Well, after a few have chipped in to the other side, I am going to have to beg to differ.
Unix file systems, as all file systems, do tend to fragment, especially in times of rapid growth of data on the file system, or in situations where free space and free inodes on any given file system, become tight. Once file systems have been heavily utilized, (75% full or higher), even if files have since been deleted, there will be fragmentation. Another situation where fragmentation may bite you is if you write large, sequential files to disk, then delete them, then re-write similar large files frequently, (i.e. spool files, etc...). Some post-relational database applications can tend to do this. Any combination of these two situations occuring can certainly contribute to fragmentation. Granted, this does not seem to occur as often as it has in the past, or seem to have as much impact. I have come across situations in the past where this has brought platforms and applications running on them, to it's knees. If the systems folks really would like to perform such a function, (AIX Backup, Format Disk, Restore), it is not necessarily such a bad thing. I would go so far as to recommend such operational functions be performed periodically, especially if percent utilization of file systems can exceed 75%. My two cents. Regards, Scott Richardson Sr Systems Engineer / Consultant Marlborough, MA 01752 **************************************** DPMonitor - http://www.deltek.us ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony W. Youngman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 6:49 PM Subject: Re: [U2] [UV] AIX Backup, Format Disk, Restore > In message > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > .com>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes > >Does anyone out there still do this (if you ever have)? > > > >Take a backup of the file systems (in our case, AIX UNIX), format the disks > >clean, then restore the data back down to lay it back contiguous. > > > >Are there any (noticeable) I/O advantages to doing this for a UniVerse > >database on today's servers? Provided our files are properly sized, of > >course. > > > >Our Systems guys are itching to do this. > > > Are they Microsoft-trained? :-) > > Unless you fill up the hard disk, Unix file systems don't fragment. The > only real reason for this is if you're using LVM and your partition > allocation has fragmented badly. > > In normal use, you should never need to defragment. > > Cheers, > Wol > -- > Anthony W. Youngman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 'Yings, yow graley yin! Suz ae rikt dheu,' said the blue man, taking the > thimble. 'What *is* he?' said Magrat. 'They're gnomes,' said Nanny. The man > lowered the thimble. 'Pictsies!' Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett 1998 > Visit the MaVerick web-site - <http://www.maverick-dbms.org> Open Source Pick > ------- > u2-users mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
