nv-l

[nv-l] Mirroring Paging Space

2003-03-24 18:51:41
Subject: [nv-l] Mirroring Paging Space
From: "Stenson, Ann M" <Ann.M.Stenson AT bankofamerica DOT com>
To: nv-l AT lists.tivoli DOT com
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 15:49:00 -0800
In seeing writeup 3/17 attached below on this subject,
checked with our in-house AIX support team
on mirroring of page space.
The following 3/24 note discusses why our servers have mirrored page space.

------------------------------------------------------

Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 3:31 PM
To: Stenson, Ann M
Subject: Mirroring Paging Space


Hi Ann,

Yes we do mirror paging spaces and the root volume group on the Netview 
servers.   

When the paging device is mirrored, there will be extra write cycles as the 
mirrored image of the paged memory is written to disk. This will affect the 
performance to a slight degree.   But using this same logic, the mirroring in 
all cases affects performance to a slight degree.

Not mirroring paging space defeats the purpose of rootvg mirroring, which is to 
keep a system or program active if a disk were to fail. 

If our paging spaces were not mirrored but all the other logical volumes in 
rootvg were mirrored, then the behavior of the system would be equal to that of 
a non-mirrored rootvg that experiences a paging disk fail in the middle of
operation.  

We avoid this by mirroring rootvg and paging spaces.   If we loose a disk in 
the root volume group we can replace the disk with out having a system crash.

So I disagree, you do want to mirror a paging space!

Thanks,
AIX team
------------------------------------------------------

forwarded to in-house AIX team

-----Original Message--------------------------------
From: Stephen Hochstetler [mailto:shochste AT us.ibm DOT com]
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 11:19 AM
To: nv-l AT lists.tivoli DOT com
Subject: Re: [nv-l] Mirroring Paging Space


There is a book called "AIX Performance Tuning" by Frank Waters that would
be good for you to have as a resource.

You don't want to mirror a paging space.  Waiting for the mirror to
complete writing would slow page space access.  Idealy you would have
multiple paging spaces across several drives.   All of them would be the
same size except the first one.   That is because only the first one is
available at boot time, so all used page space is from the first one during
boot.   After that they are round-robin used.

Kind regards,
Stephen Hochstetler              shochste AT us.ibm DOT com
International Technical Support Organization at IBM
11400 Burnet Road   Austin, TX  78758
Office - 512-838-6198 (t/l 678)       FAX - 512-838-6931
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: nv-l-unsubscribe AT lists.tivoli DOT com
For additional commands, e-mail: nv-l-help AT lists.tivoli DOT com

*NOTE*
This is not an Offical Tivoli Support forum. If you need immediate
assistance from Tivoli please call the IBM Tivoli Software Group
help line at 1-800-TIVOLI8(848-6548)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: nv-l-unsubscribe AT lists.tivoli DOT com
For additional commands, e-mail: nv-l-help AT lists.tivoli DOT com

*NOTE*
This is not an Offical Tivoli Support forum. If you need immediate
assistance from Tivoli please call the IBM Tivoli Software Group
help line at 1-800-TIVOLI8(848-6548)


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>