File storage usage can be seen on portal but why we cannot see block storage usage

As "storage used/available" for Block Storage is a characteristic of the filesystem (which is managed by the host OS) laid on top of the block device that's presented to the host, there's no way to determine how much of the filesystem is used from the storage end. 

How to check the details of the Block Storage on cloud [Please note we don’t see usage here]

Fig 1.a: Usage as seen on the cloud portal – Block storage doesn not show the usage details

With block storage, we present a LUN (much like a physical drive) to the host's storage bus, and the host then puts a filesystem on it. 

Fig 1.b: Block Storage representation

With File Storage, the filesystem is managed by the storage, and shared/exported out to the connecting host, which is why usage information is available to us and can be shared via the portal.

How to check the usage of the File Storage on cloud ?

Please click https://cloud.ibm.com/cloud-storage/file

Fig 1.c: Usage as seen on the cloud portal – the file storage used 5% out of total storage space which is 20GB.

Since there are near-infinite OS/disk layout/etc configurations that the customer could be using with his/her block storage, we do not have a script/command to share for this - it would be up to the customer to develop a mechanism specific to the host environment, to gather this data.

Fig 1.d: File Storage Representation

Conclusion

We can say that the file storage usage is easy to check and that is because it uses file hierarchy technology to store the data but block uses the set of blocks and it needs to sit on top of host, so its difficult to get the usage but by writing the script we can fetch the usage.

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Author: Kiran K L

Email ID: kirankl9@in.ibm.com