Interesting that this should come up on today's list digest. Yesterday
we began to set up an ADSM server on our SP2, and we were preparing all
of our DASD, which we had hoped to allocate in 2GB file chunks (we had
prepared the disks by formatting them into 2GB partitions). dsmfmt,
however, refused to format anything larger than 1000MB.

We tried everything listed in the Administrator's Reference -- we tried
specifying in kilobytes and megabytes, with the same result, and we
tried using an asterisk (*) as our file size, and were prompted with an
"invalid file size specification error." Error no. 27 (or maybe it was
no. 28) was reported each time we tried to dsmfmt with a size larger
than 1000 MB, but we had no way of determining what that error code was.

Has anyone ever seen this problem? Does the asterisk as a file size
specifier actually work?

Thanks. -- Tom

Thomas A. La Porte
DreamWorks SKG                            Voice: 818-733-6328
100 Universal Plaza, Bldg. 601            Fax:   818-733-6318
Universal City, CA 91608                  <tlaporte AT dreamworks DOT com>

>
> Date:    Tue, 6 Aug 1996 09:12:31 PDT
> From:    "Andrew M. Raibeck" <araibeck AT VNET.IBM DOT COM>
> Subject: Re: AIX Servers:  Use SMIT or DSMFMT for logical volumes?
>
> Micheal Tramont had questions about using DSMFMT vs. SMIT to create ADSM
> volumes.
>
> Just to clear up a possible point of confusion: DSMFMT does not create raw
> volumes, as SMIT does. Rather, DSMFMT creates and formats regular JFS files
> for ADSM to use.
>
> Unless there is a compelling reason to use raw volumes, I *strongly* recommend
> that you use JFS volumes. Raw volumes provide little to no benefit. The usual
> argument for raw volumes is performance. But since we cache database and
> recovery log pages in memory, raw volumes generally don't offer much of a
> performance benefit. The downside to raw volumes is that they don't enjoy the
> same file system level of protection that JFS offers.
>
> As far as how to allocate the volumes goes: ADSM does not support volumes
> that are 2 GB or larger. Thus your volumes must be LESS THAN 2 GB (support of
> volumes 2 GB and greater is a known requirement).
>
> It is probably better to allocate a smaller number of larger volumes rather
> than a large number of small volumes. This is because for each volume that
> ADSM mounts (database, recovery log, storage pool), a separate process or
> thread is created, which does consume some of the system's resources. As I
> mentioned above, the only caveat is that each volume must be less than 2 GB.
>
> Andy Raibeck
> ADSM Level 2 Support
> 408-256-0130