Networker

Re: [Networker] "snapshot" facility on Netware clients? & Slow backups on Netware

2003-01-15 01:56:19
Subject: Re: [Networker] "snapshot" facility on Netware clients? & Slow backups on Netware
From: Riaan van Niekerk <riaanvn AT PUKNET.PUK.AC DOT ZA>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 08:56:05 +0200
[long message]

>>>charles.heynig AT WMICH DOT EDU>>>

>Snapshot is the most worst product I have ever encountered.  Use OFM
>instead.

Riaan van Niekerk
Unix-stelseladministrateur
B.Juris, B.A., RHCE, IBM Certified AIX Sysadmin
ITB Netwerke en Infrastruktuur
Potchefstroomse Universiteit
Tel : (018) 299 2147
Fax: (018) 293 5299

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>>> anuj AT ACE-DATA DOT COM 12-Jan-03 7:03:27 AM >>>

>My backups run fast on all other clients but the backups of Netware
>clients are very slow. I am using a Gigabit Network. Can some one
>suggest me anything for faster backups on Netware?

we have been able to get SnapShot reliable in our environment. To be
honest, it was a real life saver when we had big issues backing up our
central GroupWise server:

Background

the GroupWise volume was a traditinal volume of 200 GB containing 1.2
million files.
(most CNE's would probably tell you running such a big volume on
traditional FS rather than NSS is asking for trouble, but we got burned
by OFM and open files on NSS abouth 3 years ago, which meant sticking
with traditinal FS until NSS-compatible backup technologies matured.)
Software: GroupWise 6.x NW5.1 SP4, NetWorker 4.21, OFM 7
Hardware: Dual P3 800 (Compaq ML530), 2 GB RAM, RAID controller with
64MB cache and 10 36GB HDDs, single Intel e100 NIC in 100MB switched
env.

During middle of last year, we started experiencing major stability and
integrity issues of GroupWise on this server, getting lots of 820e (file
lock errors) on a number of mail boxes, especially a central shared
mailbox being used as a BBS. Backups also started taking longer and
longer, and fulls often failed.
Backup stats

with OFM - 32 hours (the client was the first to start and finished 14
hours behind the second-last client in the savegroup, if it finished at
all, server parallelism of 8)
without OFM - 24 hours (GroupWise unloaded, and without any other
clients running in parallel

The NetWare guys upgraded NetWare to SP5, GroupWise to the latest SP
available (even tried SP3 beta), added the highest-end RAID adapter
(SA5302 with 256MB cache) available.
I upgraded to OFM 8.0, 8.1, reinstalled NetWorker, all without any
improvement.

Then, as a last ditch attempt, I replaced OFM for SnapShot (4.12), with
an immediate improvement in throughput: Backup times improved to 27
hours

We then changed the volume from traditional file system to NSS, which
improved the throughput to 20 hours. (the only reason it isn't higher is
because 48 other clients contend for the same tape drive, but this
client is the first to start and last to finish)

Moral of the story (and a general Novell rule of thumb): use NSS for
volumes larger than 100 GB. Your config might be running fine one day
and cross some traditional FS limitation the next even though you have
been running a sub-optimal config for a long time.

greetings

PS: there are some caveats, e.g. having to use a traditional volume as
the SNAPSHOT volume (which prevents you from going "NSS only" on your
clients, but supposedly is slated to be fixed in a forthcoming version).
However, the SnapShot documentation is very comprehensive and helpful in
resolving most issues.

PS2: Having migrated our NetWare and Windows environment from BackupExec
to NetWorker 18 months ago, our NetWare sysadmins rave about the
stability and capabilities of NetWorker on their platform, which is not
too bad if you take into account that NetWare is much less of a priority
for Legato than for Veritas (w.r.t stability, I have to take their word
for it, since it is still not near what I am used to on Unix and even
Windows. I still think NetWorker for NetWare is due for an overhaul,
especially recovery selection. I'd love to believe the rumours ...)

PS3: I just received an updated version of SnapShot (version 4.13b,
build 2717, date 8 January 2003) to try and resolve an issue with NW5.1
SP5. Contact your support channel if you still have problems with
SnapShot)

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