>From the movie "Blazing Saddles" ... You use your tongue better than a $20 
>...you-know-what. Couldn't have said it better. Heck, I
just wish I could have said it as good! Don't ever leave us!!!!!!! :-)

In the case of this 15M+ server, it was the imaging vender that architected 
this. I've gotten a lot of suggestions from the list
over the past days and I'll try some of them, but I will suggest that they 
split this 2TB filesystem into smaller parts based on the
G:\IMAGES\<region>\. Put each region on its own drive. This is also on an EMC 
Symmetrix. Another upper management mis-decision they
have to contend with is that the mainframe and open systems must share the same 
technology. Hence the EMC Symmetrix and the 3494
with 3590E drives. Both technologies are somewhat limiting their open system 
options. I don't' mean to dis' the 3494...it's a good
box, but the 3590E capacity is hurting them. Plus the speed. Their daily backup 
is getting large enough that soon they may not be
able to meet the vaulting deadline.


Bill Boyer
"Some days you're the bug, some days you're the windshield" - ??

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Richard Sims
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2005 8:13 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: 15,000,000 + files on one directory backup

All the anguish brought on by this kind of situation brings us back to the old 
issue of sites lacking guidance in the area of data
architecture, as should be promulgated by an IT department. What we are 
collectively seeing in all these companies is departments
buying the new, large (160 GB+) hard drives or disk arrays now on the market 
and implementing them as one, single, huge storage
area, with no thought to the realities involved in the decision. This is 
largely a problem in the Windows arena, where this often
derives from people having had basic experience with a personal computer and 
who simplistically extrapolate when outfitting larger
systems. This is in contrast to the Unix environment, where there is 
pre-existing conditioning to sanely subdivide disk space by
functional categorization and keep file systems manageable.

Do whatever you can to stem this poor practice... Feed back to the responsible 
department; bring it up at meetings; raise awareness
in company publications. Carving out multiple volumes allows for categorization 
and easier administration by their owner, and
certainly facilitates backup in terms of time schedule and parallelization 
opportunities. If necessary, analogize the issue:
does one implement a 15-foot high filing cabinet, or three 5-foot high 
cabinets? It's about practicalities. We TSM administrators
need to make ourselves conspicuous in decision making, not be willing victims 
of uninformed decisions. We safeguard our
organizations'
data, and can do that only if sane data architectures prevail.

     Richard Sims