPS

1 GB 0GB 75 (Absolute Minimum) 75 (Absolute Minimum)

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 1 TB 0 TB 75 (Absolute Minimum) 200 (Expected)

1 TB .1 TB 75 (Absolute Minimum) 200

1 TB .2 TB 75 (Absolute Minimum) 200 (Peak and Expected)

1 TB .4 TB 80 (Expected) 400 (Peak)

1 TB .5 TB 100 500

2 TB 1.5 TB 300 1500

2 TB 1.75 TB 350 1750

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including photocopying, recording, taping, or storage in an electronic retrieval system—without prior written permission of the copyright owner. For more
information, see Legal Notices. 4