Principles for tuning disk systems for IBM Storage Protect

Edit online

Many aspects of disk storage can be considered for optimizing operations. For most systems, the separation of server database, logs, and storage pools is key to an IBM Storage Protect configuration that has good performance.

The following principles are key to achieving better disk storage performance:
  • Select and configure disk storage for both performance and capacity. Adequate capacity is not the only factor to consider.
  • For most disk systems, separate the primary IBM Storage Protect server components from each other. Ensure that the server database, active log, archive logs, and storage pools are each in separate locations.
  • Monitor the systems. Workloads on systems often increase, and such increases might trigger the need for more storage or for configuration changes. Enforce strict change control to help in troubleshooting any performance degradation.
  • Limit mirroring to one type of mirroring. For example, if the operating system is set up to do mirroring, do not configure the IBM Storage Protect server to do mirroring of the active log (MIRRORLOGDIRECTORY server option).
  • Ensure that server maintenance operations are running, such as expiration and database table and index reorganization. See Tuning the schedule for daily operations.

Understand the entire picture of disk storage and how it relates to operations in your environment. You must examine not only on the configuration of the disks, but the entire configuration as it relates to performance. All of the following items have an impact:

Disk storage system choice and configuration
  • Disk type and speed. Larger disks might not be better if the rotational speed is not also higher.
  • Disk layout.
  • Type of RAID.
  • File system type and mount options.
Server system hardware and its configuration
  • Speed and number of processors and amount of memory.
  • Whether multiple instances of IBM Storage Protect run on the same system and use the same disk storage systems.
  • Host bus adapter (HBA) speed.
  • Whether HBAs are dedicated to disk operations. An HBA that is shared by disk and tape can have performance problems.
  • Whether disks are shared with other systems or applications.