[mod.computers.vax] Disk restructuring packages that run in the background...

JBREDESE@carleton.edu.UUCP (02/24/87)

We are looking for a disk restructuring package that will run on our VAXCluster
(11/780, 2 11/750s, 5 RA81 disks) running VMS V4.5.  It should meet the
following criteria:

1) It should run in the background as a detached job or some such thing.

2) It should not use up to many resources (obviously).

3) We would like to control various aspects of the restructuring such as 'how
   often it looks at a disk', 'when does it do most of the restructuring',
   and other things that are useful. Since we do not have one now, we are not
   100% sure what the 'useful' things are.

4) It should *NEVER* leave the entire disk in an unusable form.  A file
   or directory left hosed if (when?) the system crashes might be acceptable
   IF the odds of this happening are EXTREMELY small.

5) It must be reasonably priced.

Any comments regarding the various packages avaiable (including the one in the
DECUS library) would be most helpful.  We do not have time to bring in every
package for a test drive (no pun intended), so any hints as to which packages
to bring/not bring in would save us a lot of time.

Also, what sort of criteria is useful in determining how well a package does
its job.  Assuming that they all make all files contiguous (is this a fair
assumption?), does placement on the disk matter?  More importantly, how much
does it matter?  Placement of directories and bitmaps?

Please respond to me directly and I will summarize to the net.

				Thanks in advance,

					John Bredesen
					System Manager
					Carleton College
					jbredese@carleton.edu
					(507)663-4627