Archive Performance is kind of an itch to me that I am always trying to
scratch.

Speaking to Legato last week we discussed a strategy where I would list
various specific directory trees to backup. Then you turn up Parallelism
allowing more data streams and voila this results in multiple data
streams per drive.

Of course weighing in Backup data drive bandwidth ability, controller
bandwidth, LAN bandwidth and then the bandwidth ability of your
NetWorker components as well.

(Does anyone else feel like they are tweaking VWs to race in the sand?)

The parallelism setup for the server (default 4 in NW7.1?) means that if
you don't have 5 data streams coming in, Networker is only going to use
ONE drive and leave the other drive for tape operations.

If you lower your parallelism to 2 you should see the second drive join
in when the third data stream is identified. I hope this helps.

Semper Fidelis, /ALE

Eddie Albert, Network Serf
Air Force Real Property Agency
Executive Services/Computer Systems
Desk (703) 696 - 5509 - Hip (703) 517-3855
Eddie.Albert AT afrpa.Pentagon.af DOT mil

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Legato NetWorker discussion 
> [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On Behalf Of William M. Fennell
> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 4:41 PM
> To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
> Subject: [Networker] Best usage of tape drives
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I have a Server with three tape drives hooked up to it.
> I have a dedicated storage node with two tape drives hooked up to it.
> All drives are in a qualstar TLS-4000 and the tape drives are 
> Sony 700CDX AIT-3.
> We're running Solaris 8 on the Networker server and 9 on the 
> storage node.
> We're at Networker 7.1.
> 
> My storage node can of course only write local data to tape. 
> My issue is that it only uses one drive! So it is trying to 
> write 200+GB nightly from three file systems on this host to one tape.
> How can I make it use both tape drives? 
> Currently it is taking about 8 hours to backup about 200GB 
> nightly to one drive.
> I would like to improve on that performance.
> 
> My two ideas are:
> 1: reduce the number of target streams on each drive to two 
> and then have one drive take two streams and the other take 
> one stream. 
> 2: Maybe the drives need to be shared with each other?
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
>  Bill
> 
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