Skip to Main Content
IBM Power Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Created by Guest
Created on Jun 19, 2019

IFS performance on large files deletion

when deleting big files in IFS, cleanup creates huge amounts of read/write I/O in background jobs P0FBAIT00N etc.
This I/O blocks further processing if IBM i is used as FTP server and FTP processing first CDs into a directory, deletes existing files and then sends new files. Sometimes deletion needs long so FTP client will disconnect due to timeout.
The deletion in general produces a high amount of read / write I/O which kills mid-sized HDD based storage. Circumvention only by massive caching or flash based storage.
Processing of deletion should run in background and reduce amount of I/O.


Use Case:

a) storing 40TB+ of data as backup from other systems (IBM i and PC), mainly big files 5GB up to 100GB in a flat directory structure. Files will be deleted and newly created using FTP daily

b) storing big amount of small files (<300k) in a directory structure with 50.000+ files in a single directory.

c) using BRMS to dump to tape and manage retention of data.


Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Sep 30, 2022
    Thank you for taking the time to submit your request. After careful consideration, we know that we cannot deliver your requested enhancement soon, so it is being declined. However, we believe it may have future value, so we will add it to an internal list for us to keep in mind for the future.
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 29, 2020

    We are always interested in having the file system operations perform as efficiently as possible. Destroying a stream has many factors that affect the length of time it takes. As noted we already do a lot of the destroy in parallel in the P0FBAIT000x tasks. Other activity on this system as well as hardware speeds also plays a factor.

    We plan to do additional investigation on whether there is something we can do differently.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Aug 6, 2019

    The COMMON Europe Advisory Council (CEAC) has reviewed this requirement and recommends that IBM view this as a medium priority requirement that should be addressed.

    Background: The CEAC members have a broad range of experience in working with small and medium-sized IBM i customers. CEAC has a crucial role in working with IBM i development to help assess the value and impact of individual RFEs on the broader IBM i community and has therefore reviewed your RFE.

    To find out how CEAC help to shape the future of IBM i, see CEAC @ ibm.biz/BdYSYj and the article "The Five Hottest IBM i RFEs Of The Quarter" at ibm.biz/BdYSZT

    Therese Eaton – CEAC Program Manager, IBM

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Jul 12, 2019

    additional information:
    we are currently implementing (S)FTP(S) based services for some customers where they put their data on a daily base, deleting old data. Starting with about 20GB of file size, deletion needs significant amount of time on "normal" hardware. Switched to full flash based SAN the situation is better but at a high cost. Freeing pointers for IFS objecs should be run asynchronous like for deleting of QSYS objects.
    Replaced file server for 2 customers with their IBM i IFS (as they had some space TB) works like a charm for everything <4GB files. Need better performance for better argument to replace Windows or Linux file servers ;-)