I think that was just the limit for the Shark (2105), it varies by
subsystem architecture.

>>> Terry Draper <[email protected]> 11/24/2009 11:50 AM >>>
Bill and John,
   Thanks for your reply.

    You said that eight was the maximum for MA. Did you mean Multiple
Allegiance, i.e. accesses from multiple systems. Does this also apply
when all I/Os are form one system?

   I understand how things work, its just the undocumented bits that
are difficult. It was easier to get these when I was in IBM doing this
job.


Terry Draper
zSeries Performance Consultant
[email protected] 
mobile:  +966 556730876

--- On Tue, 24/11/09, John Baxter <[email protected]> wrote:


From: John Baxter <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: DB2 and PAV
To: [email protected] 
Date: Tuesday, 24 November, 2009, 15:59


Bill is correct in that DB2 will minimize the extent sizes for write
operations, therefore increasing the likelihood of multiple, parallel
operations to the same device. But also remember that DB2 will try to
maximize the effectiveness of write I/O's, endeavoring to externalize as
many pages as possible in one I/O operation (which may contain many
chained CCW's).

Another point to remember is that if the aliases are managed by WLM, a
given DASD volume may become "starved", and IOSQ builds up because of
the long WLM process cycle. There are threshold controls for the BP's,
and generally one tries to set the pageset level thresholds fairly low
to discourage write bursts and maintain a steady trickle of writes.
Obviously it would be ideal to strike a balance between write efficacy
and keeping the write I/O's from overly bunching-up.

Another strong recommendation is to implement HyperPAV aliasing, which
we found to almost totally mitigate the concerns mentioned above. These
aliases are assigned to I/O operations as needed and released for reuse
(within the same LCU or associated CSS, if configured) after the
extent-level I/O has completed.  The maximum number of aliases assigned
to any one base address can be very high (and vendor-dependent, I
believe).

This area of DB2 performance management is challenging but extremely
interesting and needs to pull together expertise from the DBAs, sysprogs
and DASD specialists.

John Baxter

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Bill Fairchild
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:26 AM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: Re: DB2 and PAV

1.  DB2 tries very hard to minimize the size of the extent defined in
the Define Extent CCW for each I/O that it does to a Shark-type DASD
that supports Multiple Allegiance (MA).  E.g., if an I/O references only
one track, then that channel program will have only that one track
within the defined extent.  To verify, run GTF and trace I/Os to that
one volume from DB2, then look at the defined extents that will appear
in the Prefix CCW for SSCH trace records and in the Define Extent for
I/O interrupt trace records.

2.  I don't know for sure, but I imagine that WLM will allow the device
to have as many PAVs as its controller microcode support.  E.g, for the
2105s available in 2000 when I last looked at this issue, the maximum
number of simultaneous I/Os allowed by the microcode to any one device
was eight regardless of how many PAVs were assigned.  Eight was the
maximum MA level.  The number of PAVs can be less than, equal to, or
greater than the max MA number, but any more than the max will result in
queued I/O requests if the workload produces simultaneous I/Os fast
enough.

Bill Fairchild

Software Developer 
Rocket Software
275 Grove Street · Newton, MA 02466-2272 · USA
Tel: +1.617.614.4503 · Mobile: +1.508.341.1715
Email: [email protected] 
Web: www.rocketsoftware.com 


-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Terry Draper
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 2:32 AM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: DB2 and PAV

1. The DASD controller will serialise writes to the same extent - as
specified in the define extent CCW. What does DB2 specify for the
extent?
Is the the DASD extent or just the area it is writing to? If so what
area is specified?
I cannot find this documented anywhere.
The many write engines will be trying to build the single table.

2. We may have many write engines started to the same DB2 table on a
single volume.
There may be many of these.What is the maximum number of PAVs that WLM
will give it?

Terry Draper
zSeries Performance Consultant

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