We had a similiar setup and used 5 backupjobs for each volume at the same time.
For every volume of the nas server we split the work logicaly.
So batch 1 took all directories starting with a-e, bath 2 all from f to h,....
We could backup our nas device in about 12 hours with 11mio files.

Regards
Spex

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] Im 
> Auftrag von Haberstroh, Debbie (IT)
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 6. Dezember 2007 14:55
> An: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Betreff: NetApp backup takes too long
> 
> Good morning,
> 
> I could use some suggestions for improving the backup time 
> for our Network Appliance.  Below is the write up that my Sys 
> Admin submitted describing the problem.  Thanks for the help.
> 
> Situation:  We have a Network Appliance (NAS) hosting 
> approximately 8 million Windows files (CIFS).  Due to disk 
> constraints, we are not able to use snapshots and due to some 
> other customer induced limitations, we cannot use NDMP for 
> backups.  We have implemented a "proxy"/redirection server 
> that backs up the CIFS files via a unc path name to a TSM 
> 5.33 host running AIX.  Our issue is in walking through 8 
> million files per night in a backup job.  The nightly backup 
> delta is approximately 40GB.  However, just to access and 
> check 8 million files to see if they meet the backup criteria 
> is taking too much time.  The CIFS backup is split into 3 
> separate batch jobs that run simultaneously.  The longest job 
> (about 3 million files) takes almost 20 hours to run.  Would 
> NIC teaming gain us any time savings during the backup?  I 
> feel the bottleneck may be our AIX system since the Windows 
> server has to get the meta data for the CIFS file, check it 
> against the TSM database, and determine if that file needs to 
> be backed up.  That is a lot of traffic between Windows host, 
> TSM server, and Network Appliance for every single file.  
> During the backup time, the CPU is at about 70% on the 
> Windows host, and the NIC is rarely higher than 50%.
> 
> TSM Server Information:
> We are running TSM 5.3.3 on AIX 5.3.  The server is an IBM 
> 7026-6H1, 4 processors and only 2 Gb Ram.  The TSM database 
> is almost 200 Gb with 300 clients.
> 
> Windows Server Information:
> We are currently using the Windows TSM client version 5.33c 
> under Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition on an HP DL380 
> dual 2.8 GHz Xeon processor with 2.5 GB of RAM.  We have 
> three batch files running the DSMC command line utility 
> scheduled by the Windows scheduler.  We have a dual port HP 
> NC7781 NIC card.  We are using only one port connected at 1GB.
> 
> 
> Debbie Haberstroh
>