3995: Moving Files to the Integrated File System

Resolving The Problem

Notes: The Optical libraries or jukeboxes are no longer supported either by hardware or by software support. The 3995 and 3996 have been removed from marketing.
If a customer wishes to migrate to a Virtual Optical Library solution, they should be directre to IBM Lab Services. The following link can get them to this service or they can email Mike Gordon at mgordo@us.ibm.com if they cannot get to the following link:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/services/labservices/contact.html

Lab Services has 2 options. The first is to migrate from the Physical Optical Library to a Virtual Optical Library. The second is to migrate to image catalogs on the IBMi but in a faster manner than those listed below. Both of these options are fee based services.
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Here are some other methods you can consider when moving data off of the physical Optical Libraries. Note that if you have a considerable number of platters and files on those platters, the options listed below may have very poor performance.

SAV/RST Commands

Save/restore commands cannot be issued to put application files in the Integrated File System from 3995 volumes that were written to the 3995 by an application. The 3995 file structure is HFS, and it is not compatible with the Integrated File System when using save and restore commands or the QHFCPYSF or CPYSTRF APIs described in the Optical Support Manual.

When using the following commands, you will get a saved optical volume, not individual saved files.

Save one volume, vol1, to a tape device:

SAV DEV('/qsys.lib/tap01.devd') OBJ(('/qopt/vol1')) SUBTREE(*STG)

Save all volumes within the QOPT file system to a save file:

SAV DEV('/qsys.lib/xyz.lib/xyzsavfile.file') OBJ(('/qopt/*')) SUBTREE(*STG)

Save all volumes beginning with vola and volb to a save file:

SAV DEV('/qsys.lib/xyz.lib/xyzsavfile.file') OBJ()'/qopt/vola*') ('/qopt/volb*')) SUBTREE(*STG)

Note: When SUBTREE(*STG) is used to save optical, you get the storage, not individual objects. The entire volume image is saved in the *SAVRST format. There is no way of seeing individual files or directories that make up the volume image. The only way to check if all of the files and directories are in the image is to do a RST to an optical volume. The SAV/RST support was added because it is faster to save/restore the entire volume than to copy it.

CPY and Performance

The Integrated File System does have performance benchmarks for the CPY command. The best performance is to use an application or a program to write the files from optical volumes to DASD. Files created by an application can be copied to the Integrated File System by using the IBM OS/400 or IBM i5/OS CPY command or the QShell "cp" utility. CPY is not designed to be a fast command; it must copy attributes as well as data. If the attributes are not important (which includes authority information that would not be present in QOPT), the QShell "cp" utility could be faster because it only copies data; however, it might only increase the speed by 10%.

It is not faster to copy everything to the PC first, and then copy from the PC to the IBM iSeries family of servers using a
shared drive. For that to work, each copy must have more than twice the throughput as the copy. As in the QShell utility, this will only copy data, not attributes.

PTF SI19287 should be applied if you are doing a large number of copies. CPY performance might increase by changing the current directory before doing the copies and then using a relative path, for example:

CPY OBJ('/QOPT/directory/file##.##/2*') TODIR('/newdirectory/file')

One of the things that slows down the command is having to navigate to these directories for every object. Better performance is achieved by using the following commands:

CHGCURDIR DIR('/QOPT/directory/file##.##')
CPY OBJ('2*') TODIR('/newdirectory/file/')

or by making /newdirectory/file the current directory and using CPY OBJ('/QOPT/directory/file##.##/2*') TODIR('.').
Making the QOPT directory the current directory is faster.

If the application is OnDemand, there are not any benchmarks for moving objects from optical to the Integrated File System. We woud recommend you contact IBM Lab Services. See the note above.