[Networker] backup of zfs file system poor performance
2009-04-06 11:44:57
Hi gang,
I've got a backup performance problem on our mail server caused by the
way zfs uses memory.
Backup server is Networker V7.4.4 and Solaris 10 (no zfs yet) and the
mail server is running Networker client SW v7.4.2 and Solaris 10 using a
zfs pool on iSCIS luns for the mail store that is cut into 6 partitions.
Each file partition is around 150GB and growing. The mail server is
running sendmail and cyrus. One of these mail partitions is taking all
day and some over 26 hours to backup full. A similarly sized ufs file
system takes a couple of hours to backup up.
We've identified the culprit at the zfs ARC memory cache on the mail
server. Every read (and in the case of backups the whole file system)
gets read into this ARC cache. This is slowing down the backups as well
as causing a performance hit on our mail server with some portion of the
mail backups running during the day now. We've added more memory to the
mail server to combat this problem but it's still not enough to
compensate for the backup hit.
For the record, I did not choose to use a zfs file system on the mail
server, but I do have to back it up in such a way as I can do individual
file restores.
Is anyone else seeing this problem? Are there any other options for
backing up a zfs file system using Networker other than backing it up
direct via the client? This mail store does have a few zfs snapshots as
well but they reside on the same file system so backing those up instead
of the working file system will not give me any performance increases.
Thanks
Paula
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Paula Ehn VE4MHZ/VE4HZ Room E3-628 EITC |
| Unix System Administrator pehn AT cc.umanitoba DOT ca |
| Academic Computing and Networking (204)474-7849 |
| University of Manitoba Fax: (204) 474-8534 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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 with 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
|
<Prev in Thread] |
Current Thread |
[Next in Thread>
|
- [Networker] backup of zfs file system poor performance,
Paula Ehn <=
|
|
|