In regard to: [Networker] all sessions slow at some time during backup,...:

This is actually 7.5 SP2.

So aside from "it's buggy anyway" is there something I can do?

I'm entering this thread a little late, but I think I've read most of
the relevant background information.

One question that I didn't see answered anywhere in the earlier posts:

- have you applied *any* of the OS or NetWorker tuning suggestions that
  EMC provides?

In particular, there's an EMC document called "Technical Guidance for
Upgrades to EMC NetWorker 7.<your version here>" that has a number of
useful OS tuning suggestions.  Things like increasing (by a lot)
net.core.rmem_max and net.core.wmem_max, tuning the TCP max SYN backlog,
etc.

Second, there's a tuning tech note specific to nsrjobsd.  I haven't seen
enough info to be convinced the problem you're seeing is related to
nsrjobsd, though I respect Rachel's expertise and opinion on it.  nsrjobsd
unfortunately got off to a rough start, so it has a bad reputation with
a lot of NetWorker admins.  I tuned it using the info in esg93654 when we
first went to NetWorker 7.4.x years ago, and we've never had any problems
(that I'm aware of) with it up through the 7.6.x that we're running now.

Also, in addition to the technical guidance doc I mentioned, which
has specific OS tuning suggestions, EMC also has a performance tuning
guide for NetWorker that talks about using bigasm and uasm to diagnose
I/O bottlenecks.  Take a look at that and see if it provides any insight
into where the issue is.

Two other things I noted from the thread:  Rainer makes a good point about
the "client parallelism" setting for your server.  This is something
that changed at either 7.4.x or 7.5.x: the server actually obeys the
client parallelism setting with respect to index: savesets.  In the old
days it didn't, but with that now being enforced, EMC has a tech note
recommending that you set the client parallelism for just the server to
be something much larger than the default (which is likely 4).

Finally, EMC will browbeat you for running the NMC on the same system as
your NetWorker server.  They have long recommended that the NMC reside on
a different system.  I don't that that's related to the issues you're
experiencing, but don't be surprised if you call support and they hassle
you about having NMC on your server.

I'll be very interested to follow your progress and the ultimate
resolution to the issue!

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT 
edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure                  701-231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                             701-231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164