We've been experiencing growing problems too. I've also worked on
 TCP/IP benchmarking in the past as an IBM co-op. Here's my $0.02
>
> 1) what is the speed of your network ? i think our network backbone is
>    10 megabit. there is talk of upgrading it to 100 megabit but don't know
>    when that will happen. we also don't know how much impact (benefit) it
>    would have on the speed of adsm if we do this upgrade. we also are
>    pumping all of the tcp/ip traffic through a low-end 3172 (and have no
>    way of measuring the performance of this box to know if it is overloaded
>    or not).

   10Mbps may in a test environment max out at 1.1-1.2 MBps (MegaBytes/
   per second), using TCP/IP. More than likely you share wires with
   other protocols (IPX, Netbios, Appletalk), if you have Netware file
   servers, Windoze stations, etc. These chatty protocols, depending
   on the number of servers and clients on the local segment, eat up
   40 to 60% of the bandwidth. If you're getting more than 500KBps
   out of that topology, you're lucky.

   If you are running an old technology 3271 (Model 1 that is),
   you're fronting VM with a black box 386/20Mhz. A single RS/6000
   doing an FTP to VM can exhaust all the cycles in that box.
   Even a standard Model 3 (486/DX 25Mhz), will peg before you
   can make it to 1.2MBps on a single ethernet segment.
>
> 2) do your users complain about how long it takes to recover pc disks via
>    adsm ? ours say that the restore times are unacceptable. i don't think
>    the people saying this are talking about individual files, i think these
>    are people who have wiped out their entire drive & are trying to recover
>    a full volume. some of the novell disks are 1 & 2 gig in size. these can
>    take many many hours to restore.

      I wouldn't doubt it at all with your environment.
>
> 3) i guess the overall question i would like to get answered is... what is
>    *THE* most important factor which dictates the speed of an adsm backup or
>    restore?
>
>    - is it the power(memory,cpu,etc) of the workstation client ?
          most important to the perception of the user

>    - is it the speed of the pc/server's disk drive ?
          you're nowhere near reaching bottleneck on this.

>    - is it the network speed ?
          Absolutly a major factor, in such a limited bandwitdh
             network. Go to 100Mps as quickly as you can, wherever
             you can.

>    - is it the communication protocol ? (what is faster than TCP/IP ?)
          TCP/IP is really the best strategic direction to go. The
             question is, what other protocols are gobbling up your
             bandwidth: IPX, Appletalk, Netbios. What can you do
             to reduce their load on the network. IPX - Netware
             IPX Router software is one way to look. Grow towards
             client/server platforms and NOSes that will use TCP/IP
             and their protocol in future releases. If you have
             routers that can filter by protocol, try to localize
             the offensive stuff where you can.

>
> any information will be helpful. Thanks !


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|  Jon Austin                             TSSJCA AT SYSA.ADM.DUKE DOT EDU   |
|  Systems Programmer,                                               |
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