Re: DSKBAL? -- MIDRANGE-L

Something else you need to consider too, if you don't do disk balancing.  Yes, 
the
OS will balance them out in the long run, but all your new records will be 
sitting
on one disk, rather than sitting on all of them.  So later when people are doing
inquiries, all the processing will be to the new disk, as that's where your 
newest
data sits.

Since the majority of the "hits" to data is on relatively new data that can be a
problem.  How often do people look up an invoice a month old, versus one that's 
3
years old?  We added a new disk at one time and no one had done disk balancing, 
and
that disk always had more % usage than any of the others, even after it was at 
the
same percent full as the others.

When one of the older disks crashed, and we had to do a scratch and reload,
everything was fine again.

Regards,

Jim Langston

Pete Massiello wrote:

> You should definitely run the command, if you have the time.  Once you set to
> run, it will run at the next IPL.  You have an option of running it once for a
> set number of hours, or run it multiple times for a duration each time.  In 
>the
> later, it will run it at each IPL for the specified amount of time, until the
> task is complete.
>
>     If you don't run it, OS/400 will automatically balance the Capacity of 
>your
> drives over the next few weeks (or days depending on your I/Os), but you will
> find that OS/400 will be doing most of its I/Os to these new drives to get 
>them
> all to be at the same capacity, without regard for disk utilization (which 
>will
> overall decrease performance during this time).
>
>     There are some new commands with V4R4 to balance the ASPs, but since you 
>are
> on V4R3, I would try to find the time to do the DSKBAL.
>
>     Just my opinions
>
>     Pete Massiello
>
> Fred Pritchard wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > re: AS/400 720 V4R3
> >
> > We just added two new drives to our RAID set and I was wondering if we
> > should run DSKBAL to even the drive usage? Is this recommended?
> >
> > I have never used it and do not know its limitations.  Can it be run while
> > the system is in use? if so, will it hinder performance?
> >
> > I can't find any documentation on this command, there isn't even any help
> > associated with it.  Does anyone know where I can get some docs? I was in
> > the manuals on the internet and searched all books for DSKBAL and nothing
> > was found.
> >
> > Thanks for any assistance,
> >
> > Fred
> >
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> --
> Pete Massiello
> OS Solutions International
> Phone: (203)-744-7854  Ext 11.
> http://www.os-solutions.com
> mailto:pmassiello@os-solutions.com
>
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