BackupPC-users

Re: [BackupPC-users] archive host questions

2010-03-08 11:10:21
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] archive host questions
From: Josh Malone <jmalone AT nrao DOT edu>
To: "General list for user discussion, questions and support" <backuppc-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:07:49 -0500
On Sun, 7 Mar 2010 17:42:10 -0600 (CST), Gerald Brandt <gbr AT majentis DOT com>
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been trying to automate archive (from iSCSI to USB drive) for
> offsite backups. Last Fridays ran fine (but took almost 20 hours). This
> Fridays failed at exactly 1200 minutes in, by a SIGALRM. Is there a time
> limit on archives?
> 
> The backups are only 282 GB total (written to USB drive) on a quad core
> xeon with 1.5 GB RAM. Should it be this slow? I do see a lot of CPU time
> in WAIT.
> 
> Can I get more than 1 archive running at a time? That is, I have 20
hosts
> I want to archive, can I have 4 archive processes running at once, each
> working with 5 different hosts?
> 
> Thanks,
> Gerald

I don't know about the hard time limit, but I'm writing about 56GB
(compressed) of archives to firewire drives in ~4 hours. I notice
compression is the limiting factor in my archives, but I'm willing to take
the performance hit to save space as my backups are VERY compressible.

On a quad-core CPU, you should basically be seeing 1 core maxed-out per
archive process since it will be running the compression program (gzip,
bzip, etc) with another one handling the tarcreate process. So, even if
it's possible to run more than 1 archive job at a time (I don't know if it
is) you won't really be able to run more than 2 on a quad-core box before
stalling again on CPU time.

What compression setting are you using? As I said - gzip is definitely the
bottleneck in my archives. Also, if you can get away from USB and switch to
eSATA or fireware you'll see good improvements there. USB is quite a CPU
hog too, in my experience.

-Josh

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------
       Joshua Malone       Systems Administrator
     (jmalone AT nrao DOT edu)    NRAO Charlottesville
        434-296-0263         www.cv.nrao.edu
        434-249-5699 (mobile)
BOFH excuse #426:

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