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DAOS is so great! It will save you oodles of disk space ... what the?

Mat Newman  May 29 2012 21:38:00
Yep, one of those amazing moments where you've convinced the customer that implementing features such as Transaction Logging, Activity Logging and ... DAOS (the Domino Attachment and Object Service) is just so easy and such a no-brainer idea that they are enthused enough to do it.

The all-important additional disk configuration for the Logs and DAOS data, the server restart, the console reporting that everything is working .... and ....

An empty DAOS disk and folder!

While the customer is wondering when the additional petabytes of space are going to be released, don't forget, that once DAOS is enabled on the server, one must still run a copy-style compact to retrospectively gain DAOS savings from existing applications (AHEM! Databases!) and the attachments stored therein.

Steps:
  • Ensure Create_R85_Databases=1 has been set with the "set config Create_R85_Databases=1" command on the Domino Server console (either direct, or through the Admin client),
  • Run a copy-style compact to apply the new ODS to the existing databases "Load compact -C",
  • Assign additional disk drives to the system either on the SAN, virtually, whatever... (1 for OS, 1 for swap, 1 for Data, 1 for Logs, 1 for DAOS .... "1 disk to rule them all" IS NOT a good idea here, but RAID IS!),
  • Enable Transaction Logging (restart Server),
  • Enable DAOS (restart Server),
  • Enable Activity Logging (not essential but HIGHLY recommended),
  • Highlight every database deemed suitable (and even some that aren't) and "Right-Click" -> "Advanced Properties" -> "Enable DAOS",
  • Do ANOTHER copy-style compact with DAOS enabled and configured to extract the attachments retrospectively and reduce storage space by consolidating the duplicates (YES, you WILL be surprised how much space you will recover!)
  • NOW you can smile at the customer as the free-space on their server just keeps increasing!

I love DAOS. And so do customers who discover the oodles of disk space they never knew they had :-)


Comments

1Steve Pitcher  05/29/2012 23:59:17  
DAOS is so great! It will save you oodles of disk space ... what the?

Separate drives is a great idea...unless the customer is running IBM i on Power Systems, of course. No need. ;)

2Ralf M Petter  05/30/2012 16:29:42  
DAOS is so great! It will save you oodles of disk space ... what the?

I always hear the statement, that a disk for every io is so much better than one disk with the same spindle count. But no one is providing test results showing this.

In our migration project from System i to the windows plattform we have made many tests and in all tests a Raid disk with 5 physical disks performs better than a configuration with 1 disk os 1 swap, 1 data 1 for logs and 1 for daos. Maybe on bigger server the seperation of disk is better, but in a small server with 5 disks is one virtual disk provided by a good hardware Raid Controller superior.

3Manish Oberoi  06/01/2012 1:57:04  
DAOS is so great! It will save you oodles of disk space ... what the?

Yep agree. Running it up now on our new mail architecture...it's fantastic and saves a heap of space.

4Charles Robinson  06/04/2012 23:23:17  
DAOS is so great! It will save you oodles of disk space ... what the?

Manish - If you are literally running a single disk for each of those then you're right, RAID 5 will outperform it. In a perfect world each of those is a separate RAID array, though, and ideally the OS is on a separate RAID controller than the rest. At the very least you should have the OS and Domino data on separate physical disks (each in a RAID configuration), and further segment the transaction logs if at all possible.

5Andy Moore  06/12/2012 23:58:36  
DAOS is so great! It will save you oodles of disk space ... what the?

Guys, I've written a recent DeveloperWorks article that covers the subject of DAOS and why you really, #really# need a dedicated Translog disk (preferably a dedicated Translog RAID 1 array) to get a performant system:

{ Link }

You dont need a separate disk for the DAOS NLOs, but it is a good idea not to put the NLO path beneath the Data Directory Path, because Domino regularly scans all files under Data:

{ Link }

So a good minimum is 1 disk for OS and swap, 1 for Domino Program Directory, NSFs and NLOs, and one for Translogs. Of course some of these "disks" can be arrays instead.

Lastly, RAID 5 is a terrible idea for Domino - of all the common RAID configurations, it is the absolute worst for Write I/O performance. With typical workloads, I/O to NSFs is 50/50 Read/Write (remember, every time a user reads something, the Unread table is updated, thats a Write), and for Translogs its 100% Write.

6Chris Hudson  06/15/2012 14:28:53  
DAOS is so great! It will save you oodles of disk space ... what the?

We also use separate drives for program files, data and Transaction logs.

DAOS NLO's we have in a folder [:\zDAOS] on the same drive as the Domino data [\ibm\lotus\domino\data]

The z in the DAOS folder name is to ensure that our backup software [TSM\TDP] backs up the NLOs after the NSF's

Mat Newman

THE Notes (formerly IBM/Lotus Notes) Guy. Productivity Guru. Evangelist. IBM Champion for IBM Collaboration Solutions, 2011/2012/2013. Former IBMer. HCLite. Views are my own.

#GetProductive #GetHCLNotes

Mat Newman




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