Networker

[Networker] NW 7.2.x on Solaris 10, Various Sun Servers experiences

2007-04-05 00:48:18
Subject: [Networker] NW 7.2.x on Solaris 10, Various Sun Servers experiences
From: Jim Ruskowsky <jimr AT JEFFERIES DOT COM>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 15:17:51 -0400
We've had 7.2.1 and 7.2.2 running on Solaris 10 for nearly a year now at 
two sites.  I do recommend that you download
the 11/06 maintenance update of Solaris 10, and get the kernel up to rev 
36 due to some race condition (which we never 
saw ourselves).  With the new fast tape drives (we use LTO3), system I/O 
becomes a very important thing to consider.
Seems that several people are asking similar questions regarding Sun 
hardware, so I'll offer some insight based
on what we've gone through this past year. 

We started with Sun T2000 (all fibre switch attached - server, storage 
node, nas/ndmp, tape drives).  Most backups
were though ethernet - so we got one of those fancy new 10Gig cards.  If 
you use that card, do NOT use the ixge driver,
make sure you use the ixgb driver.  I could not get the sun patch for ixgb 
to go in via patchadd, so I copied the files 
directly from the patch tree into their respective locations (was only 3 
or 4 files).

We also have experimented with V445 to see what the difference in 
throughput was.  The most we could push through
the V445 (2cpu) was about 500Mbits/sec (about 50% of a gigE).  With the 
T2000 (8cpu), we are getting maximum of about 2500Mbits/sec
(about 25% of the 10GigE).

The limitation for both seems to be the network I/O.  (Lemme add a little 
plug for the tool "iperf" for measuring network performance).
Max performance using iperf on V445 was 500Mbits/sec using loopback 
interface
Max performance using iperf on T2000 (old Solaris release) was about 
2000Mbits/sec, with occasional RPC getting dropped to windows clients
Max performance using iperf on T2000 (11/06 release) was about 
2500Mbits/sec, (no more RPC disconnects)

(BTW - V490 testing showed about 8000Mbits/sec using loopback - I've love 
to try one with an actual 10G card and run as a storage node).

Also, anybody considering using a 10Gig card - I would recommend 
exploration of non-Sun cards (we haven't gotton around
to it yet, but I wanna try the Chelsio N310E  - curious if anybody else 
has tried this card).

 

EMC NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU> wrote on 
04/04/2007 02:33:06 PM:

> Jeff Mery writes:
>  > We're running Solaris 9 on V480 (storage node), V440 (server & 
storage 
>  > node), and V445 (storage node) with v7.14 of Networker and they scoot 

>  > along pretty good.  We're really looking forward to Solaris 10 
though. The 
>  > networking stack was completely rewritten and should be *much* 
better. 
>  > Unfortunately, the Solaris 10 upgrade requires Networker 7.3.x which 
we're 
>  > not quite ready for just yet.
> 
> we're starting to work to an upgrade of our ancient networker server.
> i had planned on going to 7.2.x on a 490 with solaris 10. does the
> 7.2.x stream not work on solaris 10?





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