File reorganizations made easy with Robot/SPACE

We use Robot/SPACE for a number of tasks. One really handy feature is its ability to automate file reorganization to reclaim storage.

To start, we created a storage audit using specific criteria so Robot/SPACE would know which files we wanted to reorganize.

When you set up a storage audit, you can select the library or libraries Robot/SPACE should audit and the objects you want to exclude.

On the Maintain Storage Audit Task Properties window, you tell Robot/SPACE more about the task. For example, we set it up so that Robot/SPACE reorganizes file data if the savings in any file is greater than or equal to 3 MB, the percentage of deleted records is greater than or equal to 3%, and the reorganization of all the files combined will take less than 360 minutes.

A cool part of running this storage audit is that we can have Robot/SPACE run the audit and report on its results without performing the reorganization immediately. Robot/SPACE tells us which files are eligible for reorganization and how long the reorganization will take. The report is very easy to read, shows you which files are eligible (based on your selection), how much disk space you will get back, and predicts how much time it will take to perform the reorganization. We have found the time predictions quite accurate.

After reviewing the report, you can use your job scheduler to submit the storage audit to run as often as you think you need to. 

When Robot/SPACE is done performing the reorganizations, we review the report it generates. It shows us how long it took to reorganize each file and gives us a “before and after” picture of how much space we regained.

Because Robot/SPACE supports Independent Auxiliary Storage Pools (IASPs), we can have individual storage audit jobs for all of our IASPs, which makes our reorganization process much more efficient!

Contributed by Rich Malloy, iSeries Team Lead, PFGC