On Thu, 6 Feb 2003 David.Lee AT arvatousa DOT com wrote:

> My tape server is a Linux host (Redhat 7.3).
> My clients are either Linux hosts or Sun Solaris hosts.
> All client hosts are on the same domain.
> When I run 'amdump' to backup Linux hosts, the speed is pretty good.
> When I run 'amdump' to backup Sun Solaris hosts, the speed is extremely
> slow.
> It seems not a network or hardware issue.

Seems?  You don't sound particularly sure on this point...  In my
experience one thing that is a frequent cause of deadly slow network
backups is a duplex mismatch between a backup client and the ethernet
switch it connects to.  I've seen systems that the user had been happily
using without complaint for weeks or months before asking for backups.
When their backup went painfully slow I'd check their network settings
and invariably find a duplex mismatch.

Another cause of slowness can be doing client compression, especially
"client best" on slow hardware.  How old/slow are your Solaris boxen?

-Mitch