Thanks for the suggestions.

The box in question is not the Amanda server, but one of its clients.

Unfortunately, no, 'tar' is not an option, but the suggestion about a dump
wrapper seems to fit our situation.  I will try the suggestion and see what
results from it.  

Thanks,

Donald L. (Don) Ritchey
Information Technology


-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Baker-LePain [mailto:jlb17 AT duke DOT edu]
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 8:24 AM
To: donald.ritchey AT exeloncorp DOT com
Cc: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Re: Amanda Processes using too much of the system CPU, how to
throttl e back


On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 at 8:09am, donald.ritchey AT exeloncorp DOT com wrote

> Hopefully this won't be too hard to resolve, but we are having some
problems
> with resource conflicts between Amanda and the software package that is
the
> reason we are running the server.  (Guess who looses in the management
> tug-of-war on this one.)
> 
> Several times during the Amanda backup of one of our servers, the CPU
> utilization goes up to 100 percent and the system becomes very
unresponsive.
> The finger has been pointed at Amanda since the high runner processes at
> this point are vdump and gzip (the systems are Tru64 UNIX clusters, thus
> vdump).  I have changed the backup type from client-compress to
> server-compress, but that does not completely resolve the problem, we
still
> see the slowdowns.

So I take it that this box isn't the amanda server?  And, after moving to 
server-compress, you're still seeing high usage from vdump *and* gzip?

> How do I throttle back the Amanda processes without killing my backups
> entirely?  

Well, I have no experience with Tru64, but I don't think that simply 
reading data off disk (and compressing a string of text, which is 
what that gzip is doing -- compressing the index) should peg the CPU.  
Can you replicate that problem without amanda (running vdump by hand, 
e.g.).  Are there parameters you can tweak to make the disks more 
efficient?

> Do I have to go into the source and start hacking on Amanda to add a new
> "feature"?

One thing you could try would be to make the vdump amanda calls a script 
that "nice"s the actual vdump process.  Is tar an option?  That may be 
more efficient perhaps?

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University


************************************************************************
This e-mail and any of its attachments may contain Exelon Corporation
proprietary information, which is privileged, confidential, or subject 
to copyright belonging to the Exelon Corporation family of Companies. 
This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity 
to which it is addressed.  If you are not the intended recipient of this 
e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, 
copying, or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments 
to this e-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.  If you have 
received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and 
permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any 
printout. Thank You.
************************************************************************