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Dirty Blocks

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Under my Netware 4.2 Cache Utilization Statistics, I have 5367 “too many dirty blocks.”
What causes this and can I get rid of them without taking down the server?

Thanks!!

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Dirty Blocks

In reply to Dirty Blocks

This is a measurement of how many times a disk write was delayed due to pending disk-write requests or the disk channel was too busy to perform a write at the time of the request.

It is caused by too much disk I/O traffic or insufficient RAM for cache. Upgrading your disk-subsystem and/or adding RAM can help.

You may want to do a little performance tuning (increase some of the RAM you are allocating to cache etc…) before you spend any money on upgrades. Perhaps the server is still at the original install settings (which is not sufficient for any but the smallest of server loads.).

The 5367 number is only a counter of how many times this has happened. Even if you could reset it, it wouldn’t help the problem.

Dirty Blocks

In reply to Dirty Blocks

I did do some things Novell recommends for tuning. I also took the server down, ran vrepair on the volumes. Stats look good on everything right now.

Thanks for the help!

Dirty Blocks

In reply to Dirty Blocks

If this error hasn’t been around since the installation of this server suspect a faulty disk I/O card or faulty disks. Another possible cause is an increase in write requests (i.e. more users), in which case you would want to move to faster disk hardware.

Dirty Blocks

In reply to Dirty Blocks

This had happened once before over a year ago then went away. I actually have less users now than I did but I will definitely keep on eye on these things.

Thanks for the help!

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