> The first part of the unload is running very fast (4 or even 5 million
> entries per minute, but at a given point performance drops dramatically.
> It's always at the same point (around 80%), so my guess is that that's
> the most heavily fragmented part.
> The only thing I can think of to speed up the process is to use a
> storage device with a very low latency, like SSD, but unfortunately
> that's not supported on the P5 series...

So, what is slowing down?

I'll throw out some questions:
- During the slowdown . . .
    Is AIX waiting on disk I/O?  (I/O wait state)
    Is AIX CPU running hard?     (some cpu intensive task)
    What does iostat see as response time?
      (iostat -DlTR <interval> <count>)
- VMAX
    Check VMAX SPA for the time during the run, or watch real time during
a test run.
      You can see the r/w iops and r/w resp times for the storage group of
you TSM db/log.
    Do you have a SDD tier in you VMAX?  Is there enough room to move
      some/all of the TSM db/log up into it?
    If you are running FASTVP with a sata tier, move the db/log off
      of the SATA tier.
    Are the FA's and/or FA ports overloaded?

Rick


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