ADSM-L

Re: Novell Client Bottleneck

2000-01-31 10:23:55
Subject: Re: Novell Client Bottleneck
From: Patterson Barry J <patterson.bj AT MELLON DOT COM>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 10:23:55 -0500
Something not in that TID that we have employed to help boost performance
slightly, especially if your backup communications cross a router:

        We found that our IP transmitted packets were set to 576 bytes.  I
can't seem to find the original TID now, but I remember  reading that
Netware would automatically scale down the IP packet size to 576 bytes if
you had to cross routers.  There was an override SET command you can use
(place after the LOAD TCPIP in your AUTOEXEC.NCF).

SET USE SPECIFIED MTU=ON
SET MAXIMUM MTU INTERFACE=xxxx

Where xxxx we would set to the packet size (Ethernet we're setting to 1524,
and Token-Ring to 4202)

Please correct me if I have that packet size for ethernet wrong....
originally we were setting it to 1500, then 1514, and now someone told me
the buffer size for ethernet should be 1524, so if you have the correct
number, I'm all ears.  :)

This seemed to increase the speed of our backups/restores by a fair amount
since we'd been flooding our routers with lots of tiny packets.

If I'm completely off-base, tell me... I know we've used this and it seemed
to work, but it may not work for everyone?  (Depends on your configuration.)

Barry


Barry J. Patterson, CNE         All views expressed are my own and not
Mellon Bank, NA                 necessarily shared by Mellon Bank.
Patterson.BJ AT Mellon DOT com
412-236-0984



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phil Bone [SMTP:PBone AT AFLAC DOT COM]
> Sent: Monday, January 31, 2000 8:29 AM
> To:   ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject:      Re: Novell Client Bottleneck
>
> I was having the same problem on one of my Novell servers.  I looked on
> the
> Novell web site and a search on "slow backups" returned TID #2937318.
> Section E, which describes directories with a large number (over 10,000)
> files, was revelent to my situation.  I made the recomended changes and
> the
> backup speed has increased dramaticly.
>
>
> Phil Bone
> Sr. Systems Consultant
> Network Services, Infrastructure Management
> Office: 706.596.5928
> Fax: 706.596.5950
> Email: pbone AT aflac DOT com
> Email: philbone AT mindspring DOT com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeffery Carroll [mailto:Jeffery_Carroll AT VALIC DOT COM]
> Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2000 4:13 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Novell Client Bottleneck
>
>
> We have encountered extreme slowness when backing up Novell clients.
> These
> are
> 4.11/5.0 Novell clients. It now takes up to 10-13 hours for Novell clients
> that
> are only sending 2-3 gigs of data at most for each client.  Conversely our
> NT
> clients that have 80-120 gigs are finishing in less than 5 hours.  All
> clients
> are on dedicated backup segment and communicating via TCP/IP.  We are
> running
> ADSM 3.1 rel 2.30.  We have approximately 25 Novell clients.  I have
> experimented with max session settings,randomization,polling/prompting, as
> well
> as prioritization settings, and even frame types, half duplex,full duplex
> on
> both client and server.  When we had only one Novell client connected, it
> was
> extremely fast finishing in less than an hour.  However as number of
> clients
> have been added to backup scheme, bottleneck has increased as well.  The
> only
> solution I have found it to stagger jobs (one group kicks off at 8:00Pm,
> one
> group at 9:00etc).  I have seen in some posts that ADSM handles Novell
> clients
> somewhat slower than NT,Unix,etc. Any additional suggestions appriciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff
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