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InfoScale™ 9.0 Storage and Availability Management for DB2 Databases - AIX, Linux

Last Published: 2025-09-09

Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)

Platform: AIX,Linux

Section I. Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) management solutions for DB2 databases
1. Overview of Storage Foundation for Databases
Section II. Deploying DB2 with InfoScale products
Section III. Configuring Storage Foundation for Database (SFDB) tools
1. Configuring and managing the Storage Foundation for Databases repository database
2. Configuring authentication for Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools
Section IV. Improving DB2 database performance
Section V. Using point-in-time copies
Section VI. Optimizing storage costs for DB2
1. Understanding storage tiering with SmartTier
  1. About SmartTier
  2. SmartTier in a High Availability (HA) environment
2. SmartTier use cases for DB2
Section VII. Storage Foundation for Databases administrative reference

Relocating inactive tablespaces or segments to tier two storage

It is general practice to use partitions in databases. Each partition maps to a unique tablespace. For example in a shopping goods database, the orders table can be portioned into orders of each quarter. Q1 orders can be organized into Q1_order_tbs tablespace, Q2 order can be organized into Q2_order_tbs.

As the quarters go by, the activity on older quarter data decreases. By relocating old quarter data into Tier-2, significant storage costs can be saved. The relocation of data can be done when the database is online.

For the following example use case, the steps illustrate how to relocate Q1 order data into Tier-2 in the beginning of Q3. The example steps assume that all the database data is in the /DBdata filesystem.

To prepare to relocate Q1 order data into Tier-2 storage for DB2

Obtain a list of containers belonging to Q1_order_tbs.
```
$ db2inst1$  db2 list  tablespaces
```

Find the tablespace-id for the tablespace Q1_order_tbs.

$ db2inst1$ db2  list  tablespace containers for <tablespace-id>

Find the path names for the containers and store them in file Q1_order_files.txt.

#cat  Q1_order_files.txt 
          NODE0000/Q1_order_file1.f
          NODE0000/Q1_order_file2.f
          ...
          NODE0000/Q1_order_fileN.f

To relocate Q1 order data into Tier-2

Prepare a policy XML file. For the example, the policy file name is Q1_order_policy.xml. Below is a sample policy.

This is policy is for unconditional relocation and hence there is no WHEN clause. There are multiple PATTERN statements as part of the SELECT clause. Each PATTERN selects a different file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE PLACEMENT_POLICY SYSTEM "/opt/VRTSvxfs/etc/\
placement_policy.dtd">
<PLACEMENT_POLICY Version="5.0" Name="selected files">
    <RULE Flags="data" Name="Key-Files-Rule">
        <COMMENT>
            This rule deals with key important files.
        </COMMENT>

        <SELECT Flags="Data">
            <DIRECTORY Flags="nonrecursive" > NODE0000</DIRECTORY>
            <PATTERN> Q1_order_file1.f  </PATTERN>
            <PATTERN> Q1_order_file2.f  </PATTERN>
            <PATTERN> Q1_order_fileN.f  </PATTERN>
        </SELECT>

        <RELOCATE>
             <COMMENT>
                Note that there is no WHEN clause.
             </COMMENT>
             <TO>
                <DESTINATION>
                    <CLASS> tier2 </CLASS>
                </DESTINATION>
             </TO>
         </RELOCATE>

    </RULE>
</PLACEMENT_POLICY>

Validate the policy Q1_order_policy.xml.

# fsppadm validate /DBdata Q1_order_policy.xml

Assign the policy.

# fsppadm assign /DBdata Q1_order_policy.xml

Enforce the policy.
```
# fsppadm enforce /DBdata
```