There are several options for increasing the capacity of your storage disks:
Use block suballocation to enhance use of disk space.
Block suballocation divides any partially used disk block into suballocation blocks of 512 bytes. These suballocation blocks can be used by files to share what would otherwise be unavailable space.
You can set block suballocation only when creating a Traditional volume. For instructions on setting block suballocation on Traditional volumes, see Section 4.7, Creating and Mounting a Traditional Volume.
Keep at least 1000 free blocks on each Traditional volume that has suballocation enabled. Free blocks are disk blocks that have no files stored in them. If the number of free blocks is low, the suballocation increases server utilization. To view the number of free blocks, view the volume’s details in iManager.
Disable in the Monitor (monitor) utility if your hard disk provides this capability.
Read-After-Write-Verify is almost always provided by the hard disk itself. Use the Read-After-Write-Verify feature only if your hardware does not provide this feature but does support software-controlled Read-After-Write-Verify.
For information, see Section 8.3.3, Turn Off Read-After-Write Verification.
If you have a 16-bit disk adapter, make sure you increase the number of reserved buffers below 16 MB. Use the set command or the Monitor (monitor) utility to set the parameter to its upper limit, 300. The parameter is found in > > > . For instructions, see SET
in the NW 6.5 SP8: Utilities Reference.
Remember that too many reserved buffers can prevent large volumes from mounting in a Traditional file system. As soon as possible, upgrade the system to a newer board that can access higher memory.
Scatter/gather is an I/O technique to organize the read and write calls from multiple data buffers that are separated in memory. The purpose is to lower the overhead associated with each call by reducing the number of calls that must be made.
Provide a device that is large enough to hold a core dump of the server’s memory. A core dump cannot span multiple devices.
If a volume comprises two or more segments, each segment should be on a different disk. If the volume is made of more than one segment on one disk, the volume spans between the two segments, slowing performance.
Keep at least 10% free space in any NetWare volume, except for the sys: volume, where there should be 20% free space.
WARNING:Do not fill up your sys: volume. This could damage your entire file system. The Transaction Tracking System™, which protects Novell eDirectory™, shuts down, compromising the eDirectory replicas on the server.
To keep enough free space on volumes, try the following suggestions:
Regularly monitor each volume’s disk space.
Use the parameter to specify when you are warned that a volume is running out of disk space.
Move any user files or print queues to another volume.
Do not store replicas on servers with low disk space.
Limit the size of auditing files on Traditional NetWare partitions.