Re: Guest Partition Storage Configuration

If I read the original post correctly you were discussing JDE servers so I made the assumption you were discussing the Intel servers. If these are the IBM i database servers, I still recommend that you create the drives in *SYSBAS, and allow IBM i to do it's thing.

As to the number of arms (network storage spaces) you need to provide the server, the rule is the same with a hosted one as it would be with a physical one, the more arms the better IBM i is going to react. So with that in mind, I would create all the storage spaces to mimic 35Gb drives, and create as many as you need for the space requirement. A dead flat minimum in my view is 6 in order to keep IBM i happy. When you link them to your virtualized server they will then show up in IBM i as independent disk units and IBM i will happily use them.

Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On 6/22/2011 2:43 PM, Evan Harris wrote:

Hi Jim

Thanks for the response.

Part of the reasoning for separating the IO was due to performance
issues seen on other guests; we were looking at a minimum of 4 drives
for the application servers, not just one or two (not sure if I had
made that clear).

Following on from your response, is there any rule of thumb as to how
many to create, or what sizes to make the storage spaces ?

Making one large storage space will create I/O problems of it's own if
what my IBM resource has told me is accurate.

Do you have any best practise guidelines for this aspect ?

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 11:37 PM, Jim Oberholtzer<midrangel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Evan,
>
> Based on your description of the situation, I think most will agree that
> best practice would have you create your storage spaces in SYSBAS. If
> you isolate the drives for the storage spaces you will degrade the I/O
> capacity to a point where I wonder if the performance of the guest
> partitions would be sufficient. Allow IBM i to do what it does best,
> manage storage.
>
> If you had an iASP that had many disk units in it to eliminate the I/O
> issues, then you could consider that. For now I would create the
> storage spaces as needed and let them do their thing.
>

-- Regards Evan Harris http://www.auctionitis.co.n