Personal observation:
My experience is that Windows systems are getting better every year, and
they work great as mid-size TSM servers. But, they still can't push enough
I/O for a system as I/O intensive as yours, or push as fast as a comparable
AIX host. Best I can tell, even if you add more adapters to a Windows host,
that doesn't necessarily give you another effective path for I/O.
(Disclaimer: I have no experience with the 64-bit Windows systems.)
We have been unable to achieve the same tape throughput on a Windows host
that we had on an AIX host. Problem is not the tape itself. Could be the
drivers, or the internal bus structure of the host, or a memory/buffer
problem - who knows.
Now the reason we scaled down from AIX to Windows is that we only have about
100 clients now to back up on that network, so this isn't a critial problem
for us. It's plenty fast enough for the configuration. But out of
curiosity I have talked to people at Tivoli, at Microsoft, and SHARE and
asked "what tools does Windows have that would help me solve this problem?",
and the answer all round was "hm - interesting question". Win2K performance
tools give you no information about non-disk I/O.
That itself should tell you whether or not you should go there. (NOT!!)
My opinion and nobody else's -
Wanda Prather
"I/O, I/O, It's all about I/O" -(me)
-----Original Message-----
From: James R Owen [mailto:Jim.Owen AT YALE DOT EDU]
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 4:39 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: ?Can Linux or (Win?) replace AIX for I/O intensive TSM service?
?Can Linux (or Win?) replace AIX for hosting an I/O intensive TSM service?
After scanning the past year's ADSM-L postings including Linux in the
subject
I have the impression that a few people are playing with Linux hosting a TSM
service, but real I/O intensive TSM services are still mainly hosted by AIX.
?Is anyone already using or actively planning to use Linux (RedHat EL 3.0?)
to host an I/O intensive TSM service similar to any described under the
recent ADSM-L thread, "Sizing an AIX platform and tape libraries"?
We believe we are approaching the maximum that can be achieved w/
TSM: v5.2.1.3
OS: AIX 5.1 (64bit)
CPU: IBM 7025-6F1 w/ 4 * 750Mhz proc's + 3GB RAM
SAN: 1 Gb w/ EMC Symmetrix 8830
LAN: 1 Gb Ethernet
ATL: IBM 3494 w/ 6 * 3590E drives
IBM 3584 w/ 4 * 3580 LTO1 + 2 * 3580 LTO2 drives
This configuration is successfully supporting our current ITS TSM service
(see details below), but we believe we either need a major performance
boost or to split this load onto an additional host platform:
Linux, Win*, or must we remain w/ AIX for I/O performance?
to handle expected additional growth.
Which platform have you chosen (or would you choose) for similar TSM
service?
Yale ITS TSM Service:
--------------------
Active Clients: 2400 <= 3d, 2500 <= 7d, 2700 <= 35days
Servers: 151
WinNT,2K* 105
Linux 20
Solaris 9
AIX 7
SQL-BT (Oracle) 3
Mac 2
TDP's: MSSQL,MSexchg: 2 + 1
[new] 2
Personals: 2549
WinNT,2K*,XP 2230
Win98,ME 26
Mac 183
Linux 50
Solaris 5
AIX,DEC*X,HPUX,IRIX: 1 ea.
[new] 51
Expected growth: +500-600 clients for several years
+20% data for existing clients/year?
TSM DB: 75.7% of 160GB
BAckup DB w/ LTO1 HCmpr. takes 2.3h
EXPIre Inv examines ~6M obj, deletes ~1M obj. in 8-9h
Disk STGpools: 600 + 180GB
Nightly Backup Period: 15:30-08:00+
Weeknight Backup Load: 500-650GB+
Thanks for any experience/insight you are willing to share with us!
--
Jim.Owen AT Yale DOT Edu (203.432.6693)
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