You could always use an ethernet port for each server like just having a 
"cross-over" cable connectiong each other server to your media server. It's 
not easy to get it to work right, but it's basicly having a lan for backups 
to each server.

The more "right" way could be to use SSO having a FC connection from each 
server to your SAN switches going to your tape drives.
That should solve the performance problem but it comes at a price.

What Extreme switch and  (if any) SAN switches are your using?

/johnny

At 21:28 17-12-2002 -0800, Chip Paswater wrote:
>Hey folks,
>
>I'm having some bottleneck issues with my backup design.  Here's the
>scenerio:
>
>1 Sun E4000 with 8CPU 8GB and single gigabit ethernet
>ADIC Scalar 1000 Tape Library with 8 LTO drives
>LTO Drives are capable of 15MB/sec
>Sun and TL are both connected to SAN fabric via 2 connections each
>
>So the connection from the Server to the library is not the bottleneck.  I
>have 4 drives going down 1 fibre path and 4 down the other.  Considering
>1gb FC can do 100MB/sec, and an LTO drive does 15MB/sec, that means a max
>througput of 60MB/sec per FC port.
>
>However, when doing a network backup, all data has to come through the single
>ethernet port on the E4000.  Sun loocks their MTU rate of their gig ethernet
>cards at 1500, so max bandwidth comes to around 440mbits/sec.  This means a
>max theoretical throughput of around 50MB/sec, obviously not enough to push
>data to 8 LTO drives simultaneously.
>
>So how do I scale the solution to open the ethernet bottleneck?  Veritas is
>not being forthcoming with a solution, and I can't seem to find any best
>practices documents on their site with any insight.
>
>Should I consider trunking ethernet to my Extreme switches?
>
>What about running a media server but controlling the robot from the master?
>
>Has anyone had any experience with Vertias's claim that they can do "SAN
>direct" backups?  ie,Direct Server -> TL over FC without using IP over FC
>
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