I believe the problem is *before* the dump even begins.  I have seen
this problem on volumes that have a tremendous number of small files or
are terribly fragmented.  But I've never seen the problem it just start
out of the blue, it's usually a gradual process that gets worse with
time.

~JK

John D Stephens wrote:
> 
> Moshe -
> I have seen huge delays between volumes as well.  What is going
> on is this.  After NBU starts the NDMP backup, it steps out
> of the way and idle until the filer signals NBU that the dump
> has completed.  Then the filer sends all the meta data to NBU
> and NBU then catalogs that data.  Depending on the size of your
> backup and the amount of files, it takes a little while for NBU
> to chug through the catalogs.  Hopefully, 4.5 is faster at this.
> Check your iostat -x and look for the activity on your catalogs
> after the filer finishes sending the NDMP job, but NBU still
> shows it to be active.  The only way around this is to use
> multiple streams.  Be carefull, multiple streaming does use the
> filer's CPU more than normal.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> John
> 
> Moshe Linzer wrote:
> >
> > Lately we have started seeing delays between volumes when backing up our
> > Netapp filer.  I have a single AIT-2 tape attached to my F760, and I run
> > a full backup of the filer, which contains 3 volumes.  The performance
> > on the first volume is as expected, but then there is a delay of
> > sometimes up to 12 hours before the second volume begins to be backed
> > up!  The same thing happens before the third volume.  volume sizes are
> > between 375-480GB.  I think this began after we applied some patches
> > lately, but the patch descriptions don't seem to have any bearing on
> > this problem.  Had anyone seen this type of behaviour?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Moshe
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> > http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
> 
> --
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>  + John D Stephens    ITS Design Systems   +
> + Texas Instruments  12500 TI BLVD, Dallas  +
>  + jstephens AT ti DOT com     214-480-6229       +
>   +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
> _______________________________________________
> Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
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-- 
=====================
Jeff Kennedy
Unix Administrator
AMCC
jlkennedy AT amcc DOT com