This article explains how disk space alerts work in Minion Enterprise, and how you can easily configure alert thresholds, deferments, and exceptions.

Drive space alert thresholds are stored in the dbo.DriveSpaceReport table.  This table is the central place to configure the disk space alert thresholds for your entire environment.

How to handle Drive Space alerts: Fix, Defer, or Except

When you first install Minion Enterprise, you might start receiving disk space alerts if you have some disks that are running low on free space. You have several options for handling these alerts: resolve, change the threshold, defer the alert, or exclude the drive from alerting. 

Change the Drive Threshold

Change the drive space alert threshold, if the drive in question is a known issue:

EXEC Setup.DriveSpaceThreshold
@ServerName = 'MyServer',
@DriveName = 'C:\',
@AlertMethod = 'GB',
@AlertValue = 50;

This inserts a row to dbo.DriveSpaceReport.

 

Change the Server Threshold

You can change the drive space alert threshold for an entire server, if the server itself is a known issue:

INSERT INTO dbo.DriveSpaceThresholdServer (InstanceID, AlertMethod, AlertValue)
VALUES (4, 'Percent', 10);

This inserts a row to dbo.DriveSpaceReport. 

For more discussion on setting thresholds, see Drive Space Module.

Defer the Alert

Defer the drive in question from alerts for a specific period of time, if the resolution is coming (and you don’t want alerts in the meantime):

EXEC Setup.DriveSpaceDefer
@ServerName = 'MyServer',
@DriveName = 'C:\',
@DeferDate = '08/20/2015',
@DeferEndDate = '08/20/2015',
@DeferEndTime = '06:00';

This inserts a row to the table Alert.DriveSpaceDefer.

 

 

Exclude the Drive from Alerting

Exclude the drive from alerting, if the drive isn’t your responsibility or should otherwise not be alerted on:

EXEC Setup.DriveSpaceException
@ServerName = 'MyServer',
@DriveName = 'C:\';

This inserts a row to dbo.DriveSpaceReport.

 

Additional notes

Drive space alerts thresholds, deferments and exceptions are recorded in the following tables:

  • dbo.DriveSpaceReport – This is the alert configuration table.  It holds default disk space thresholds for every configuration you could need in your environment.
  • Alert.DriveSpaceDefer - The definitive record of deferments. Feel free to insert deferments via the Setup.DriveSpaceDefer procedure, or a simple insert statement.

You can also do your own drive space research using the Collector.DriveSpace table (and its associated "Current" and "Previous" views), and with the following Report procedures: 

  • Report.DrivesByInstanceID - Provides a list of drives for a single instance.
  • Report.LatestDriveSpace - Provides drive space information for a (comma-delimited) list of servers.
  • Report.DriveSpacePredict - Provides a simple report of growth rate, days til drive full, and date the drive is predicted to be full, for a single instance.
  • Report.DriveSpacePredictByID - Provides drive space information, and a prediction about when the drive will hit its alert threshold, for a single instance.
  • Report.DriveSpacePredictByServerList - Provides drive space information, and a prediction about when the drive will hit its alert threshold, for a (comma-delimited) list of servers.
  • Report.DriveSpaceHistory - Provides drive space history for a single instance.
  • Report.DriveCapacityChanges - Provides a report of changes to drives' capacity, for all instances.

These procedures are used with SSRS reports provided with Minion Enterprise.


For more information, see the article Drive Space Module.