Comments in line below...

> On Behalf Of Dewhirst, Rob
> 
> > Set parrellism up to 6 Viola you have a streamin' screamin' backup!
> 
> I thought this was saveset parallelism, and this was based on 
> volumesm which for me is one.  How do I get more parallel 
> streams? This to me seems like a good short term fix until I 
> can get a better architecture in place.

Our friends at EMC/Tech Support have told me ONE disk many directories
and Parellelism works. That is what they have had me do and it cut my
backup time literally in 1/2. I also have a focused backup time just for
those file systems.

> > How many CPUs if one or two consider upgrade to 4 cpus.
> 
> This system itself is admittedly pokey -- it's a 1.2 ghz dual PIII.
> However, I have systems of lesser capability with more 
> additional load backing up
> 
> I can quite easily replace the server with a much faster one 
> and upgrade the OS, but I am afraid I will run into the same 
> issue since I don't actually see this server as overloaded.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but are you measuring the load during
backup? If you are using compression and backing up the processors
should be showing a lot of use. If you are not using compression than I
guess you wont see any use at all as it is an I/O pass thru.

> I have the options of DLTIV or SDLT.  Currently using DLTIV 
> with the other six clients on that server and they don't have 
> this performance problem.

The question I didn't ask you, Network Setup? Is your data being pushed
through a separate GB Network between server and storage server?

> > Is the file directory structure static or dynamic?
> 
> It does grow much, but I've never had the patience to audit 
> the system changes since there are so many files.  I don't 
> think it's changing much.

I have read other replies, I like what they suggested. The setup
principal static directories and then use a second client listing to
backup all files and exclude the directories you have listed in the
first client listing. Rather ingeniously really, I had not thought of
that. It covers you, your customers and once a quarter you could update
the static vs dynamic file directory clients.

> > Does your support agreement allow you to upgrade to at least 7.2?
> 
> Yes, I can upgrade to the current release if I wanted.  I was 
> waiting to skip on up to 7.3.1 when it was made available.

This is probably a good call, depends on how willing you are to wait for
7.3.1 to be proven and how badly you need to make an improvement in how
things are done.

> > Can you afford the Disk2Disk backup option?
> 
> Probably, but I could roll my own disk based backup much cheaper.

I like the way you think!

> > With millions of file, compression is an issue. Compression 
> means CPU 
> > power, not so speed of cpu as much as number of CPUs. That and 
> > Memory...
> 
> From watching the performance stats during backup, it does 
> not appear that the CPU under much load at all.

Maybe you should tweak how much of the CPU is dedicated to backup
operations. CAUTION when doing this touch base with EMC Tech Support
those guys (and a few gals) are really good at what they are doing.

> > 200GB is a non-issue to me as even the lowly LTO2 tape drives can 
> > handle those in native format.
> 
> > To help with that you could manually set the directories 
> being backed 
> > up, but you would have to tell your staff if they create new 
> > directories they should notify you.
> 
> I unfortunately have to rule out any option that requires the 
> users of the data to do anything.  

Yep, I understand I have the same situation here, how dare we expect an
educated user. We are to be one of those invisible services <grin> De
Oppresso Liber! /ALE

To sign off this list, send email to listserv AT listserv.temple DOT edu and 
type "signoff networker" in the
body of the email. Please write to networker-request AT listserv.temple DOT edu 
if you have any problems
wit this list. You can access the archives at 
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/networker.html or
via RSS at http://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NETWORKER