BackupPC-users

Re: [BackupPC-users] Really slow with rsync, even on incrementals

2011-02-23 15:03:35
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Really slow with rsync, even on incrementals
From: Timothy J Massey <tmassey AT obscorp DOT com>
To: "General list for user discussion, questions and support" <backuppc-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:01:07 -0500
John Goerzen <jgoerzen AT complete DOT org> wrote on 02/23/2011 11:39:57 AM:

> Michael Stowe <mstowe <at> chicago.us.mensa.org> writes:
>
> > Another way to put this is that you'd like BackupPC to overcome
> > performance problems caused by your amazingly slow I/O.  Not that I'm
> > arguing against rewriting BackupPC to accomodate slow media, but I'm
> > certainly not going to bother, since it's certainly not slow for me.
>
> Well, I don't think that's entirely accurate.  BackupPC is on the order of 10
> times slower than alternatives making full backups after the first.  It is on
> the order of 20-50 times slower than alternatives making incrementals.  This
> referring to the same disk setup.


I think the numbers you're seeing are *very* unusual.  I've got servers that do incrementals of servers that have hundreds of thousands of files, but only change a few files a day (like 8-10), and it takes just a few minutes to do an incremental on these systems.

I have other servers that change 50% of the files on the system, which reflects about 30GB of incrementals per day.  I think the largest file that changes is 7GB (not 25), but we're talking about large files here.  That server only takes 45 minutes to back up.

I have servers that are also more typical file-servers:  hundreds of thousands of files, several hundred GB of used storage, and thousands of changed files per day equalling maybe 1-2GB of daily deltas.  These servers take a decently long time to do a full (as in 700 minutes, or say 12 hours), and a relatively short time to do an incremental (under 2 hours easy).

All of these file servers are plenty powerful (multi-core, multi-GB of RAM, SAS drives, etc.), but the backup servers are not:  these are 1.5GHz VIA processors (read: SLOW) with 512MB RAM and a single SATA drive (1TB, IIRC.), and are connected via 100Mb (right:  100, *not* 1,000) Ethernet.

> > Might I suggest that you back up to something quicker, and then copy it
> > over to your USB drive?  (If that's too slow, than I fail to see how
> > BackupPC can do any better.)
>
> I don't expect that to be worth the expense.  In other words, half of 55 hours
> is still too long.


Again, I think you've got something fundamentally wrong with your hardware, software or configuration.  The results you are seeing just seem *wrong*.

Timothy J. Massey
 
Out of the Box Solutions, Inc.
Creative IT Solutions Made Simple!

http://www.OutOfTheBoxSolutions.com
tmassey AT obscorp DOT com
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St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
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