In our shop, we have Linux guest machines defined as dedicated volumes (this was a holdover from the days before we got z/VM). Some other Linux machines are also using full-pack minidisks. Is there an advantage to using one over the other? What about performance?
Fullpack minidisks are potentially eligible for MDC. Dedicated volumes aren't AFAIK. There are also some optimizations that are available to DEVNO and dedicated devices that aren't available to minidisks, but I'm not sure it's worth the management hassle unless you're doing really tight deadline OLTP. Re: performance - on modern hardware, the difference is still measurable, but it's a lot smaller than it used to be. Use your performance monitor to see what it's like on your box. Now that you have VM, start using cyl 1 to xxxxx minidisks and let VM worry about the labels and real cyl 0. Makes DR and rearranging disk ENORMOUSLY easier.
