Rob,
Is there a timeframe of when the Flashbackup option will be available of
NT/Win2k?
Kevin
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Worman [mailto:rob AT worman DOT org]
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 8:48 AM
To: JV; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Backup Millions of small files with Solaris
client & server
JV-
You are talking about the classic "lots of small files" scenario.
4M files in a single directory, ouch!
The best and single answer to your problem is "back up the raw
partition, thereby avoiding the OS inode overhead".
While it's possible to do raw partition backups using vanilla
NetBackup, this choice has several big caveats:
-backup size is always the size of the partition, even if it's empty
-can only restore the WHOLE partition, not an individual file or dir.
-can only do full backups
-the filesystem should be quiescent, if not unmounted
But you could at least get a feel for the performance improvements
you'd see when backing up raw - a substantial one, I'd bet - by
making a test class and seeing how long it takes to back up your data
as /devices/pci@blahblahblah. The NBU SysAdmin guide has more info
on this, look up "raw partition backups" in the index.
The answer most people in your situation have chosen is the NetBackup
FlashBackup option. It's purpose is to provide the speed of raw
partition backups but without all of the caveats listed above. I
recommend you check it out, it can make the difference between a
24-hour full and a 4-hour full. :-)
HTH
rob
At 9:15 PM -0700 4/22/03, JV wrote:
>Dear Veritas Netbackup pros:
>
>I have a gigabit ethernet client with special backup needs, I'm
>asking if you can give any pointers if you've been down this road:
>
>Netbackup client: Sun e250, Solaris 2.6 with a single gigabit
>ethernet adapter on a private switched storage network running
>SUNWged 2.0 driver, 2x400 Mhz cpus, 2 GB RAM. Storage is two A1000
>arrays, they have a hardware RAID 5 controller with ufs filesystems,
>ten mount points of 35 GB each, with 4 million files each (total
>storage 350 GB, 40 million files, on 20 x 18 GB SCSI disks, 2
>controllers on the A1000s). No client-side compression, HW
>compression on the LTO drives. I can only do FULL backups once per
>week and sneak in an incremental M-F at offpeak times. Netbackup
>master is E450 running Solaris 8, Netbackup 4.5_M3, on 5 LTO tape
>drives on Brocade 1Gbps switch.
>
>As you can imagine, the tape drives are starving for data with a
>pathetic throughput rate. I have set the policy to 2 active jobs per
>policy, two storage units (LTO tape drives). The problem is READING
>the A1000 arrays, the Solaris host mildly pages (2000 pg/sec) when
>running this backup according to vmstat.
>
>Playing games with the filecard mask in an include list [ie
>/data01/*] doesn't look hopeful, there aren't any subdirectories -
>all 4M files are 1 level deep in the mount point [ie
>/vault01/file_aaaaaaaaaaaaa*]. An "ls -l a*" won't return in a reason
>span of time.
>
>
>What can I do to the configuration of Netbackup to improve the
>throughput?!?!
>I have seen several threads in the archives here that reference Win2K
>setups, what are the unix ppl out there doing?
>
>Thanks
>JV
>
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