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we are running adsm 2.1.06 on an ibm pc server320, which is only a 90mhz pentium
and we have only 32m of ram we are running nt 4.0 on the server.
hanging off this we have a 3570-b02 (dual-drive) tape unit. the system started
off
as a pilot but has been so successful that we are currently specing out adsm to
cover all our servers and systems.
currently we have 11 nodes being backed up to this system. we push about 1,614m
bytes of data onto tape each night. we backup os/2,nt,win95, dec alpha (nt),
notes
and sql 6.5. we find the performance and reliability to be excellent and (touch
wood) have had no probs with it so far.
shutting down and restarting the system is a lot easier than doing it on mvs
(which
is akin to a scram on a nuclear reactor!). nt skills are more readily available.
machine builds, rebuilds, upgrades etc are easier also.
as we expand our adsm system we will most probably remain with nt, but may get
the
larger tape units ('cos the current system is only doing about 5 - 8% of our
servers).
we commence our backups at 17:30 (for the smaller less important nodes) and
schedule a new start every half hour after that. we can fit all this
i have found that sheer cpu speed is not all that important. what is important
is
fast large disks, fast network and lots of ram.
we run raid-5 fast-wide scsi-2 disk array of 12gig capacity. i'd like more, but
for 11 nodes it is adequate. make sure you have a large database, cos 7million
files may fill it up heaps. we find the notes clients have lots of little files
and
that fills up our database - we run a 1gig dbase and it is about 77% full.
i will be upgrading the system to 64m of ram, but i have found the ram to be
more
useful when you are on the nt adsm server and trying to do things. too little
ram
will slow you down, but i am not sure it will make a huge difference during the
backup cycles. i make sure i do not play around with the machine once it
commences
its backup cycle.
network speed is paramount. we are sucking the life out of our 16m token ring
system at the moment, and, for data storage purposes we are putting in a 155mbps
atm network. each client will have token ring and atm cards. the token ring is
adequate for business use and the atm is for backups.
i will move to version 3 adsm when i upgrade, but i will most probably stay
with nt
a large, fast uni-processor intel box with huge fast disks, more memory than a
herd of elephants, with a fat and fast atm pipe into our system.
but, this is only my thoughts and experiences - no doubt there are others out
there
who have different ideas and tales.
regards
shane
--
There are only two ways of doing anything....
There are only two ways of doing anything....
the IBM way and the wrong way.
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