Best practices for TRIM configurations

The need for TRIM depends on the amount of data that is to be written and the availability of space that can be reclaimed at a time. A few ideal practices are suggested that can help you bring out the best benefits of the TRIM feature.

• It is advisable to run TRIM during a maintenance window or when the workload is light. For more information, see mmreclaimspace command in the IBM Storage Scale: Command and Programming ReferenceGuide.
• It is advisable to run the mmreclaimspace command with the -P option to define a specific storage pool. The mmreclaimspace command ignores the NSDs in the file system or the file system storage pool that are not configured for TRIM.
• TRIM can impact concurrent foreground workload bandwidth for write-heavy workloads, especially workloads that create many new files.
• The frequency of when to run TRIM depends on your workload. TRIM has the most benefit for workloads that routinely fill and empty the NSD/Vdisks on the ESS storage through file creation and deletion. TRIM has less benefit for workloads that mostly modify or update existing files.