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Conference vaxaxp::vmsnotes

Title:VAX and Alpha VMS
Notice:This is a new VMSnotes, please read note 2.1
Moderator:VAXAXP::BERNARDO
Created:Wed Jan 22 1997
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:703
Total number of notes:3722

546.0. "pagefile & Swapfile on Shadow set?" by CSC32::M_ANTRY () Tue Apr 29 1997 11:52

    I have a customer that called and wanted to know something.
    
    They are thinking about creating a secondary page/swap disk and
    placeing secondary page and swap files on this disk.  They wanted to
    know the advantages and disadvantages if this page/swap disk was
    SHADOWED.  They are OpenVMS 6.1.
    
    One of their thoughts of a disadvantage would be that when booting,
    every time they booted this shadowed page/swap disk would do a merge. 
    They wanted to know if there was a way to prevent this from happening,
    could they do something prior to shutdown?
    
    Thanks in advance
    
    Mark Antry
    Mission Critical Support Team
    GOLD/VMS
T.RTitleUserPersonal
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546.1EVMS::KUEHNELAndy K�hnelTue Apr 29 1997 12:4912
    advantage:
    
    	A disk error during a hard pagefault taken in kernel mode will
    	cause a bug check.  A shadow set greatly reduces the probability
    	of this scenario.
    
    disadvantages:
    
    	Performance suffers.  I can't think of a (reasonable) way to avoid
    	merge during startup, and shadowing generally isn't the best performer
    	for write-heavy applications.  Paging/swapping usually involves 
    	about as many writes as reads.
546.2In a Cluster?STAR::ATOZJohn J. AndruszkiewiczThu May 15 1997 07:5010
	You did not mention if this was a stand alone system, because that 
	will make a difference - in the time it takes to do the necessary 
	merge.  For example, if another node has that virtual unit mounted, 
	on controllers that can do write logging, then when the first 
	system stops, the other system will do an assisted merge 
	( a.k.a. mini merge ) on that virtual unit.

	Regards, 
		John