Amanda-Users

Re: Dramatic reduction in backup time

2006-08-03 10:04:09
Subject: Re: Dramatic reduction in backup time
From: Jon LaBadie <jon AT jgcomp DOT com>
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 09:56:03 -0400
On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 02:46:06AM -0700, Joe Donner (sent by Nabble.com) wrote:
> 
> That was definitely not the case.  The holding disk has been empty all this
> time, except on 31 July.  And after I ran amflush it was empty again.
> 
> What I don't understand is the increase in dump time and tape time?  They
> both more than doubled in speed!  How is that possible?
> 
> 
> Olivier Nicole wrote:
> > 
> >> I honestly haven't changed anything.  The only thing that happened was
> >> that
> >> I had to run amflush on July 31, because for some reason the
> >> amanda-related
> >> services on the backup server seemed to have hung (but that's an entirely
> >> different issue).
> > 
> > That si just a wilkd guess, but how about the amflush has freed space
> > on your holding disk that had been wasted for ages?
> > 

Holding disk issues were going to be my guess also.

When the run time (wall clock) and tape time (taper
is active) match as the first two:

Run Time (hrs:min)         9:43
Dump Time (hrs:min)        6:21
Tape Time (hrs:min)        9:23

Run Time (hrs:min)         9:43
Dump Time (hrs:min)        6:17
Tape Time (hrs:min)        9:23

it "generally" means your dumps are going straight to tape.
Contrast that with the last two where time for taping the
same amount of data is greatly lower than total run time.

Run Time (hrs:min)         4:03
Dump Time (hrs:min)        3:12
Tape Time (hrs:min)        1:17

Run Time (hrs:min)         4:27
Dump Time (hrs:min)        3:37
Tape Time (hrs:min)        1:16

However, if the dumps were going straight to tape then I
would expect the dump time (cumulative time for dumping of
each DLE - thus can be > run time if DLEs dump in parallel)
to match tape time.

So it would appear the dumps were going to the holding disk
but were severely constrained by slow tapeing.  I wonder
about the halving of dump time also.  There may still have
been a problem with the disk system.

Did anyone change any scsi cables or terminators.
Or maybe the just "jiggled" things back there doing other work?


-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)

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