PREFACE

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is intended for managers of Digital's VAX and Alpha AXP computer systems. VAX is the brand name of a computer system made by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts. The various models of the VAX computer range in capacity from a desktop workstation to a company-wide mainframe. Alpha AXP is the brand name of another computer system made by Digital which uses the same operating system as the VAX. A System Manager is the person who is in charge of or responsible for such a computer system - its maintenance, operation and management. Put bluntly, the System Manager is the person who gets in trouble when the computer goes down or isn't working as well as it should.

Naturally, for this book to be of any use to you at all, you have to have a VAX or Alpha AXP computer system or at least be planning to have one in the future. That VAX or Alpha AXP has to have disks , since the problems we will discuss occur only on disks. The computer has to be turned on, not shut down for use as a doorstop somewhere, and it has to be at least occasionally used. If you don't use it, you won't get the fragmentation disease and you wouldn't care if you did.

This computer of yours has to be running the VMS (or OpenVMS ) operating system. Other computers and other operating systems suffer from fragmentation too, but this book is specifically written with the OpenVMS system in mind. The fragmentation problem is so important, and so inherent in the OpenVMS system, it would be a mistake to try and generalize this discussion into something applicable to any computer or operating system.

VAX and Alpha AXP System Managers, this book is for you!

System Managers run into a lot of problems keeping their users happy with the performance of the computer system. One problem that haunts virtually every System Manager, and literally plagues those with more than a few disk drives to care for, is fragmentation. Fragmentation, more fully defined in a later chapter, is a sort of disease that affects computer systems, causing them to slow down and perform badly, somewhat like an arthritic old man who these days just can't get around quite as well as he used to. The problem is so widespread and so damaging and, surprisingly, so poorly understood, that an entire book on the subject is warranted.

So, who should read this book?

Any VAX or Alpha AXP System Manager who is interested in fragmentation.

What This Book Can Do For You

• Help you recognize whether there is a fragmentation problem.
  
  
• Show you how to find fragmentation.
  
  
• Show you how to know it when you see it.
  
  
• Help you see where it's coming from.
  
  
• Help you understand it and what it is doing to your system.
  
  
• Make it easy and simple to understand and deal with.
  
  
• Help you handle it.
  
  
• Show you what changes have to be made to handle it and prevent it.
  
  
• Tell you what equipment and tools you must have to handle it.
  
  
• Help you predict fragmentation problems and solutions.
  
  
• Get you started.
  
  
• Get you handling fragmentation.
  
  
• Help you rid your system of fragmentation forever.
  
  
• Show you how to spot and correct errors in fragmentation handling.
  
  
• Give you the ability to deal with fragmentation routinely.
  
  
• Show you how to keep fragmentation handled all the time.
  
  
• Show you how to handle fragmentation without doing anything.
  
  
• Show you how to prevent fragmentation from ever coming back.
  
  
• Help you improve conditions in the VAX or Alpha AXP management area.
  
  
• Show you the way to a life without fragmentation.
  
  
• Help you be more in control of your computer system.

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