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balance - Balances the percentage of used space among volumes in a domain.
/usr/sbin/balance [-v] domain
Specifies the name of the file domain.
Displays information on which files are being moved to different volumes. Selecting this flag slows down the balance procedure.
The balance utility evenly distributes the percentage of used space between volumes in a multivolume domain. This improves performance and evens the distribution of future file allocations.
Use the showfdmn command to determine the percentage of used space on each volume. This information allows you to determine the need to balance the volumes.
The balance utility can be used at any time, but it is particularly useful after adding or removing a volume (addvol, rmvol) because these procedures can cause file distribution to become uneven.
When you plan to run both the defragment and balance utilities on the same domain, run the defragment utility before running the balance utility. The defragment utility often improves the balance of free space, thus enabling the balance utility to run more quickly.
Before you can balance volumes in a file domain, all filesets in the file domain must be mounted. If you try to balance volumes in an active file domain that includes unmounted filesets, the system displays an error message indicating that a fileset is unmounted.
You must have root privilege to access this utility. Additionally, you must register the Advanced File System Advanced Utilities license to use this utility.
You cannot run the balance utility while the addvol, rmvol, defragment, rmfset, or balance utility is running on the same file domain. If you attempt to do this, a warning message is displayed.
The following example shows the procedure for determining the percentage of used space on each volume of the two-volume usr_domain file domain and then redistributing the files to balance the percentage of used space. The final showfdmn command shows the redistributed percentage of used space.
# showfdmn usr_domain Id Date Created LogPgs Domain Name 2dcab512.000d1ed0 Fri May 6 14:22:26 1994 512 usr_domain
Vol 512-Blks Free % Used Cmode Rblks Wblks Vol Name
1L 819200 126848 85% on 128 128 /dev/rz8g
2 768281 768080 0% on 128 128 /dev/rz9d
---------- ---------- ------
1587481 894928 44%
# balance usr_domain
balance: Balancing domain 'usr_domain'
balance: Balanced domain 'usr_domain'
# showfdmn usr_domain
Id Date Created LogPgs Domain Name
2dcab512.000d1ed0 Fri May 6 14:22:26 1994 512 usr_domain
Vol 512-Blks Free % Used Cmode Rblks Wblks Vol Name
1L 819200 459248 44% on 128 128 /dev/rz8g
2 768281 433632 44% on 128 128 /dev/rz9d
---------- ---------- ------
1587481 892880 44%
The files are now distributed more evenly between the two volumes.
addvol(8), defragment(8), rmvol(8), showfdmn(8).