Storage pool - containers - filesystem usage

[dcabro]

I have one storage pool - container based with 4 directories. Each directory resides on a 5TB LUN/partition (Windows Server 2016). Total capacity is 20TB. STG pool is 60% utilized.

What is strange is this:
Partitions 1,2 and 3 have between 750 and 850GB of free space. Partition 4 has 30GB of free space.
Partitions 1,2 and 3 have 430 containers. Partition 4 has 523.
However, OPs center reports between 1.9 and 2.1TB of free space for directories 1-3, and 1.8TB free for the 4th one.

Do you experience the same imbalance across directories? Is there a way to spread the data evenly or this is normal and nothing to worry about?

Thanks!

 

[marclant]

However, OPs center reports between 1.9 and 2.1TB of free space for directories 1-3, and 1.8TB free for the 4th one.

Free space in the directories, or free space in the containers? Big difference.

 

[marclant]

Do you experience the same imbalance across directories? Is there a way to spread the data evenly or this is normal and nothing to worry about?

What version are you at? If at 8.1.5 or higher, there should be automatic move containers, it's kind of a mix of defrag and reclamation. It moves data to new containers when thresholds are met and as a side-effect would not really even things out, but slowly move them in that direction.

 

[dcabro]

I'm at 8.1. 6. Right, I see it as more balanced after a few days.

 

[dcabro]

From IBM support:

The way TSM distributes data to different partitions within the directory storage pool does not affect the backup jobs running on the server.
Regarding how TSM writes data to these partitions it is something handled internally within the server and it has nothing that we can do manually to interrupt it and we can not detect how it decides to distribute these data.

As long as you have space in storage pool the backups will run successfully and we don't need to worry about the partitions.