Re: RAID 6 rebuild time - can I slash it?

Mostly the size of the drives is the major factor.

Yes data does need to be moved about to allow for the various RAID stripes so if the system will END UP more than 70% full then the prepare step will take longer as well. If it's cool to delete that 130+ GB virtual tape then I would do so as it can't hurt for sure!

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 3/19/2014 12:29 PM, Jeff Crosby wrote:

All,

On a Saturday of my choosing, our HW service provider is going to take our
System i 520 from 2 8-drive RAID 5 sets to 2 8-drive RAID 6 sets w/hot
spare. Yes I'm taking a SAVE21 before.

Building the RAID 6 will be time-consuming. My question is this: Is the
amount of time it will take based on the size of the *drives*? Or on the
amount of *data* on the drives?

I'm asking because we have a virtual tape drive (TAPVRT01) that is taking
up 123GB. If I understand virtual tape correctly, it cannot be "shrunk."
I could remove that device (or whatever "piece" of the image catalog
structure) beforehand and recreate it afterward. I could also do other
cleanup, like old job logs, etc.

But only if it actually saves time. If the RAID 6 build time is tied to
drive size to where a cleanup won't make a difference, then I won't bother.

Thanks.