Any good storage usage analysis apps/software?

[DahakaMVl]

Is there any app to properly monitor and analyze storage usage on my pools similar to Windows storage analysis (see image)? I have searched on google and the forum, but found nothing really similar to my issue.

I guess options would be:
- Something that either scans the host file system
- Something that scans pools
- Something that scans shares
All of these would be fine to be honest.

 

[Ericloewe]

In what way does a simple zfs list -o space not meet your requirements? It's not clear what kind of analysis you're looking for.

 

[DahakaMVl]

Thanks for the reply.

As far as I can tell from the docs it only shows usage up to the dataset/zvol level and doesn't describe the subdirectories and files. The `-d` parameter also seems to only apply to the said dataset/zvol level. (Unless I'm missing something).

Apart from that I'd prefer a more user-friendly interface though not required and development over time of usage on folder level would be nice.

 

[Ericloewe]

I mean, there's a school of thought (which I follow) that datasets should be highly granular, granular enough that you'd have little reason to typically care about what goes on inside each dataset (the main exception being the "why the hell is this dataset so large", which is typically rare). Broadly speaking, that's similar to what Windows is showing there.

and doesn't describe the subdirectories and files

That's what du is for. du -hc | sort -h will sort by human-readable size. It's not the sort of thing you should probably be running near the root of your filesystem if you value your time.

 

[DahakaMVl]

Thanks, `du` certainly helps. Didn't know about this command. It is definitely usable for my use-case.
The reason I want to analyze storage usage is mostly to go through my media library and old projects and see where I can optimize, compress, or delete files and media.

Broadly speaking, that's similar to what Windows is showing there.

Definitely true. I didn't even think about that.

Another example of what I was looking for originally is something that serves the same purpose as this:

 

[Ericloewe]

You could probably get a similar effect with the correct options for du and some sed/awk/whatever-fu. I don't have any examples handy, though.

Alternatively, you inspired me to ask every sysadmin's favorite tool for help and came across ncdu, which adds an ncurses TUI to du, for a similar effect. Same caveats as du seem to apply on casual inspection, and you need to explicitly enable color with ncdu --color=dark.
Best part is that it's already included in TrueNAS Core.