Best practices for IBM Spectrum Protect storage pool conversion

• Review the following checklist to make sure that the container storage pool has been configured appropriately:https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spectrum-protect/8.1.8?topic=performance-checklist-data-deduplication
• If the QUERY OCCUPANCY command displays occupancy for a converted node, or file space, in the source storage pool, use the REPAIR OCCUPANCY command to remove the invalid occupancy records.

• You can complete conversion processing while the target container storage pool processes data. Ensure that you have enough system memory to manage the conversion process.
• If the storage pool conversion completes, but the status of the pool states "Conversion Stopped", issue the QUERY CONTENT command and specify FOLLOWLINKS=YES to display all files, including files that are stored on the volume and any files that have links to the volume.

Storage pool with a FILE device class

• If the conversion reuses the existing disk, commonly called in-place, the target storage pool should be approximately 50% larger than the source storage pool. If there is less than 50% of free disk space in the target storage pool, you must monitor the conversion closely to track any issues related to space consumption. In particular, specify a shorter process duration and more frequent reclamation processing for the conversion process.
• For in-place conversions,specify a shorter conversion duration to determine the behavior and draw-down speeds of the source storage pool. The frequency and the number of reclamation processes will dictate the draw-down rate rate of the source storage pool storage consumption.
• During the conversion process, issue the QUERY CLEANUP command to identify any damaged files. You might need to repair or delete the damaged data before the conversion process ends because the source volumes that contain the damaged data are not converted until the damage is resolved.

• Do not use all of the available tape drives for storage pool conversion. Reserve a few drives for database backup, reclamation, and client restore operations.
• The number of tape devices that are required for a conversion process on total number of drives in the library. Use at least 6 tape drives to optimize the conversion process. If you use less than 6 tape drives, converting tape to a container storage pool could take several weeks dependent on total amount of data to be converted.