Bacula-users

[Bacula-users] btape speed test and LTO-5 drive

2012-07-02 07:45:38
Subject: [Bacula-users] btape speed test and LTO-5 drive
From: Mario Moder <lists AT demaio DOT de>
To: bacula-users <bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net>
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:43:01 +0200
Hi Bacula community

On the search for bottlenecks in our new backup system (Bacula 5.2.10 on 
Ubuntu 12.04 64bit, HP Ultrium LTO-5 drive connected by Adaptec 1045 
external SAS, File pool storage on iSCSI target) I ran the "speed" tests 
with "btape /dev/nst0" because the backups from local disk spool to tape 
only run with 70-80 MB/s.

Block size is default 64512 bytes and I have set Maximum File Size = 8GB 
so that the drive should not stop the tape too often.

Summary of the first two tests:

- Fastest zero test (4.295 GB): 178.9 MB/s
- Fastest random data test (4.295 GB): 119.3 MB/s

What I don't understand is the result of the next two tests (with bacula 
block structure):

- Fastest zero test (4.294 GB): 84.21 MB/s
- Fastest random data test (4.294 GB): 81.03 MB/s

Is this normal? LTO-5 should have a speed of max. 140 MB/s with 
"uncompressable" data and a speed of max. 280 MB/s with 2:1-compressable 
data. Well, the test with random data gives ca. 120 MB/s I guess that's 
ok, but why does the bacula structure test with random data give only 
ca. 81 MB/s?

The btape "fill" test also gives 81 MB/s with an LTO-5 tape. It fills up 
to 1.5 TB which is normal capacity with uncompressable random data but 
the write speed is much lower than expected.

For comparison, I ran a dd test with /dev/urandom data and it shows that 
the drive is capable of reaching much higher speed than with bacula:

root@bacula:/mnt/data1/tmp# dd if=urandom.raw of=/dev/nst0 bs=64k
196608+0 records in
196608+0 records out
12884901888 bytes (13 GB) copied, 112,333 s, 115 MB/s


The full btape speed test output can be found here:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/1071093/


Greets,

Mario

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
_______________________________________________
Bacula-users mailing list
Bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users