Hi all,

I guess that IBM started using the posix fs call to allocate storage. The 
command finishes in seconds, but at least on AIX the actual I/O still lasts 
forever. Some operating systems might be able to allocate disk space a lot 
quicker. It all boils down to the particular unix flavor implementation of 
sparse files... Windoze never had sparse files, so there dsmfmt was always 
instant....


On 2 nov. 2011, at 13:49, Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU wrote:

> I had an odd situation occur involving formatting disk storage volumes on
> a Linux server.
> 
> In the past, when creating and formatting storage pool volumes, a 300GB
> volume would normally take an hour or more. I could watch the space being
> allocated, piece-by-piece until it reached 300GB and then wait for the
> formatting to complete. This process was usually so resource intensive
> (never understood why???) doing something like an LS would take many
> seconds to respond.
> 
> Yesterday, I had a need to create new volumes on a recently rebuilt server
> - RH Linux 5.6 and TSM server 6.2.3.0.
> 
> Imagine my surprise when a 300GB volume was created in 2-seconds!
> Furthermore, I create 9-300GB volumes as fast as I could enter the
> commands!
> 
> I thought for sure there was some kind of problem but all the error logs I
> checked were clean.  I figured if I started using them they would start
> registering errors but nothing happened!  Everything seems to be working
> just fine.
> 
> So, what gives?
> 
> Is there some dramatic change in 6.2.3.0 (this is my first server upgraded
> to this level) effecting the behavior of creating disk storage pool
> volumes?  It can't be the hardware since this is a 3+ year old machine.  I
> have newer, bigger, beefier, faster servers that still take a long time to
> format storage volumes?
> 
> 
> Zoltan Forray
> TSM Software & Hardware Administrator
> Virginia Commonwealth University
> UCC/Office of Technology Services
> zforray AT vcu DOT edu - 804-828-4807
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-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten/Kind Regards,

Remco Post
r.post AT plcs DOT nl
+31 6 248 21 622