Hi Farren,

I'm not familiar with the vmstat command and Solaris but this is what I
have learned during the last years as a TSM consultant:

- Use as much and as fast CPUs as possible for the TSM server. As every
database-based application TSM is CPU-depending. I've seen very great
performance differences between different TSM servers. At one time we
upgraded a single CPU Windows TSM Box to a dual processor machine and the
performance of the expiration process rose from 200 examined objects per
second (EOPS) to more than 3.000 EOPS... Or the database backup process:
I've seen systems backing up 30.000 pages per minute and other TSM servers
accomplish over 60.000 pages (both using IBM LTO Ultrium drives). CPU power
also affects the client performance because client and server have to
search for eligible files to back up and the larger the number of files on
a client or the higher the number of versions the longer does it take to
back up the client.

- Try to optimize your cache hit ratio at a level > 99%. The new
SELFTUNEBUFPOOLSIZE option is very helpful for this task...

- Use raw partitions rather than ufs or vxfs filesystems for the db,
recovery log and disk storage pool volumes (if possible).

- Look at the network settings for the affected clients. E.g. auto-sensing
is known to cause problems for certain network adapter/switch combinations
or different settings for full-/halfduplex. Or try an ftp transfer from the
client to the TSM server and vice versa to see if the network is the
bottleneck (Once one of our customers complained about the backup
performance but he had forgotten that the leasing contract of his DNS
server had expired and the system had been removed. I was just wondering
that TSM was backing up data at all...).

- Look at the memory consumption on the clients and the server during the
backup. Tuning the memory subsystem can solve many performance issues...

I don't know what type of clients you back up, what kind of hardware they
are running on or which type of data they have but performance tuning can
be a very difficult task. And you have to look at each client individually.


Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Met vriendelijke groeten,
With best regards,
Bien amicalement,

CU/2,
                Dirk Billerbeck


Dirk Billerbeck
CC CompuNet AG & Co. oHG
Enterprise Computing Solutions
Am Jaegersberg 20, 24161 Altenholz (Kiel), Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 431 / 3609 - 117, Fax: +49 (0) 431 / 3609 - 190,
Internet: dirk.billerbeck AT computacenter DOT com


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