Thanks for all the suggestions.

I'm pretty much convinced it's 'number of files' that has the huge effect.
We're trialling a Data Domain de-dup device at the moment (so backing up to 
disk) and to tell you the truth, for this particualr Netware volume it's no 
faster which again tends to confirm my suspicions.  We get good throughput 
while all the other clients (mix of Linux, Netware, Solaris and Windows)  are 
in the mix streaming data to it, but we always end up with this one lonely 
server chugging along when all the rest have finished.  Certtainly CPU umph 
isn't a problem - plenty of CPU left on the client when the backups in progress.

I'm sure I saw a thread some time ago re 'number of files' and some sort of 
plateau after which performance plummets, but can't seem to find it.
As a file server it fair zips along with no issues.

I was thinking of splitting the volume in two to try and get around 600,000 
filers in each to see if that improved things.  A project for a rainy weekend 
perhaps.

Thanks... Allan.

>>> ajs AT STOLAF DOT EDU 04/12/07 16:56 >>>
Somewhat better here, though we've never been impressed with the speed 
of the NetWare client. Our biggest volume (~770GB, 1.2 million files) 
backs up to disk in about 13 hours (1GB/min, 16.67MB/s).

This is pretty much what we get from all of our NetWare volumes. The 
only exception is the volume that hosts our workstation images (maybe a 
dozen 2GB files). Here we see ~25MB/s.

We used to tweak the TCP/IP stack a tad (to increase buffers, receive 
windows, etc.) but recent kernels do a good job of autotuning and this 
is generally frowned upon.

No magic bullet here, unfortunately...

ajs

Allan Nelson wrote:
> Hi 
> I'd be interested in the asnwer to this too.
> We basically have the same issue - a 380GB volume which takes about 15-16 
> hours to backup.
> My hunch is that it's the number of files (1.2 million) or the poor Netware 
> client (7.2).
> 
> I've also setup load balancing on 2 GBe NICs but it doesn't really help.  The 
> bottleneck seems to be trawling through the file system.
> 
> Be interesting if anyone is getting much better throughput than this on 
> Netware with similar sized volumes/number of files.
> 
> Cheeers... allan.
> 
>>>> LPamintuan AT REGINA DOT CA 04/12/07 15:11 >>>
> Fellow admins,
>  
> Just need to find out if there is something like 'bigasm' on Windows and Unix 
> servers which I use on my NetWare clients to test backup throughput. Somehow 
> to backup 500 GB of data, it is taking almost 24 hours to complete. This 
> NetWare server is a Dell PE 2850 with quad processor and 8 GB of RAM and 
> connected to a GB network.
>  
> My environment is:
> Networker server v7.3.3 on Red Hat Linux ES 4 backing up to disk devices.
> NetWare client/server v7.2 on NetWare v6.5 support pack 6.
>  
> Any help or advise is greatly appreciated.
>  
> regards,
>  
>  
> Librado Pamintuan
> Technical Support Analyst II
> I.T.S
> City of Regina
> 
> Phone:          (306) 777-7573
> General Fax: (306) 777-6804
> eFax:             (306) 546-6002
> eMail:            lpamintuan AT regina DOT ca 
> 
> 
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-- 
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