Here's something that I've been curious about for a while: how does WAFL deal with fragmentation and balancing?

For example, when you add a new disk to a volume, does DataONTAP/WAFL do any shifting of data to the new disk in the background in order to balance out disk usage across the volume? Does any kind of defragmentation take place automagically? (Is fragmentation even an issue with WAFL?)

I ask because we are having just these issues with another manufacturer's journaling file system, requiring us to spend significant time and effort to stay on top of.

-- Andrew Siegel, Head of Systems Blue Sky Studios, Inc. White Plains, NY 914-259-6336 direct abs@blueskystudios.com