There are two records that are capable of being used to ascertain when files become full on a Nonstop platform, NonStopFileDetail (FILEDET) & NonStopFileException (EXCEPT). There are some important facts & requirements for using these records.
The FILEDET record is built based on the files that you specify in the DISC configuration with the 'MONITOR' parameter.
The EXCEPT record is, as the name suggests, designed to hold information on file exceptions. No specific configuration is necessary to tell the disc collector which files to monitor for the purpose of building this record, apart from the ADD DISC parameter. Configuration parameter’s for ‘EXCEPT FILEFULL’ & ‘EXCEPT LASTPART’ has some bearing on the results. There are a couple of restrictions on how we determine what constitutes a FILEFULL exception condition. They are:
- The file is open for write; and
- The file is greater than a certain percentage full (default is 90%) or has been marked as full by NSK; and
- The file is not filecode 100, 101, 134, 541, 700, 800 or 843.
Note that if you have your DISC interval set to 5 minutes, the disc collector paces its work across this 5 minute interval. This means that there is no way to tell exactly what time the disc collector reads information about that very file. For this reason, if the file is opened only for a short time, and then closed again, it is highly likely that this may not coincide with the scanning of the file. So, we need to know if the file is open for write for the entire 5 minutes before we decide which is the best record to use.
Please note also that there is an absolute limit of 800 files for the EXCEPT record. If more exceptions than this are found, then the parameters for what constitutes an exception are set too low and should be raised.
Further information regarding the above parameters is available in the online help.
