DB2(R) maintenance utilities, such as BACKUP and REBALANCE, can be very  2  resource intensive and running them can severely impact the performance of  2  your production system. Such utilities are typically scheduled to run  2  in off-peak hours. However, today's business demand of constant 2 uncompromised availability makes finding any off-peak time almost 2 impossible. Deferring these utility tasks is not an option because they 2 are required to assure data integrity and maintain query performance. 2 With the introduction of utility throttling, you can regulate the performance 2 impact of maintenance utilities, so that they can be run concurrently with 2 production periods. You can develop a throttling policy that will run 2 the utilities aggressively when the production workload is light, but will run 2 them more conservatively as production demands increase.

2 The ability to throttle utilities allows you to: 2

    * 2 Execute maintenance tasks with total control over the performance impact 2 to the production workload. This eliminates the need to identify 2 off-peak hours or schedule downtime for utility tasks.
    * 2 Ensure that valuable system resources are fully utilized by utilities in 2 periods of reduced demand.
    * 2 Eliminate performance impact as a consideration when monitoring a utility 2 and configuring its parameters (for example, setting the PARALLELISM parameter 2 for a backup invocation). Once a throttling policy is established, it 2 is the system's responsibility to ensure that the policy is obeyed (to the  2  extent possible).