ADSM-L

Re: Slow Reclamation - And a need for speed...

2002-06-11 20:09:03
Subject: Re: Slow Reclamation - And a need for speed...
From: Steve Harris <STEVE_HARRIS AT HEALTH.QLD.GOV DOT AU>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 10:07:27 +1000
Hi Jack.

I was in the fortunate position of having lots of tapes and lots of slots so I 
increased my reclaim percentages from 50 to 80.
After three months, things have now stabilized and I get the same effects as I 
did before with much less effort.  When a reclaim does run I really do get some 
benefit (5-1).

I'd suggest that you don't need to force reclamation of your onsite tapes.  
Just set the reclamation percentage to whatever you'd like and run expire 
inventory so that it finishes at a time that is convenient for reclamation. If 
there is anything to reclaim, thats when it will happen anyway.

Offsite tapes shouldn't be an issue.  Purchase sufficient tapes so that you 
have enough scratches on hand.  Set offsite reclamation to 100% most of the 
time, and only force a reclamation once a week.  This will reduce the amount of 
activity required for offsite reclamation significantly, and it won't cost you 
many more tapes.  

Check for filespaces that haven't been backed up in a while
select node_name, filespace_name, backup_date from filespaces where 
backup_date<current timestamp - 3 months

You may find filespaces that no longer exist or which have been excluded for 
some reason. These won't expire so check with your users and if necessary 
remove them with delete filespace command.  Be careful and use type=backup on 
this so you don't delete archives.

You might also want to run a q content on some tapes that haven't been written 
to for a while.  This can help identify those cases where improvements can be 
made to the include/exclude lists. Using this I once found that I was keeping 
oracle transaction logs for a year due to the dba's reorganizing their 
directory structures and invalidating the include statement that was supposed 
to only keep them for a week.

The other thing that occurs to me is that your library is too small.
It may be worthwhile to consider an autoloader to supplement your library.  
This can be used to produce the offsite tapes without taking slots. You could 
also stage data through a fixed size storage pool in the library and then to 
the autoloader. keeping the most current data in the library, and less current 
data outside.  This will involve you in manual mounts for reclamations and 
large restores however, so its probably better just to get a bigger library if 
you can.

HTH

Steve Harris  
AIX and TSM Admin
Queensland Health, Brisbane Australia.

>>> Jack.Coats AT BANKSTERLING DOT COM 12/06/2002 5:33:48 >>>
TSM 4.1.3 on NT 4, 2 LTO drives in IBM 18 tape library.  Single SCSI chain.

We run reclamation what seems like all day every day, but tapes don't
seem to free up in a timely manner.  And our offsite tapes are 'growing'.
We have been using TSM for about a year with 60 day retention, and have
only added two (small) clients in the last 2 months.

The pool for onsite TAPEPOOL (that stays in the library) and COPYPOOL
that goes off site.  The number of tapes in the COPYPOOL (offsite) seem to
be
growing greater than what would seem reasonable given the size of the
TAPEPOOL.

Lately I have stopped reclamation and done a 'move data' of some of the
lowest use volumes that are offsite, and now they are marked 'pending'.

Our current schedule is:
  Weekdays 1300 till 2000 - update stgpool COPYPOOL rec=20
  Weekdays 0900 till 1300 - update stgpool TAPEPOOL rec=10
  Saturday 0800 till 2000 - update stgpool TAPEPOOL rec=10
  Sunday 0800 till 2200 - update stgpool COPYPOOL rec=20

Would it be a good idea to up the recovery percent?

Should I possibly do copypool on MWF from 0900-2000 then
tapedata on TTh instead of some on each day?

Suggestions?

TIA .. JC



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