Chunk and dbspace configuration

The number of disks that you use and the configuration of your chunks, dbspaces, and blobspaces affect the performance of your database server. You can improve performance by planning disk use and the configuration of chunks, dbspaces, and blobspaces.

All the data that resides in a database is stored on disk. The speed at which the database server can copy the appropriate data pages to and from disk determines how well your application performs.

All the data that resides in a database is stored on disk. The Optical Subsystem also uses a magnetic disk to access TEXT or BYTE data that is retrieved from optical media. The speed at which the database server can copy the appropriate data pages to and from disk determines how well your application performs.

Disks are typically the slowest component in the I/O path for a transaction or query that runs entirely on one host computer. Network communication can also introduce delays in client/server applications, but these delays are typically outside the control of the database server administrator. For information about actions that the database server administrator can take to improve network communications, see Network buffer pools and Connections and CPU utilization.

The various functions that your application requires, as well as the consistency-control functions that the database server performs, determine the optimal disk, chunk, and dbspace layout for your application. The more disks that you make available to the database server, the easier it is to balance I/O across them. For more information about these factors, see Table performance considerations.

Together with round-robin fragmentation, you can balance chunks over disks and controllers, saving time and handling errors. Placing multiple chunks on a single disk can improve throughput.