VAST Data VMS: Querying Your File System with the VAST Data Catalog

This video from VAST Data Customer Education introduces the VAST Data Catalog, a powerful feature within the VAST Management System (VMS) that enables real-time, SQL-like querying of the entire file system and element store. For storage administrators, this tool simplifies complex data management and reporting tasks that would otherwise be difficult to perform. The VAST Data Catalog allows you to write and execute queries directly from the VMS GUI or through an external query engine, providing immediate insights into your data. The demonstration highlights the types of queries you can perform:

• Space Consumption Analysis: Quickly identify the top users or directories consuming the most space.

• File System Reporting: Run queries to find the largest files, total file counts, or files with specific names or ownership.

• Audit and Activity Logs: Use the catalog to query audit log information, such as the amount of data read or written by a particular user or protocol.

The video emphasizes the efficiency of this approach, showing how a single SQL query can retrieve information that would be complex and time-consuming to gather with traditional file system tools. Data from the catalog can also be exported via the Prometheus exporter or API to external analytics platforms like Grafana for long-term analysis and visualization. This tutorial is designed to equip VAST Data operators with the knowledge to leverage the VAST Data Catalog for simplified storage management, reporting, and data-driven decision-making.