Tino Schwarze <backuppc.lists AT tisc DOT de> wrote on 11/26/2008 01:24:47 PM:

> > > Have you looked at the wait column (last one) in vmstat?
> > 
> > As in iowait?  Usually the CPU is "100%" used, but much of it is 
iowait 
> > (~40-60%, IIRC).  Of course, you *expect* that:  I'm I/O bound, after 
all, 
> > with only a single IDE hard drive...  Also, I'm not using compression, 

> > which is also why I'm not worried about CPU.
> 
> In my version of vmstat, iowait is not accounted to CPU usage (SuSE
> 10.2).

You are right:  I think it's the same on mine (CentOS 5.2).  I'm thinking 
of top, where the total CPU is shown as 100%.

But the point holds:  I have lots of unused CPU, even with an *anemic* 
EPIA @ 1.2GHz.


I'm still not sure why people say they need multi-GB of RAM and multi-GHz 
CPU's for their BackupPC servers.  I *just* don't see why:  I've got a 
pool >600GB on a *tiny* box (without compression, anyway).  Maybe if 
you've got >1TB of pool data or multi-millions of files you *might* need a 
little more RAM (and I don't think that is the case), but I *still* don't 
see why you'd need more than 1GB of RAM, and still no more CPU power. 
Again, you need a many-drive RAID array *way* more than you do need CPU or 
RAM.
 
Maybe I'm the only person who's running BackupPC on a box this small.  But 
I've got about a *dozen* of these boxes scattered around various clients, 
backing up between 10 and 600GB of data.  They *all* run flawlessly.

Oh, and a *BIG* thank you to Craig for this.  BackupPC lets me sleep 
better at night.

Tim Massey


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