Re: [Veritas-bu] bpdbm acting wacky -- NB 6.0 MP5

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Sponsler, Michael <Michael.Sponsler AT ngc DOT com> wrote:

See...that's the thing. Symantec is not straight forward with the proper Master Server hardware recommendations. It's side stepped answers and vague responses. I guess the fact is, they don't really know what to recommend with your Netbackup domain reaches a certain size, and load.

This isn't Symantec's fault and they can't help but be vague because every site is different. And they can provide recommendations for sizing, but that's not the support tech's job - they're break/fix, not performance analysis (or master server cross-platform migration!). You may need to engage a professional consultant or Symantec's Professional Services for a detailed analysis.

The job isn't simple, and the performance and tuning guide helps but isn't the complete answer. There are way, way too many permutations on what customers do that it's impossible to spec out what you need without doing a deep dive into your requirements and you've tried to meet those requirements.

What Symantec *can* help with is whether what you're seeing is expected behavior or not. Beyond that, it's up to you or the people you hire to fix the problem.

We didn't have the same issues under Netbackup 6.0 MP4. But at the same time, we've ran Netbackup 6.0 MP5 for some time before we actually saw serious system performance issues.

So this suggests that 6.0MP5 is not the cause. Something else changed, and Symantec can't tell what that was. You might know, but probably not. Many times it's what is happening on the clients that hurt you and of course the user community never admits to anything.

A lot of processes by itself isn't a problem. It's what they're doing that's the problem... Many of those could be idle.

.../Ed

From: Ed Wilts [mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org]
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 12:43 PM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: Tharp, Trey; Sponsler, Michael; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu

Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] bpdbm acting wacky -- NB 6.0 MP5

On 4/29/08, Jeff Lightner <jlightner AT water DOT com> wrote:

Uh oh - you've dared to say something negative about Aptare - that
simply is NOT done in this forum.  :-)

It certainly is. If there's something we don't like about them, we should be open to discussing it here (or on their own forums, although this is more independent).

Let's just say they're not on my favorite vendor list with their 6.5 upgrade... And yeah, I know they're listening/reading but I'm not telling them anything they don't already know.

As for StorageConsole creating load on the master, of course that's going to be true. You can't do the work any other way.

Getting back to the original poster, a v440 with 16GB of RAM managing 60 media/SAN media servers sounds like it's way underpowered to me. I believe this server was released over 5 years ago... You'd probably be able to roll in a T2000 with way more power and pay for it on the first year maintenance costs alone.

   .../Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu

[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Tharp,
Trey
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 11:49 PM
To: Sponsler, Michael; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] bpdbm acting wacky -- NB 6.0 MP5

The bpdbm parent process spawns a child for just about everything it
does. So, if you have script or reporting tools that are running
bpimagelist, bpmedialist, bpmedia, bpexpdate, etc. it will create child
bpdbm processes for all of those.

Aptare is infamous for creating lots of these and driving load up on a
master server.

-Trey

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of
Sponsler, Michael
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 9:05 AM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] bpdbm acting wacky -- NB 6.0 MP5

Solaris 10, Netbackup 6.0 MP5 Master server.

My bpdbm process is acting wacky (I think...I've never noticed this
behavior before).  I've actually got 14 bpdbm processes running, but
also 38 active jobs currently.  The logs for my in netbackup/logs/bpdbm
are very large...around 2 gigs per day's log file.  I'm seeing such
inforation in there as:

image_by_file: processing file
/usr/openv/netbackup/db/images/<hostname>/1157000000/<hostname>-Oracle-B
ackup_1157475027_UBAK
expdate: no match for
/usr/openv/netbackup/db/images/<hostname>/12030000000/<hoststname>-Oracl
e-Backup_1203468053_INCR

by bp.conf file has:
VERBOSE = 1
ENABLE_ROBUST_LOGGING = NO

But the thing is, I've noticed some information in my bpdbm logs talking
about Informix backups that we haven't done in almost 2 years since
we've moved to Oracle.  The backups are long since expired...so why is
Netbackup processing those files?

On my master server, I'm running Solaris 10 on a v440 w/ 16 gigs of RAM,
4 CPU's running @ 1593 Mhz.  I do have a large netbackup domain...60
Media & SAN Media servers, ~30 clients...but my Master server sees
constant 100% cpu utilization.  The Server slows down, and locks up.
Could this be related to bpdbm checking all the files in the catalog,
and spawning so many bpdbm processes?

--
Mike Sponsler
Michael.Sponsler AT ngc DOT com

--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org

If I've helped you, please make a donation to my favorite charity at http://firstgiving.com/edwilts

--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org

If I've helped you, please make a donation to my favorite charity at http://firstgiving.com/edwilts

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