Re: [Networker] sizing a Sun server for a 4xLTO3 tape library

John,

Did you check this thread in the archives?  Oscar I think is running
Networker on a linux box...intel based?   The HP/Comaq servers in
particular always have fast PCIX buses and built-in gigabit ?


Robert Maiello
Pioneer Data Systems


On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:34:07 -0800, Ballinger, John M 
<john.ballinger AT PNL DOT GOV> wrote:

>Anyone have this same data for a Windows server ?
>
>JOhn
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Legato NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU]
>On Behalf Of Robert Maiello
>Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 6:43 AM
>To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
>Subject: Re: [Networker] sizing a Sun server for a 4xLTO3 tape library
>
>That is well summed up Vernon, the key concept being 2 LTO3 drives (and
>even 2 LTO2 drives) can "eat" a gigabit NIC all on there own.
>
>That said, I'd like to add that looking at PCI buses for the HBAs and/or
>NICs I'm always hard pressed to pick a particular SUN server up to the
>task.  Perhaps others can reccommend one?  The ideal server being one
>where every card is connected to a seperate high speed PCI bus.
>
>Also, it has been seen that Solaris 9 or Solaris 10 is needed to get the
>throughput out of mulitple NICS.
>
>Robert Maiello
>Pioneer Data Systems
>
>
>
>On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:34:25 -0800, Vernon Harris <harriv00 AT YAHOO DOT COM>
>wrote:
>
>>Ty,
>>Rule of thumb for sizing a sun server to drive 4 x
>>LTO3 drives would be as follows:
>>
>>   For each LTO-3 drive you would need a minimum of approximately
>>1.25GHZ of processing power.  That would include the processing power
>>necessary to handle 1 gigabit ethernet nic card.  But to adequately
>>drive the 4 LTO-3 drives if you backup methodology is lan based
>>backups, you should consider adding a second nic card and trunking the
>>2 nic cards together to create a fat network pipe.  Otherwise max
>>throughput would be limited to approximately 80-90MB/sec, which is the
>>practical thruput limit of gigabit ethernet. If you add a second nic,
>>you will need 1.5GHZ of processor power per drive.
>>
>>Practically, most servers can never generate enough i/o to keep LTO-3
>>drives spooling without shoeshining the drives.  The installations that
>
>>I've seen with
>>LTO-3 drives configured attached to solaris servers have not
>>expererienced performance issues on the servers.
>>
>>One important problem that I've seen repeatedly on Sun Servers attached
>
>>to the fabric is with Sun Branded qlogic hba's using the leadville
>>driver stack.  This is manifested with link offline errors in the
>>/var/adm/messages file which causes the hba to go offline and the
>>connected drives and libraries to disappear from the fabric.  This
>>condition can only be resolved by rebooting the server.  Stick with
>>native emulex or qlogic cards.  Otherwise you are asking for major
>>problems.
>>
>>--- Ty Young <Phillip_Young AT I2 DOT COM> wrote:
>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> I apologize in advance if this topic has been covered.  I looked
>>> through the archive using a variety of search terms without
>>> successful results.
>>>
>>> We have determined that a 4 x LTO3 tape library will work well in our
>>> environment.    Our Sun SEs, however, claim that
>>> attempting to drive such a
>>> library with one host (i.e. where all four LTO3 drives are
>>> fiber-connected through a switch into the server) is asking for
>>> trouble and that we really must consider driving it with two, in
>>> order to split up the gigE network bandwidth requirements as well as
>>> the FC HBA bandwidth requirements.
>>> Their argument seems to be based on the theoretical maximum sustained
>
>>> I/O that a Sun server backplane can handle, at 1.2 GB/sec.
>>>
>>> What I'm not understanding is how one calculates I/O across a server.
>>> Given that a server takes network traffic (input) and routes it to
>>> the tape drives (output), is it accurate to basically double the
>>> aggregate write-rate of a bunch of tape drives (read and
>>> write) and then double that
>>> number again to factor in performance with drive compression ?
>>>
>>> My head is so full of numbers and stats at the moment that I cannot
>>> think
>>> straight and I need some help.   Thanks!
>>>
>>> -ty
>>>
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