When you say "kill ADSM", I assume you mean kill the scheduler service
on the client?

Our ADSM server is V2 on AIX.
We run about 200 WinNT & Win95 desktops, about 40 AIX servers and 30
WinNT 4.0 servers as ADSM clients.

Of the WInNT 4.0 servers, some are fileservers only, most operate as
file servers AND run other stuff as well.
Some are as slow as 100mz, most are between 100-200mz.  We run with
COMPRESS ON on all of them (i.e., the client does the compression before
sending data.)

I have never encountered a problem like you describe.  Our network is 16
MB token ring.  With COMPRESSION ON, the backup speed is always limited
by the processor speed of the client machine, but we can do a lot better
than 500K per hour on the faster NT machines.

When you get weirdness like that with the 32bit Windows client, I
usually resort to a piecemeal debugging approach.

Some things you could try:

      Load the V2 client instead of the V3 client and see if you get
the same results.  That would rule out a performance problem introduced
with V3.
      Turn off COMPRESSION, and/or try SLOWINCREMENTAL in the client
options file.  If you are having a serious CPU problem, or a memory
problem, that should help.
      Use the GUI and try running an incremental backup on one drive
at a time.  If there is a problem in the client file system, sometimes
you can find it that way.

Good luck!


===============================================================
Wanda Prather
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
443-778-8769
wanda_prather AT jhuapl DOT edu

"Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think."
              - Scott Adams/Dilbert
===============================================================




> ----------
> From:         Mitch Sako[SMTP:mitch AT cellnet DOT com]
> Sent:         Friday, February 13, 1998 5:47 PM
> To:   ADSM-L AT vm.marist DOT edu
> Subject:      NT Client Stops Fileserving During Backup
>
> We have two PP-200/128MB NT4 machines.  The ADSM server is running
> fine, TCP/IP, ADSM Version 3 server and client.  A fileserver running
> a ADSM V3 client seems to stop fileserving when the backup client
> is pumping data out the pipe.  It's a 100Mb pipe (NT seems not to be
> able to drive much traffic over it, anyway using TCP/IP, though) but
> it's getting 500KB+ for most of the transfer.
>
> When fileserving stops, clients on the domain freeze when accessing
> the fileserver, kill ADSM and the problem goes away.
>
> Is NT so primitive that it can't scratch and chew gum at the
> same time?
>
> Is ADSM on NT such a hog that it takes over a machine even though all
> the related resource allocation dials have been screwed down tight?
>
> I've read the the NT TCP/IP stack is one of the suckiest
> implementations
> of TCP/IP on earth, does this mean we are doomed until micro$oft
> decides
> to do something about this?
>
> Our UNIX client(s) do not seem to have this problem, nor does the
> ADSM server running on NT seem to have any performance problems.  It's
> just the ADSM NT client that has the problem.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mitch Sako                            Phone:     650.508.6761
> Cellnet Data Systems                  FAX:       650.508.6700
> 125 Shoreway Road                     Pager:     408.989.3365
> San Carlos, CA 94070                  E-Mail:    mitch AT cellnet DOT com
>                                       Personal:  msako AT netcom DOT com
>