Network Management

Ok, I know this is a difficult question, but anyway… How much database disk space (Kb/Mb) each new client will consume on my AirWave? I mean, how do I calculate the necessary AirWave disk space for a public space where new clients booms like mushrooms (i.e.: 1000 new clients a day)?

Cheers!

Mo

Others can chine in but I don't think that Airwave is based on a per client storage.  There are MANY more variables that consume the space.  

In order to protect against running out of space, I would recommend adjusting the historical data retention settings per this use case in AMP Setup screen.

Seth, for sure this is one of the ways to go. However, this does not answer my question... Nowadays disk is quite inexpensive so why not keep data? And what if this is a "must be" from the customer? My idea is to get to know how much should I recommend in such cases. And going further, what if VisualRF is on? Does it requires even more disk space?

Mo

Mo,

The main reason why you would not keep data even though disk is cheap is that application performance will suffer...  The larger the database(s) get the longer it takes to search through them...

Mo,

I've got an AMP server monitoring ~2200 AP across 21 controllers seeing roughly 25k users per day.

We maxed out the specs on the Dell server, basically more than doubling Aruba's recommendation

24 x146Gb drives in RAID-10 giving us 1.5Tb of diskspace.

I had my historical data retention (HDR) set to keep the following values

• Client Data Retention Interval
• Client Association and VPN Session History

for 180 days and within I believe 1 month of launch, disk usage was at 98%.

Each RRD file was roughly 256kb, performance was terrible, I then tweaked HDR, specifically those 2 values to 14.

I haven't had a problem since and i've been able to recuperate 50% of my diskspace.

You're probably asking yourself, well I can't search back 2 months for data for a particular client.

No I cannot, but I run reports every 2 weeks and keep those offline for me to return to.

You're only other option is to purchase an expensive SAN and attach it to the head server if you want to keep data longer than that.

my $0.02

Pasquale, many, many thanks for your post! Nothing, but real field experience…

In a quick calculation based on your feedback, to support 12k new users per day (that is more like my environment) I would need half of your storage that is 1.5Tb if I set retention to 14 days. So for, 60 days retention it should be something about 3Tb.

I hope someone from Aruba engineering is watching this thread to confirm/refuse such numbers. But, as your post brings “no comments” but real life field experience, it is quite undeniable.

Thanks again for sharing konwledge,

Mo

It's also good to point out that Airwave uses LVM so you can add disk space later, and essentially merge it in to the logical volume.

There's a good tutorial running around here on doing that.

Ok, so let's fake a case:

Atlanta airport had over 45 million passenger in 2012. So, about 125.000 passengers a day. If 25% of the passengers connect to the airport WiFi per day, it would be about 31K per day. The American “security services” told you that they must keep as much as possible information about connections for 60 days. How much disk space would you consider for such project?

I have 1000 clients per day and a bit over 1000 devices in my environment, and the performance stats tell me that my 1000 clients accounf to 42% of the database.

My airwave folder is 11.8 GB so clients are about 5 GB.

Much of the data is stored in RRD, so duration won't affect size appreciably.

Going with worst case that comes to 175 GB for client data.

Real world use or actual data may provide more accurate results of course.